Always start with a provocative headline, especially if its about the potential for LED failures.
But first, let’s remind ourselves of the news that broke over the weekend, that more than 100 school buildings have been deemed unsafe because a building material (reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete) is long past its practical (and safe) life. It was used extensively from the 1950s to the 1990s as a more lightweight construction method for floors, walls and roofs (though it was acknowledged to have a limited life of around 30 years).
Four key historical dates for you in respect of RAAC:
1961: The Institution of Structural Engineers issued a report stating that moisture reduced material strength by 13%, while long-term exposure to ‘polluted air’ reduced it by 40%.
1980-1990s: safety issues were raised when roof collapses led to buildings being demolished.
1996: A BRC report, funded by the UK government found RAAC panels cracking in a housing development and cracks and bends in panels in school buildings.
2002: Another BRC report came to three conclusions: material coatings on RAAC probably become compromised after 20 years; corrosion can happen without any visual indication; some of the inspected panels did not meet standard when they were originally installed.
In not so many words: this was a time-based material that required on-going surveillance because it WOULD fail. This was always a longevity issue. It was all about TIME.
Enough about concrete. What does this have to do with us and why am I writing about it?
Its September 2023 and there are a number of longevity issues coming into conjunction.
- Later this month, Recolight will be hosting the second edition of Circular Lighting Live (Royal College of Physicians, London on Thursday 21st September.)
- Later this year we look forward to working with BSI on the editing of BS8887: Code of practice for the remanufacture of luminaires
- The Institute of Asset Management is hosting a conference in November (details TBA)
We need to look back at the LED revolution and hunt down the parallels with concrete-ish panels..
This is about the shift from ‘light bulbs’ – for the young and unwary, these were light sources inside a glass envelope. We all knew that they would regularly fail – manufacturers provided expected lifetime data to tell us – and because they needed to be replaced, luminaires were built to be able to do just that. As a consequence, the luminaires lasted for decades while the light performance was maintained via replacement lamps that matched the performance of the original sources. Pity about the energy usage.
Once we got over the fantasy that ‘LEDs would last forever’, manufacturers needed to publish expected operating life terms, and we got used to Ln and Bn numbers, relating to percentage degradation and failures over time. We came to appreciate that an LED installation might last 5 years or 50 years, dependent on operational factors. And we started to introduce clients to the concept of ‘paying forward’ – a higher capital spend that would deliver an overall saving in energy spend over years in use. And that is called Asset Management.
But here’s the thing: if you expect to change a ‘light bulb’ every couple of years it doesn’t take much brain-space to worry about what night happen to the installation itself. Life goes on – tra la. But we’re no longer popping a lamp out of its socket and giving the cover glass a wipe; now we need to plan for an exhausted LED board and a knackered driver . . . but not for a number of years . So who’s paying attention?
Once TIME becomes a design consideration and an operational factor, SOMEONE needs to pay attention.
It’s why we’re having to talk about what happens when an LED installation comes to the end of it’s life, and also why the Institute of Asset Management is making so much noise these days. Again, LIGHT is an ASSET and it needs to be MANAGED.
Building components are inevitably at risk of being forgotten when they fail once they are being looked after by the next generation of facilities managers and maintenance engineers. The original specification, with whatever warning flags that may have been added, is languishing in a bottom drawer somewhere. So who’s looking. That’s really what we’re seeing within a built estate of mainly public building going back over half a century. The people who are in a position to do something with the problem have forgotten to look.
The LED installations that are most at risk are not those in public buildings; We need to be looking at some of those exciting boutique hotel corridors and vanity office reception spaces; temples of retail and entertainment, where linear LED channels have been built into wall and floor surfaces. Who’ll remind the owners of these buildings that most linear system will need to be ripped out within the next few years? Or do we just sit back and wait for the failures, the wholesale gutting of spaces and yet more finger-pointing; though it’s unlikely that the roof will fall in. That’s a small mercy.
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