Lighting for the bathrooms

[iteles]

The aim here is to have light be plentiful and IP64 + to withstand being directly above the showers without any issues.

Final portion of #47.

We couldn't find any at Leroy Merlin so we should look further afield.

[iteles]

There are two other considerations to discuss here:

• Dimmable: We have been careful to have dimmable lights across the whole house (and not very bright lights in the corridors where they are not dimmable), so it would seem silly to have only super bright lights in the last place people go before they go to sleep
  • Finding lights that are dimmable and IP65 however seems a little akin to finding the Holy Grail - there are a small handful of IP44 dimmable lights (but this is only 'protected from light spray of water' as opposed to IP65's 'protected from low pressure water jets' which is much better for the enclosed shower areas http://www.dsmt.com/resources/ip-rating-chart/)
• Non-flush mounted: Ideally, because those ceilings are a pain to get into, we would be able to mount the lights ontop of the ceiling rather than in it - this would also give us more versatility to test different lights

The only IP65 light fitting that I've found matches both of these criteria is:
https://smile.amazon.co.uk/Bathroom-Waterproof-Changing-Bluetooth-Smartphone/dp/B07DXRNFGL/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top

My biggest problem here is that apparently everything is proprietary, the app they have is awful and we're just adding another remote to the mix in the meantime.

Also, we need a TON of them. There are 16 light points in the upstairs bathroom alone.

The dimmable part is the stickler here. If they don't have to be dimmable, this becomes a walk in the park.

I'm upping this to priority-1 because if we can only find flush-mounted light points, we have to get them here this week for the electricians to work with

[iteles]

Or we get spots:

But by far my biggest problem here is that the IP65 ones are mostly one-use products where you have to replace the whole thing and not just the bulb when it goes 😕

I should clarify that I have spent 3 hours in total now trawling through every national supplier of lighting and finding IP65 lights that are not the fugly ones for external use has proved next to impossible. Hence turning to Amazon.

[iteles]

@nelsonic Any thoughts on how to solve this problem with non-dimmable lights? filters to go ontop? Low lumens? You kind of want to be able to see very well in a bathroom, no matter what time of night you go in there!

[iteles]

Adding this here to clear my tabs but if we don't need dimmable lights, this is an easy solve. A Couple of examples I like below (both available in daylight white or warm white):

[nelsonic]

@iteles any reason you didn't include the links to the items?

[iteles]

@nelsonic I should have made it clearer, but they're hyperlinked - clicking on the images will take you directly to them on Amazon UK.

[nelsonic]

I prefer the design of the first one but the IP rating of the second is better and it gives more light.
As discussed verbally, I don't think the Electricians have included anywhere near enough light points in the bathrooms, take a look tomorrow when we're at the building site.

[iteles]

We appear to be pretty much stuck with an underwhelming and ill-placed number of light points in the bathroom.

I'm particularly concerned with having enough light in the showers because there appears to be one light point across all three showers. This is either going to be an ugly fix or a shadowy situation 😕

The key thing for us to determine is whether the lights in the bathroom need to be dimmable as this is our biggest constraint given I literally only found one IP65 dimmable bathroom light that wasn't a spot.

I would suggest that the lights in the upstairs bathrooms where people will be ending their day and the reduced mobility bathrooms probably do - otherwise we're losing the effect of keeping people in lower light situations to enhance sleep at the end of the day.

But the others don't. This also means that if people really want more light (some people prefer this when using mirrors and performing other bathroom tasks), they have options that don't mean increasing the dimmed lights for everyone.

[nelsonic]

Inês, tudo se resolve.
All of our lights will be controlled by custom code.
The lights the electricians are installing will have very little to do with the final implementation.

[iteles]

@nelsonic It seems like what you're saying is that we don't need to worry about the software/apps being proprietary but we do need to ensure the light fittings themselves allow for dimmable lighting.

Is this right?

[nelsonic]

@iteles no, much to the contrary. (apologies if that was unclear).
We will 100% NOT being using any proprietary software for controlling our lights.

At present we have purchased a number of lights for the house that are not "smart".
The few for the kitchen and co-working area that have remote controls have no other "smart features" and are not connected to any network their remotes work by RF and are self-contained.
(these are a separate issue that will be resolved in due course: #47 (comment) )

As for which lights we should be using in the bathrooms,
these are the cheapest IP65 Dimmable LEDs I've found:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32812482710.html

Yes, these are recessed lights which means we need to cut into the ceiling.
Carlos won't be "happy" but it will only take a couple of hours to do the "rasgos" and fills.
I'm happy to do all the work.

[iteles]

@nelsonic Those are spots and given our current lighting situation (few light points and not in the right places for the showers) are un-usable because they tend to provide too little light for a small focussed point (this has certainly been my experience and reason I dislike spots in bathrooms). See also the concerns on these above

It seems we're having a bit of a communication issue here, we were obviously not going to use proprietary software for the lighting, this would be against what we've been saying for years 😕

But in conclusion:

• We will obviously have our own software so there is no problem that the various lights come with proprietary software (mentioned above)
• We do in fact need the hardware to support dimmable lighting as per Lighting for the bathrooms #72 (comment)

So this takes me back to the question in #72 (comment) around whether all of the bathrooms should have dimmable lighting?

[nelsonic]

@iteles we need to think past the current obstacles.
Yes, the electricians did not think to place the bathroom lights in logical/convenient places,
but that is not the "end of the world" it's just something we need to (and crucially can) work around.

According to the electrical plans that were agreed with Bernardo last year this was the layout for the bathroom lights: https://github.com/dwyl/home/blob/master/20180405-plantas-electricidade-REV02-Francisca-FINAL.pdf

LED lights are used in Sports Stadiums so the "too little light" argument is invalid.
We just need to use the appropriate wattage and we can outshine the Sun in the bathroom!
18W is a lot of luminosity! for reference: the Ikea reading lights in the lounge are 5W and if you stare into them from 1m away you will temporarily blind yourself! That's the operating distance for the shower/bathroom lights.

18W version of the Dimmable Waterproof LEDs I linked to above: (they're very bright and only $7.65)

As for where the lights are positioned as I said above, holes and "rasgos" (groves for wiring) will need to be made in order to place the LEDs exactly where they need to be focussed. Given how energy and cost efficient LEDs are we can have multiple spots in each shower cubicle if we need to.

Everything is already in place for dimmable lights in terms of the circuitry.
We just need to extend the single lighting point to the desired locations and wire the lights in parallel.
We need to buy bulbs/lights that are dimmable (linked above - with more options below ...).
We can control them using a Raspberry Pi Zero or Arduino and relay switch; we already have all the hardware we need.

If we decide to recess the lights we will need to drill circular holes with a Diamond core hole drill:
https://www.screwfix.com/p/erbauer-diamond-core-drill-kit-8-pcs/96229


https://youtu.be/1ddAadd6GYo
Once the holes are drilled for the LEDs the concrete will need to be chipped out of the hole
using a hammer and chisel (the way all the other holes have been made in the house so far...).

For the "rasgos" we use an Angle grinder to cut two parallel lines and then chisel out the middle:

https://youtu.be/8pw7vfw-V38

Obviously it would have been much better if the original electricians had done the job they were contracted to do, but sadly they didn't so now we need to fix it. I think it will end up looking very good. All the "rasgos" will be covered and painted and nobody will know they were ever there.

Prefer Surface Mounted Lights?

If you/Carlos decide you prefer surface-mounted lights because they are less work,
there are many options. Surface Mounted Bathroom Dimmable LEDs $12.10 with free shipping
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32817864509.html

And a bit more digging ...
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33054285460.html $9.20 for 20W with free shipping:

Either way we will have to do "rasgos" on the ceiling in order to position the lights exactly where we need them. And based on this extra work, we'll need to deduct from Bernardo's final payment.

[iteles]

@nelsonic As we had discussed at the site, the whole point was to avoid doing the extra rasgos if possible, which could be done with the right non-spots.

I will make sure the painters don't bother to paint the bathroom ceilings just yet and we'll speak to Carlos about it on Monday.

For the record I prefer surface mounted lights because you can change the bulbs, even in IP65, so I find them more sustainable. Either way, if we're going to do the extra ripping up of the ceiling, then surface-mounted is not an issue because we'll be hiding the cables so they will not look bad.

Lastly, I had not considered shipping from China as an option given our current timelines.
This of course opens up more options and I'm sure if I look there will be other dimmable options and all bathroom lights can be dimmable.
We'll then have to get the electricians to come back later on in the year once these arrive.

[nelsonic]

Inês, the embedded spot lights last 20 years. And can be changed with a screwdriver in less than a minute. ALL modern Bathroom (IP65) lights are sealed units and the bulbs cannot be changed.

I'm really not fussed about embedded vs. surface mounted lights (other than ease of cleaning).
It's certainly not an argument I need to have. I have way better things to be focussing on.
All I was doing was sharing a link to an example product that was IP65 and cost effective.

Everything can be shipped from China by 48h FedEx if needed so the "timelines" are a non-issue.
If timelines are really an issue, pay more and get them express delivered from Amazon:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dimmable-Ultra-Thin-Lighting-Bathroom-3000K-6500K/dp/B07GWHCCJM

[iteles]

@nelsonic That light is IP20, the only one I can find similar to this is IP54:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B073PX8S3W/ref=psdc_10709331_t2_B07GWHCCJM

No IP65 ones. Anyway, let's review tomorrow on site.

[iteles]

We have some IP65 spots in the showers and some bigger lights installed but we will now wait for the walls of the showers to be put in before revisiting the lighting.