Like anything of value, production lighting requires some TLC if you want it to perform at its best––and for a long time. Much of what’s involved in the maintenance of the fixtures themselves could be classified as good housekeeping (want them to work? Keep them dust-free), but sometimes how well, or poorly, lighting performs depends on how you’re powering your systems.Here are some best practices for church techs to keep in mind.
Schedule Maintenance
“If we’re going to invest in these lights, we need to plan for regular, routine maintenance. ” Tim Logsdon, Lighting Director, Gateway Church, Southlake, TX
If you don’t put lighting maintenance on the calendar, chances are you’re not going to get around to it. Tim Logsdon, lighting director at Gateway Church in Southlake, Texas, puts it this way: “If we’re going to invest in these lights, we need to plan for regular, routine maintenance,” he says. “It’s similar to a car: you want to make sure you change the oil, you want to check under the hood every once in a while, maybe replace the spark plugs, and that thing will treat you right for years to come.” He notes that most production lighting manufacturers provide maintenance schedules for new fixtures on request. If you’re purchasing used fixtures, it’s a good idea to ask the seller about the unit’s maintenance history.
Be Systematic
For maintaining conventional fixtures, Randy Read, specifications sales manager at German lighting manufacturer ARRI Inc., advises church techs to set up their workspace into a number of different stations. He offers this guide:
- Station 1: Getting rid of the dust. Using a professional air compressor, blow all of the dust out and off of each fixture.
- Station 2: Keeping fixtures clean. “This is where all the fixtures and their cables are wiped off with soap and water and inspected for cracked glass, burned plugs, and anything out of the ordinary,” Read explains. “If the fixture has a lamp––not an LED––this should also be taken out and wiped off with alcohol pads.” He cautions techs never to touch the glass with their bare hands; the oil from your skin will leave spots on the lamp, which in turn creates hot spots … which decrease the bulb’s life.
- Station 3: Plug inspection time: “This means the covers are taken off and all wires are inspected, and all screws are tightened to prevent arcing of wires,” Read elaborates.
- Station 4: Time for a beauty treatment. Stock this station with paint, and apply touch-ups to fixtures, barn doors, and anything else that’s looking a little rough. “Fixtures need to look good [and] operate well,” Read says.
- Station 5: Test … test … is this thing on? This station is where techs will plug in fixtures to confirm that everything is in working order. (Better to do this on the ground rather than find out something’s not right when the unit is back up in the air.)
And finally, Read reminds techs to break out the portable vacuum cleaner and get rid of the dust on any hanging pipes. “I know [this process] is asking a lot, but remember how expensive all this equipment is, and how hard it was to get funds to buy this equipment––and how hard it will be to get funds to replace it,” Read reminds us. He also points out that this exercise serves as a safety inspection, and that your lights will, well … lighten up. “You might be surprised at how clean and bright things look because the glass has been cleaned and all that dust is not blocking the output of the fixture.”
Dust Dimmers
Dimmer racks are often stored in dusty closets, yet they don’t like dust. James Holt, director of technology in the Tech Arts Department at The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kan., urges church techs to power dimmers down and vacuum the vents out on a routine basis. “Keep the dust out of the racks so they don’t overheat because they’ll burn out that way,” he says. “Keeping the dimmers clean is the biggest thing to me, because that’s where all the heat is generated.” Churches using haze should pay attention to their moving fixtures, which will pick up more dust as they pull air, he adds.
“Keeping the dimmers clean is the biggest thing to me, because that’s where all the heat is generated.” James Holt, Tech Arts Department, United Methodist Church of the Resurrection, Leawood, KS
Check Fans
While the fans in moving lights tend to stir up one of the primary enemies of all electronics––you got it: dust––you need them all to be operational. Otherwise, you’ll experience failures due to another major enemy of electronics: heat. “If you’re using moving lights, every so often feel them and make sure that there’s airflow, and that the fans are actually running inside the mover,” Holt advises. “A lot of movers may have four, five, or six fans in them depending on the model, and one or two fans may fail.” When that happens, the fixture will eventually overheat, which decreases its overall lifespan.
Pinpoint Pins
When changing lamps in incandescent fixtures, Holt counsels church techs to examine the unit’s pins. “The pins shouldn’t have any pits or burns in them; if the pins are burned, that means the socket is burned and you need to replace that socket. Otherwise, it will destroy the new lamp as well.” While the socket itself is more difficult to see, the pins are a good indicator of its condition.
LED Odds and Ends
It may seem a little weird to be discussing maintenance for LED fixtures––they’re touted to be maintenance-free. But are they? Yes … if you’ve made the effort to actually turn them off when they’re not in use.
“Just because you turn off your lighting control console and all the lights are dimmed to zero, they’re still pulling energy unless you already have an electrical control system in place,” explains Mark Bishop, president of Lyntec, an AC power control products manufacturer based in Lenexa, Kan. The easiest way to tell if an LED light is actually off is to touch the heat sink on the back of the fixture: if it’s warm to hot, it’s on. “It doesn’t matter if there’s light output or not.”When not powered down via an electrical control system, Bishop explains that LED fixtures are always in “listening” mode––which, he emphasizes, is not to be confused with standby mode. “The lighting fixtures are always listening for instructions from DMX––should I move? Should I dim?” he illustrates. “And the No. 1 mistake people make is [associating] no light output with the fixtures being turned off.” And if LEDs are constantly pulling power, they’re also perpetually generating heat.
“If [fixtures] dim internally, if they move internally, they’ve got a computer inside––they have processors. And those processors’ lifespans will be dramatically reduced if they are left in an always-on position, whether there’s light output or not,” Bishop states. To address this, Lyntec manufactures wall-mounted motorized circuit panels that allow lighting systems to be powered down at the circuit level. The company also offers relay panels that can be installed in the rigging next to the fixtures themselves. Bishop recommends these panels for retrofit projects only, since they are more difficult to access if something goes wrong.
“Just because you turn off your lighting control console and all the lights are dimmed to zero, they’re still pulling energy unless you already have an electrical control system in place.” Mark Bishop, President, Lyntec, Lenexa, KS
Regardless of how churches opt to truly power down their LED lighting systems, Bishop urges them to treat this technology the same way techs have been trained to turn off their audio systems. “If you’ve got powered speakers, the amplifier that’s built into the speaker basically has a computer in it, [and] everyone knows that they have to be powered down,” he says. “The same reason you turn off your audio gear is exactly the same reason you want to turn off your lighting gear, except that people are so used to lighting being incandescent––where there weren’t computers in it––that they haven’t made that mental transition yet.”
