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Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors

benkuhn.net

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Re: Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors

#51

Post by wheels »

I usually eschew labels, preferring simply "sleep weirdo", but I fit the pattern of "Non-24 Sleep-Wake Disorder", with my sleep and waking times drifting progressively later at semi-regular intervals. The result is that I'm often awake through the night. (This week I'm going to bed around 9:00 a.m.)

Even with that, I've noticed some pretty big productivity swings based on the season. Interestingly, this hit me very hard in moving from where I'm from (southern Texas) to Michigan (for college) and then to Berlin (for the last 14 years). Right now, in Berlin, which is approximately as far north as Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, North America's northernmost large city, the sun sets before 4:00 p.m.

I usually try to spend a month of winter closer to the equator to keep my productivity levels and spirits up.

Between the seasonal adjustment (where the sunset time swings by a full 7 hours in Berlin) and my sleep weirdo-ness, I've also come to love me some artificial-sun-level lighting.

I tend towards 400-500 watt halogen bulbs. I have an up-firing light of approximately that wattage in every room of my home.

A question for other folks that compensate sunlight with artificial lighting:

Do LEDs really work for you? I'm a wanna-be hippie, and I'd love to use energy efficient bulbs and have tried every generation of them, but the light just doesn't do it for me. I keep going back to halogen as the sweet-spot between black-body radiation and energy efficiency. I can immediately spot the difference between an LED or CFL and incandescent bulb. I've had some success in mixing them in about 50/50 ratios. They've already been banned for sale in the EU, but I have a stockpile that will last me a decade in a pinch. Does anyone else struggle with the light quality from modern lighting?

Re: Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors

#53

Post by [deleted] »

MiroF wrote: post #35
keyle wrote: post #17

Many offices, mostly in places like Amsterdam, Paris etc. in art-deco building, take pride in the amount of natural light they're pumping in the office. With mirrors and sunroofs (with sails as shade) and a few plants, you can really give a beautiful, open air feeling to your office. This, feels like crutches. edit: there is something to be said about starting an hour earlier and finishing an hour earlier if the suns…

You don't live in Boston, so you don't understand. It's dark by 4-4:15 here

[deleted]

Re: Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors

#54

Post by xyzzyz »

morsch wrote: post #27
Scoundreller wrote: post #3

> Isn’t this expensive to run? It draws about 2 kWh per day (assuming 8h of usage), which costs about $0.30 at typical rates. This is comparable to one day of a modern fridge or one load of laundry. Power is cheap, folks! But it will offset your other heat sources. If you live alone, you can treat it like a room heater and lower the temperature for the rest of your home. Since the bulb is radiating heat some degree o…

2 kWh is kind of nuts. Yes, it's in the same order of magnitude than the fridge and washing machine, but those already tend to be the largest consumers of electricity in a household, unless you're doing cooling or heating with electrity. And a modern fridge suitable for 2 to 3 persons will be more like 0.5 kWh per day and a load of laundry is < 1 kWh.

Three standard 60 W incandescent bulbs will draw just under 2 kWh in 10 hours, and not too long ago it was completely normal to have many more of these on at the same time.

Re: Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors

#55

Post by benkuhn »

Scoundreller wrote: post #3

> Isn’t this expensive to run? It draws about 2 kWh per day (assuming 8h of usage), which costs about $0.30 at typical rates. This is comparable to one day of a modern fridge or one load of laundry. Power is cheap, folks! But it will offset your other heat sources. If you live alone, you can treat it like a room heater and lower the temperature for the rest of your home. Since the bulb is radiating heat some degree o…

While LEDs do produce some waste heat, efficient ones convert 50%+ of the input power to visible light, so it's less than you might think (compare to ~10% for incandescents, iirc). The bulb I have doesn't have a perceptible effect on my room temperature (although I guess it probably does cause the thermostat to turn on a tiny bit less often).

Re: Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors

#56

Post by BenoitEssiambre »

GuiA wrote: post #4

Every few years some company/research lab will claim they have a technology that’ll simulate sunlight coming through a window, but it still isn’t something one can buy. The moment we can buy eg a 3ft by 1ft panel that we can just mount on a wall and feels like an actual sunlit window for a few thousands dollars or so, interior design is likely going to get radically different. (And that’s not to mention the sci-fi dr…

What you want is, first, a strong source and second parallel rays (not radial rays like omnidirectional light bulbs). The later is the hard part. Because of conservation of etendue, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etendue#Conservation_of_etendu...) it's difficult to have very parallel rays unless the source is small and/or far away. Most spotlights still have relatively wide angles of radiation. I wonder if something like this might work if well placed: https://www.amazon.com/Primelux-8-inch-14400-Lumens-Driving/...

Re: Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors

#57

Post by derefr »

Mizza wrote: post #6

I'm extremely light sensitive, and so have built quite a few DIY solutions in order to alleviate my S-A-D symptoms. One of my systems may have been a bit over powered and over used, as I developed what a doctor friend later diagnosed as "light induced hypomania", which was quite an experience. Experiment at your own risk.

> One of my systems may have been a bit over powered and over used, as I developed what a doctor friend later diagnosed as "light induced hypomania",

I would note that light-therapy lamps for SAD have clear instructions to not sit in front of them for more than an hour-or-so at a time. Your body really does just go on producing more dopamine as long as you're sitting there.

Re: Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors

#58

Post by taneq »

saagarjha wrote: post #45
codingdave wrote: post #43

> The lamp flickers when other current-hungry appliances turn on That should not happen. There is likely a problem somewhere in the electrical system. We used to have similar problems in our home, hired an electrician to help track it down... they gave our home a clean bill of health, but called the city... long story short, they found a problem in a transformer a couple blocks away from us. It had been impacting man…

Is it not? I thought the motors inside of them caused that to happen?

Yes and no. Motors pull a much higher current when they're starting up than when they're running, so your wall socket voltage is going to dip when you start a motor. That said, it shouldn't dip enough to be particularly noticeable, and if it is then that can point to a problem in your power supply or wiring.

Re: Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors

#59

Post by [deleted] »

codingdave wrote: post #43

> The lamp flickers when other current-hungry appliances turn on That should not happen. There is likely a problem somewhere in the electrical system. We used to have similar problems in our home, hired an electrician to help track it down... they gave our home a clean bill of health, but called the city... long story short, they found a problem in a transformer a couple blocks away from us. It had been impacting man…

[deleted]

Re: Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors

#60

Post by benkuhn »

codingdave wrote: post #43

> The lamp flickers when other current-hungry appliances turn on That should not happen. There is likely a problem somewhere in the electrical system. We used to have similar problems in our home, hired an electrician to help track it down... they gave our home a clean bill of health, but called the city... long story short, they found a problem in a transformer a couple blocks away from us. It had been impacting man…

Ah, this does seem quite plausible--my local power utility doesn't seem super competent, and my landlord doesn't seem particularly excited about maintaining my house :)
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