so one question for you gordon when does the opposition turn up because i'm absolutely ready
for it well there's only one set of opposition in this video we're going to look at the difference
between flood lighting and where you would use it and street lights and to do that we're going
to show some products from Ansell Lighting that will show you the difference between
a street light and a flood light and where it's best to use a street light and as always
once we step outside the studios it starts to rain so let's go back to those studios
we're just about dried off and we've got in front of us here the Ansell Magnaled
street light but first of all explain what the difference is between a street light and a flood
light oh well yeah that's why i had to drag you around town looking at examples of good
and bad practice and what a lot of people do when it comes to lighting say a car park or an access
road pop down to the wholesalers buy the biggest flood light you can possibly find and put it as
high up on the building and think that's going to give you enough light well actually car parks tend
to be quite large areas and the secret to getting good car park lighting is to spread the light out
as far as possible from regular well-defined points and that's where this kind of product
from ansel comes in okay and then my thinking that's why we've got a loaf of bread in front of
us as a practical demonstration it is well let's cut a few slices and see how a street light works
well this is a first for the efix channel we're going to conjure something up in less than 10
minutes yeah well we're going to use bread to demystify the polar plots that manufacturers
put on the lighting data sheets you'll often find them in there and obviously to use that basically
try and describe the direction that the light heads from a fixture so we're going to use this
bread here as the carpark okay that makes sense of course i thought that yeah and we're also going to
use some some some butter to represent the light that comes out from a lighting fixture now someone
always told me light is light butter the further you spread it the less you have okay so i think
i'm with you so we're going to start off in a car park bread on the right and this is the light and
you're going to show me how that light appears in the car park yeah so this is a flood light
and if you look at the polar plot there in the uh in the corner of the screen there you'll see
the best it comes out as a lump of light all equal in all directions and it's actually quite a narrow
beam angle you get from that flood light and if we put that in the car park we'd probably need
quite a few dollops of light to cover the car and this is what we saw in the rain didn't we we saw
those dollops of lights in those areas yeah and obviously that creates glare as well so you end up
with two scenarios either an overlit car park that we have there or an underlit car park there yeah
yeah anyone see the light yeah i can't really get around it by tilting it because then
if you tilt the floodlights in which you get glare which can obviously cause hazards you may not be
able to see road signs and things like that okay that one's out the way so the second car park's
coming i noticed yeah so this is the uh yeah this is using a street light and you'll see the polar
plot there has directional elements to it so what it does literally spreads the light out across a
wider area so we don't have light going behind the column because we don't want it there we want it
on the area we're trying the light only which is possibly the car park or possibly an access road
and by spreading the light further it means actually that we can get away with less fittings
all right so less light fittings when we're using this style compared to a floodlight that makes
sense as well now let's demonstrate it then so let's turn one on and see what you're talking
about yeah so then we'll see that there so here's the the light fitting against the wall you'll see
the light heading forwards you'll also see there's no upward light so that means we're not causing
light pollution turn it sideways you'll see the enormous spread of light that we have there and
that's an even spread isn't it as you look at that there's not any bright elements there on
the wall it's evenly lit and it's proved in the car park yeah again so in that torrential rain
you can see the sharp cut off of the light going forward but you gain that even illumination across
the car park even i think i could find my car if i left it in that car park yeah so you can see
the markings you can see everything even but again and then what it means when we bring it back to a
floodlight installation here probably could have used one street light instead of two floodlights
i love it when we create content when actually now i understand something that i probably
didn't understand that well beforehand great explanation thank you for that but what about
the power level of these are they similar to flood lights yes or street lights just like
floodlights come in at a vast range of power levels my surprise actually that the ones that
probably like the street area outside your house are probably less than 20 watts so it's actually
not a lot of power but and quite a bit of light but they say it's just spread over that wide area
these ones from antelope we've got here come in 30 50 and 70 watt versions so that's 5
300 to 10 900 lumens at around 150 lumens per watt so similar numbers to what you'd
seen a floodlight but it's dealt with those clever design features in there as well gary
so those clever design features shall we take a closer look at what's going on inside one of these
so there we have the flat polycarbonate cover which gives it its rating of IK09 and underneath
that cover is the secret to that brilliant light distribution it's these small plastic optics if
we just take a closer look at them we'll see that the actual shape of the optic almost
follows what we see in that polar plot the flat line at the back is where it stops the light going
behind the column and then you can see obviously it's a wider profile to push light out the sides
and then that rounded profile the push light towards the front and street lines all about these
clever optics so what about the mounting options okay so more street lights as you'd expect sit on
the top of a steel or aluminium column and that fits into this bracket adapter here that's fixed
in place with these two large stainless steel grub screws and then this itself then mounts onto the
back of the fitting and if we tighten those up we can change the angles can we yeah it can so this
is where you'd usually see it yeah mountain on the post top but you may depending upon the design you
may want to just slightly tilt that depending if your column's at the back of a path or the front
of a path and there's those adjustment markings to do that you can do a plus or minus 20 degrees
we can also mount off a column so in other words we could potentially have two fittings off it will
it allow for that as well yeah so sometimes yeah there's a spigot that comes off either side of a
column and then it needs to come in the rear side of the fixture so you can just flip it over and
it's the same screws you can see how we've changed that mounting arrangements to come in from the
rear and here's a typical example of what you'd see installed so yeah two fixtures on the single
column and the advantage of that is you've only got one column in the ground one hole in other
words haven't you yeah the other advantage of that robust mounting method is look at what's happened
to this floodlight here the heavy seagulls landed and tilted it out of operation it's very difficult
to do that on a on a streetlight mounting different variants yeah so you can obviously
switch them direct from a central location or you may choose to have a photocell fitted to
each fitting again it depends on how those control options that you need for the particular project
let's get one open then and see what's inside okay so the really clever bit is once we hinge this
open with this tool-less entry i've automatically disconnected the supplies i did there so it saves
me going down to the bottom of the column and pulling out a fuse we've actually disconnected
now so we can start working on it so there it is and it's separated from the connection where our
supplier was coming in we see the connector block the flex uh grip there that would have held it in
place so that's disconnected that what about sealing up for ip rating yes you see there's
a nice solid seal around this gear compartment uh but then look at obviously how we bring our cable
in there so you're going to root that through the bracket arm but obviously how do you tighten
the cable seal into it you'll notice there's a there's a cable cable grip gland in there
so it's all held in place and of course it's important that we get it level remember we're
going on something round now aren't we so yeah so handy spirit level in there to make sure you don't
tilt it when you're when you're installing it so we can separate the two from each other say for
maintenance is that right yeah so say you wanted to take the actual separate the light assembly
in the driver you can easily detach it from the column mounting just pull out these two pins and
they lock out a place and then disconnect the the safety chain to hold it in there and you
can separate the two halves of the housing that looked incredibly simple to separate them so again
you could be repairing that in the van or perhaps replacing it but is it easy to reverse the process
yeah so again a little bit tricky here we're doing it on the bench remember that
half of it would be fixed at the top of the column but again those brackets just quickly spring back
into place and again you can attach that safety check probably should have done that first
what about the moisture yeah clever little design feature spotted in there this little
breathable vent plug so there's a minimal chance of getting condensation with inside the fixture
this ansel magna led street light is well engineered just to finish it off it's ip66
as well yeah and that's just exactly what you need for a car park you're up on those columns getting
battered by the elements but this is it's getting designed for long life so it's 54 000 hours of
lamp life to l80 so that's 80 percent of its original output when you first put it up there
but also comes with a five year warranty okay so when we're thinking of warranty it flicks me
back to the other thing it's cost so i look at a flood light i look at a street light there's
probably quite a little bit of difference there in the price well on face value yes you'd think
oh my street light is uh yeah a more expensive option but actually gary let's remember the
most expensive thing when it comes to lighting car parks and roads is actually the price of
putting the column in and the further apart you can get those columns obviously you save money
yeah and i think about the street that i live in over time i've seen the actual columns get further
apart and have also in some cases got a lot taller yeah well that's the advantage of these optics
that we've seen and moving to led from possibly those old sodium lamps is you can get yeah wider
pole spacings but you probably noticed a lot the color of the light changed as well yeah it's a lot
better now yeah so this white light 4 000 degrees kelvin so you get that slightly cooler light
that's great for street lighting great for telling the actual color of your car when you're trying
to find it as well um but that's the that's the key bit you know by doing your design right you
can really save a lot of money by pushing those pole spacings out and i would recommend if anyone
out there any electricians have been approached to like car parks or access roads is possibly
contact the ansel lighting design department and get them to look at the design for you because you
can actually be pretty pretty clever when it comes to that design yeah and as always we're interested
in your feedback like me maybe you learned something today maybe in the past you've gone
for a floodlight for the areas that we've talked about and now you're thinking street light's
the way forward and we recommend you get hold of ansel to help you with that design if it's new to
you we'd love all your comments if you leave them below we'll try and get back to as many as we can
you