Light

Interest in measuring light comes from:

• the trend to atrium buildings where natural light is used to light work areas and for growth of plants, providing a pleasant atmosphere
• office workers working under fluorescent and other lighting inside office buildings. Lighting greatly affects peoples’ physiological wellbeing and work performance.
• retail areas such as Shopping Malls where artificial and natural lighting can have a major impact on visitor
• control of animal and chicken production
• control of plant growth and production

Light is generally measured in lux (lx).

The recommended illuminance of a work area can vary from 40 lux for very rarely visited areas where the sole task is movement and orientation, through to 1600 lux for tasks requiring minute inspection.

Our involvement with the design of a landmark Sydney building complex where the incorporation of natural lighting was a major feature in creating favourable ambience and in cutting power consumption required us to develop data logging light meters which were not available commercially. The considerable cost of the instrumentation now has been amortised and they are available for other light measurement applications at a very economical rate, for anything from a simple low cost spot check to complex projects. The units are top quality, custom built, data logging with 12 bit loggers and not otherwise available in Australia.

In situations where light levels vary, measuring light intensity over an extended period of time provides a far better indication than does a spot test, and with our equipment the cost is not that much more.