Fiber Optics for Household Lighting

my mistake my wife says its fiber optics and also wanted to add that eventurally

i was to build a dome shaped home with the use of fiber optics and wind mill electric and a few other ideas ,

i am pipe dreaming at this point as i am disable in wheel chair and would have to be a miracle for it to happen but one can always dream .

You are IN LUCK my friend, I represent one of the largest Fiber Optics manufacturers in the world..

Please tell me what the dimensions are, and the approx lengths you will need..

I can quote you basically factory direct, with Campbell Lighting being only the agent.

sincerely

Donald Campbell

Dear Mr. Donald Campbell,

I was interested in this too.

We (myself and my organisation - Energy Consultants) are trying to work out a solution in this application for residences as well as industry.

So as to be able to calculate on a THUMB basis, could you please provide answers to the following queries?

1. Would it be possible for light collected from the terrace or any open space of a premises to be transported by means of the OFC to ANY DISTANCE without loss of intensity?

2. If NO, then can it be transported upto say 25 metres?

3. If I need to light up a volume of space admeasuring say 1000 cubic feet (10 x 10 x 10) to a level of lighting provided by a normal 40 Watt Fluorescent Tube Light or say two nos of 18 Watt CFLs, would I have to have a BUNDLE of OFCs? How many such OFCs would be necessary in the bundle?

4. Could you indicate cost per metre of such OFC if the requirement were in BULK? Say something like 10 Kms of OFC?

5. What would it cost if the requirement were only about say 100 metres or so?

Just for your information, I am a resident of Mumbai (India).

Can you provide technical construction details of a working model?

Look forward to your reply. If you need further clarifications, please write.

Thanks

Ravi Amdekar

hello this is roger snow :

the dementions of our present house is 30 wide by ruffly 45 long 3 bedrooms , 1 small bath , a 12x14 kitchen and a combination living room and dinning room 14x28.

right now we have all florecent lights ,(no regular lights and our bill last year was 145 and this year at this time is 120.00 so that has helped , but was to lower it more .

right now we have very little money to do any thing but hopefully we will have some in a few months as my wife is disabled too but has been waiting on ssi , for 4year 2 months .

sorry am not sounding like i want any pitty or hand outs just stating the fact .

actully in the future we would like to buy about 2 acres of land and build a 42'

in diameter. and 2 20 ft domes one for bed room and one for wood working shop

our dream is to have the lighting from fiber optics and one light in bundle to turn on at night , and a wind mill generator tied into electric system to pay a large amount of electicity . and piping 8 ft underground with one side up hooked up to a blower and

the other hooked up to a filtered floor grill in the middle of the dome for air conditioning and a small stove for heating ..

all sounds good except the money .

well thank you for showing interest

god bless

roger and sharon snow

I am the Lighting Designer for a large engineering consultasncy company and am engaged in just what you are trying to do, we are putting light tubes into our office in order to save lighting hopefully for 70% of the working year. Using skylights is the cheapest and best way to get light in. Fibre optics by there nature will not work as if you have a bundle and want to distribute light to several rooms you will use a lot more light than you think plus fibre optics are in my expereince the most expensive way to get light into a place. If you read up a few books on lighting design you will be able to design your own lighting scheme and you will get a mor efficient and much cheaper scheme. One thing to remember is to think how much lighting do you need and where, be rigourous in this and you cannot go wrong, use plenty of switches and switch lights off when not in use. Use KISS.

Have fun................

Hello Patrick e

Yes, I agree, for a single floor dwelling or a small commercial building, or a large retail open ceiling building (Like Walmart), these tubes or just plain old sky lights are best.

One of my local Wal Marts has many, many old fashioned Sky Lights, in conjunction with F32 T8 dimming ballast hooked up to a Photo Sensor. Seems like a very reasonable system, and it works very well, except for the premature failures of the T8's..

However, if you are considering a multi floor apartment building, OR a concrete floor multi floor building, you options would be limited to energy saving lighting, or Fiber Optics, no matter how inefficient it would be..

People just have to chose what system works best for them.

Donald

hi again Mr.Campbell

i sorry if i missed it but what is your home page address or could you drop me a email

at snoman8@bellsouth.net.

Hi snoman8,

If you wish to illuminate an area of your home using sunlight only you can achieve that trick through a window in the roof with a light pipe down to the room requiring light.

I lived in a house in Dallas, Texas some 20 years ago whiere the kitchen was in the middle of the house and the only light came down a very wide light pipe from a ceiling skylight which was in the roof.

It worked very well. Obviously we needed electric light at night!!

A UK company sells a product which will probably do the whole job; I emphasise that I have not tried this out, nor am I employed to advertise their product, nor do I have any interest, financial or otherwise in the company. but it looks as if it might work.

The product is called the Sky Tunnel and is designed and manufactured by a company called Solar Skylight, Their telephone number (UK) is 0800 389 7361.

I have just called them and they are still there - the brochure that I have is a couple of years old so I thought that I ought to check!)

Various models are available dependent upon your exact requirement.

I wish you the very best of luck.

Sleepy

I have two of the light tubes, (10" dia.) that you mention -- I have them in a formal living room which is in the middle of the house, with no windows. They work VERY well and are not too expensive, approx $400US installed for both.

The only thing I would like to add to them is a way to control the amount of light. On any daytime hour summer or (sunny) winter, it is like having two 150w flood lights on the ceiling.. It is not unattractive just very bright. I have considered making tinted lens to fit in place of, or over, the existing lens.

I would recommend these to anyone.

Sorry forgot to add a link for the Solar light tubes.

http://www.solatube.com/residential/

To ietech and others within this forum,

I have just received an up to date brochure from Sola Skylights.

They now provide an 'Eclipse Varilight' which when installed in the tunnel enables adjustment of brightness or light cutoff.

This sounds like something that could resolve your problem!

They also are able to add a light into the tunnel to add light during darker times, obviating the need for a seperate light in a small room.

There are also other accessories which can enable you to use the pipe as a ventilation route.

Good luck

Sleepy

Over to you

Thanks Sleepy, I'll check the varilight -- sounds like it may solve the brightness issue.

thank you "

What an exciting idea! I illuminated a shower once with an edge lighted sheet of plexiglass with an engraving in it. But carrying sunlight down into the basement! That would be cool! I had a soldering iron once that concentrated enough light to melt lead...no stray voltage, no need to turn off the machine, but hard on the eyes!

The Art Gallery of Canada has a light well in the centre of it...a vertical tunnel lined with mirrors. And the pedestrian tunnels at Carleton University have their flourescents relived from time to time with light wells that look for all the world like gigantic (tunnel sized) periscopes.

Mr. Campbell...you sound like a remarkable resource. I am looking forward to your answer on how big (and expensive) a package it would take to illluminate a room. Second question though....how would you collect the light?

Hey guys, I am working on that formula for others, so I will post it here when it's done.

Those light tubes work great, but you have the bulk of the tubes in the way.

The system we are working on will use Both Daylight, and artificial light of your choice, as it will have dual receptors/collectors

Bear with me as me get this all worked out.

Donald

To Campbell Lighting,

I too am interested in what you have to offer here.

Like one of other correspondents, I too have been involved with edge illumintaed perspex strips which had a strange beauty. About 40 yrs ago!

Fibre Optics is interesting, I will be every interested in the amount of light that can be transmitted as I had always assumed that there would be limits here.

Very, very interested.

Sleepy

Hello Sleepy, and others,

It appears that the fiber optics may be getting more popular, as Solar is good, but SO expensive, and still not as efficient as it will be someday..

I all boils down to how much money one wants to spend, and how long they can wait for the savings to return the investment.

We are getting into all kinds of new lighting ventures, Fiber Optics, LED Lighting, solar panels, solar water heaters.

Now, the new generation of our CCFL lamps, (Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamps),

promises to be FAR better than any CFL could ever hope to be.

Presently, we currently stock a major brand of the 8 watt CCFL fully dimmable, but the light level leaves a little to be desired. However, by the first part of 08, we expect to be ready to sell the NEW ballast-less CCFL lamps up to 18 watts (equal to 100 watt incandescent) which has a remote mounted ballasting system.

This new system will solve a major problem with the new electronic lighting systems currently available.

First, we are eliminating the excessive heat of both lamp and ballast in the same enclosure, secondly we are designing our new dimmer to work in conjunction with the remote ballast, which will offer a major breakthrough for many applications..

This new system will not only give the versatility of incandescent brightness, and dimming ability, but will also give these CCFL energy savers 30,000 plus hours of life expectancy, a far cry from the 6-8,000 hours life of the standard wal-mart type CFL's

Another VERY new system we are bringing out is the NEW Low Power Induction/Electrode-less light bulbs called the "Forever Lamp"..

This bulb contains NO filament and is based on the "Tesla Coil" similar concept, and so far the hours of life are looking unbelievable.

This unit will be priced to sell to the common man, with a LIFETIME free replacement warranty!

I can't wait to see what GE offers for the Company after we sell several million units. haha

Anyone that is interested, please feel free to private message me for details.

Donald

Hi, for Campbells Lighting,

Not sure why Solar is expensive? Unless you have a different take on this?

You have hit a nerve with me; I have been playing around with different low energy lights that I have been able to purchase. In small trial quantities.

I have been very dissapointed. Curently my study, from which I am sending this, is part lighted by small flourescent strips (under cabinet, over the desk) and a number of different downlighters, MR16s , GU10s and CFLs.

The MR16 are by far the best in producing good light at desk and floor level. GU10s are not as good although they appear to be a bright when you look at the aperture. CFLs are slow to start and some take a long while to gain full brightness level. These are 11 Watt Megamux units and have proved to be the best of the CFLs that I have tried so far.

I have not tried CCFLs yet, nor LEDs as the latter are unlikely to have the neccesary power, unless you know better??? I would like to try CCFLs of which I have read a tad. Just let me know what you have and when.I would apreciate any literatute on these to bring me up to speed.

My ideal light would be a downlighter with the quality and luminance of MR16s but mains powered. I have several enquiries out to different companies in different countries to try and see which way things are headed. Oh and they need to be dimmable as we never know until we install, what luminance we may actually need, especially in different circumstances.

MR16s appear to be better than GU10s and CFLs because the tiny filament enables better focusing of the light from the lamp/housing to give a better beam. Certainly GU10s have a longer filament and the CFLs are diffuse to start with , (many light sources within the lamp) I trust that the CCFLs do not have this same problem - it needs to be designed out at the beginning!

I want mains powered lights to avoid the electronic transformers which are sold for this purpose but which provide a lot of electronic noise and provide severe interference to many radio appliances at different radio bands. I am currently considering buying a radio distribution system from central antennae to minimise this problem. This approach looks to be cheaper than providing RFI suppression for each transformer and radio appliance! (Most magnetic transformers are too large to go through the installation aperture for these lamps and I am tired of taking up floors of the room above the room I am working in!)

I too have had life issues with standard CFLs although from my perspective this appears to an improving situation. If CCFLs are an order of magnitude better,it will be a step forward but will take some proving!

The world needs solutions to these problems!!

Good Luck and hope to hear from you.

My email address can be provided to your email address.

Thanks

Sleepy

Hello Sleepy.. I will try to answer your questions:

Not sure why Solar is expensive? Unless you have a different take on this?

When I say expensive, I am speaking of the initial Cost, plus the minimal conversion factor, (real power generated, VS loss), plus, the fact that you cannot run an air conditioning system, OR a non-fossil fuel heating system with solar generated power.

Also, LED lighting systems, (Ran off the mains), can be equally as efficient as the Overall cost of the solar system, obviously, just for lighting..

nor LEDs as the latter are unlikely to have the necessary power, unless you know better???

High Power LED's are changing that, however care must be taken to properly heat sink these units as they burn quite hot, and average life is down to 50,000 hours as opposed to 100,000 hours with the small 3mm and 5mm low power old style LED's Many commercial high power LED's are now available world wide, and they are used in the GU10 and Mr-16, and all the Par style lamps.(further info available on request)

My ideal light would be a downlighter with the quality and luminance of MR16s

Please keep in mind that you are talking about basically an incandescent light bulb with some bromine gas added for better color temperature.. I think you would be amazed how close the High Power LED MR16 comes to equaling this light output. If you weren't happy with that, you could use an aluminum strip light, with High Power LED's installed.. Obviously the initial cost would be more, but that would be easily re-couped by the energy savings over the 50,000 hours of life.

Oh and they need to be dimmable as we never know until we install, what luminance we may actually need, especially in different circumstances.

Not all High Power LED's are dimmable, as it depends if they use a capacitor, or a transformer on the PCB board. Here is the scoop on the Osram/Sylvania High Power LED as to dimming:

Dimming of the HF2X is possible using the Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) functionality of the OPTOTRONIC OT 09/10-24/350 DIM/E.

MR16s appear to be better than GU10s and CFLs because the tiny filament enables better focusing of the light from the lamp/housing to give a better beam. Certainly GU10s have a longer filament and the CFLs are diffuse to start with , (many light sources within the lamp) I trust that the CCFLs do not have this same problem - it needs to be designed out at the beginning!

CCFL's are really just fluorescents that are started by high voltage pulse, as opposed to glow start technology. Inherently they are longer life than the CFL lamps.

However, you still have the phosphor inside for even distribution of the arc light between cathode and anode, and determining the color of the light. So, even though you can get these in a spot light configuration, you will NEVER get the punch that you can out of an point light source, like incandescent, Halogen, or High Power LED.

I want mains powered lights to avoid the electronic transformers

Unfortunately, your ONLY choice for a true "Mains" powered light source is your incandescent/halogen light sources..

All fluorescents have transformers, either magnetic or electronic, all LED light sources have either transformers or constant voltage transformers called "Drivers"

Hopefully this answers your concerns.

Donald