Lighting Services Blog

     Everywhere that buildings exist, there exist standards for keeping the people using them safe in an emergency. In America, the standards that government entities reference is called the NFPA 101, or the Life Safety Code. At least 43 states have adopted it as their official standard for creating and maintaining safe buildings, and all states at least base their building safety codes on it. So what is this Life Safety Code, and how does it affect you?

You know that your emergency lighting needs to comply with certain codes, but do you realize it may also be time for your non-emergency lighting to get checked?

Electrical safety should never be undervalued, especially for businesses and commercial properties that can have dozens to hundreds of lights in a property. Lighting inspections go beyond basic electrical safety, ensuring that you have full satisfactory illumination for indoor, outdoor, and emergency lights throughout the building and grounds. 

In addition to ensuring that each light fixture is safely and correctly installed, it's also important to perform regular light inspections. While many businesses overlook the importance of lighting inspections because lights are considered an integral and ignorable part of the building, responsible maintenance means knowing when a new lighting inspection is an important part of your process.

    When you are responsible for the safety of a commercial establishment and everyone that works inside it, you have a lot to remember. There are tests that need to be performed to make sure your emergency equipment works properly. There are standards your business has to comply with. Fortunately, you don't have to face these tasks alone, and it is better to rely on lighting professionals to ensure that your place is safe. They have three advantages.

    School administration is a tricky business. Balancing competing demands, along with keeping the curriculum great and the hallways supervised, makes it easy to forget something such as lighting. However, the type of lighting a school uses is important, and it may be time to look into what type your institution is using. If your school is using incandescent or fluorescent lights, it is probably time to upgrade to LED lights. There are several reasons for this. 

      Every business wants to know what OSHA standards apply to them because those rules give a good idea of what will keep employees and customers safe. For instance, the rule that every exit route must be clear of obstruction and that the exit door can't have decorations or signs that hide the door is a great guideline for ensuring that your exit is usable in an emergency situation. As you can imagine, OSHA saves a lot of their rules for how exit areas are illuminated, and you will want to keep abreast of their requirements. Fortunately, OSHA has written out some clear guidelines in this. The following questions are some that you, the business owner, need to ask.

Owners of commercial properties across the country recognize that LED lighting is superior to traditional commercial lighting in terms of light quality and color rendering, and they are retrofitting LED lighting and reaping the benefits. LED lights are energy efficient and long-lasting, very affordable and emit very little heat, which in turn reduces HVAC loads. LED lighting upgrades and installations improve work-space and transitional lighting across a variety of commercial industries.

So many factors are involved each day that make up our business decisions. It's often easy to fall into a pattern of tunnel vision where only today's problems are concerned. Let's take a quick look at the two best reasons to look at upgrading your company to LED lighting now, instead of waiting until it becomes a problem.

Emergency lighting fixtures are ever-present in public and business buildings throughout the country, so omnipresent that we often forget they are there at all -- until the moment we need them.

Every business, no matter how big or small, comes with a surprisingly long list of maintenance responsibilities. Just keeping the facility properly swept, mopped, and wiped down with a sanitizing cleaner takes enough effort as-is. Almost no team manages to keep up with every corner of the building, especially in areas where it's not fun to be. From cleaning the break room microwave to wiping down handrails, there are a number of facility upkeep tasks that need to be maintained, and maintaining the building lighting is one of these little tasks that all too often falls through the cracks.

According to safety regulations, your commercial building is required to have emergency exit lights indicating both emergency exit doors and the path to emergency exits if the route is not apparent. But installing your exit lights correctly is about more than just placement. Emergency exit lights need to function properly and safely even in situations where all other lights in the building fail. 

This is why most emergency exit lights are connected to a backup battery source that will last at least a few hours after power fails or is cut off in the building. Beyond power source, you should also think carefully about the materials used to build your emergency exit lights and the bulbs that illuminate the signs so that people in dangerous situations can clearly navigate their way to safety.