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For three years after the Thunder Mountain Harley-Davidson motorcycle dealership in Loveland, CO, was built, salespeople took a dim view of the interior lighting when showing off the bikes to prospective buyers. “Our salespeople used to take bikes outside to give potential buyers a better view of the bike and its paint job in the sunlight,” says owner Shelley Erdmann. For example, bikes that were purple tended to look black under the showroom lights.
The original lighting—comprised of 64 175-W metal halide fixtures—has since been scrapped in favor of 32 42-W fixtures each equipped with eight compact fluorescent lamps. The new system has added sizzle to the showroom floor, is a better complement to the building architecture and has shaved energy costs by 25 percent.
 The 58,500-sq ft facility, with its 44-ft high ceiling, sweeping rooflines and a floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace, looks more like a ski lodge than a dealership. The building was just three years old when the owners decided to evaluate the lighting for energy efficiency. “Thirty-five to 45 percent of the buildings we work on are less than five-years-old,” says David Soderlund, president of Cleantech Solutions, Boulder, CO, the energy services company responsible for the redesign. “Take an inner-city YMCA built in the 1930s with 20-30 footcandles and a rec center built in the 1990s that provides 60-80 fc; it seems counterintuitive, but more energy is used in the modern building.”
Armed with a PowerPoint presentation, Soderlund laid out the projected energy savings for the owners of the dealership. The “response from the building operations manager was, ‘that sounds great, but why are we having this conversation?’ ” says Soderlund. The reason, he says, was “the owner never had the conversation about operating costs with the architect” when the building was first designed.
Maintenance proved to be the biggest drawback to the original lighting system. Each fixture had one ballast and lamp. Replacing these lamps proved to be tedious and expensive; each time a lamp would burn out it would leave a dark area on the showroom floor until operations personnel could come and replace it at a cost of $175 each, plus the cost of renting a lift due to the high ceiling. Making matters worse, the low-frequency rumbling produced by the Harleys when they were driven off the showroom floor for test drives often caused the lamps to break. Considering both these factors, the lamps had an average lifespan of about 18 months.
LIGHTING BY ZONES
The new fixture (Sportlite’s LX8 Starliter high-bay) was specified after a three-month search. The fixtures use high lumen output CFLs and ballasts designed to replace metal halide, mercury vapor and highpressure sodium fixtures. “Even though we cut the number of fixtures in half, Thunder Mountain is seeing 90 percent more light delivered to the floor and there is much better light distribution,” says Soderlund. The CFLs also “maintain their brightness much better than the metal halide lamps.”
The discarded system provided 16-24 fc; the new system offers 25 fc during normal operation and 50 fc during peak hours. “We punch up the lighting on Fridays and Saturdays,” Soderlund says.
There are four ballasts per fixture and each drives two lamps. A digital light control system using a single wall panel controls the lamps across three zones on the showroom floor:
• In the center of the showroom floor, four lamps per fixture run regularly, but on Fridays and Saturdays, six lamps run.
• Along the north and south perimeter, two lamps run regularly, while four per fixture run on Fridays and Saturdays.
• On the east/west edges, where there is floor-to-ceiling glass and daylight contribution, all lamps remain off during weekdays, but two or four per fixture are used on Fridays and Saturdays.
• The lights are programmed to turn on and off automatically 15 minutes before and after the store closes.
With this control system in place, Soderlund anticipates a four-year lifespan for the lamps, which translates to about two-and-a-half years of actual operational use. The eight-lamp design also ensures that the showroom remains lighted even if one of the lamps burns out. Shadows on the products have been eliminated, and the fixtures provide nearly equal vertical and horizontal illumination, improving the visibility of chrome and paint details on the bikes.
Moreover, simply reducing the number of fixtures from 64 to 32 has opened up space near the windows and on the ceiling. Without fixtures blocking them, “the dormer windows can now accommodate daylighting,” says Soderlund. Building operations manager Scott Milewski adds that there’s now “extra space to hang banners and signs. It’s really made the store look cleaner and brighter.”
The relighting was completed in just three days in January 2007 and has since afforded prospective customers a crisper, clearer view of the bikes inside the showroom. Harley riders are traditionally a tough breed, but there’s no longer a need to take it outside.
May 2009 |
