Lighting Services Blog

Most people know that you have to put an emergency exit light at the point of egress in a building. Putting lights on the other side of the emergency exit is also a good idea. Consider the following.

During a storm or disaster, you may have experienced power outages.  Your emergency lighting system should be ready if you experience a power outage from a small incident or a major catastrophe.  Here is where an inverter comes in.     

Eventually, no matter how well you take care of your exit signs, you have to buy a new one for your building. Or perhaps you just bought a building that needs an exit sign to get up to code. Regardless of the circumstance, you will have several designs to choose from. Here are a few options that you might find.

Power outages have a way of clarifying gaps in a plan. In modern business, we plan for every possible contingency. We plan for competition, technological advances, and changes in the economy. We can plan for the changing seasons, but we can't plan for record-breaking storms. Connecticut, home to our headquarters, recently suffered from a significantly widespread power outage. Hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses were blacked-out for days, some for over a week.

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.

Building safety regulations require that every commercial facility be fitted with a minimum number of lit emergency exit signs. Anywhere the closest fire escape route is not immediately evident must have a visibly lit exit sign with an arrow pointing in the correct direction. Exterior doors must be marked with a similar exit sign, letting everyone know which door leads them to the safe outdoor areas. However, you have no reason to stop at the bare minimum of what the fire marshal demands.

With the holiday season upon us, the evergreen, tinsel and lights are emerging from storage to make their annual appearance on store fronts, doors and counters. Oh, yes, and let's not forget the requisite tree and the beautiful baubles and lights adorning it.

Building contractors may grumble about emergency lighting and safety regulations, but in an emergency the name of the game is egress. While local codes may vary somewhat in language, the International Building Code (IBC) states that "means of egress is a continuous and unobstructed path of vertical and horizontal egress travel from any occupied portion of a building or structure to a public way. A means of egress consists of three separate and distinct components: the exit access, the exit, and the exit discharge."

In the midst of every day "normal" life, when the sun is shining and everybody is going on about every day business, it's easy to take for granted those little things we routinely walk past. But emergency exit lights, like alarms, are something you never want to dismiss.