Renovation Boot Camp: Kitchen by Robin Siegerman

Author:Robin Siegerman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yorkshire Publishing Company

One myth about halogen bulbs is that they are all low-voltage. Not so. The halogen gas inside the bulb makes it burn whiter than incandescent, but not necessarily more efficiently. Some operate at 12 volts but some run on the same voltage as incandescent, 120 volts, also known as line voltage. Some halogen bulbs have a screw base, for example a par-20 or par-38 (these look like a bulb that you might put in an outdoor flood light) and some are the small bulbs that look like a low-voltage MR-16 (the small halogen bulbs with the two-pin base), but also use 120 volts. If you use these instead of the low voltage ones, typically the fixture that houses the bulbs is less expensive, since it doesn’t require a built-in transformer to convert the electrical current from the standard 120 volts to the low 12 volts. The color of light is a little whiter, the wattage is a little lower but they are not particularly energy efficient.

The low-voltage lamps and fixtures do save energy using a lower voltage and a lower wattage, typically 50w as opposed to 75w or 100w. The standard low-voltage, MR-16 lamp available on the market has a life of between 2,500 and 4,000 hours. Ushio is the one manufacturer I know of whose MR-16s last an average of 10,000 hours.

Any MR-16 type lamp can be problematic, so it’s not my first choice. The placement of the fixtures for MR-16 lamps must be calculated carefully. If they are too far apart, you’ll get shadows on the countertop, if too close together, the light beams overlap, creating hot spots.

If you happen to buy a bulb with a narrower beam angle, the bulb will seem much brighter than the others. The characteristic of either low or line voltage is that the light itself is regulated by a beam which is emitted from the lamp. A wide beam distributes the light from the bulb over a wider area so that by the time the light hits the work surface, it is somewhat diffused. But you have to calculate the placement of the other fixtures carefully so they are not too far apart, otherwise there will be a perceptible shadow on the counter-top, which creates the hot and cool spots I was describing earlier. If, on the other hand they are placed too close together, the beam of light overlaps too much creating an even hotter spot than directly below the bulb, since light is cumulative. The optimal placement is achieved with a series of mathematical equations. Now, where the design gets really mucked up is when you have to replace one bulb and not the others, and by mistake you get a new bulb with a narrower beam angle, you will notice that this bulb seems much brighter than the ones around it, because its light is concentrated in a tighter area. Bulbs lose their intensity over time and a tighter beam angle means a more concentrated amount of light on the surface below it.

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