Solve Title 24 Problems

Ed Rondo, RME Electrical Contractor C10 Lic.937757

I believe, as the electrical contractor license holder for the company, that Title 24 Part 6 (Energy Efficiency Standards for Residential), adopted October of 2005, is ill conceived and greatly hinders the ability for our lighting designers to find many options to conform with these regulations.  The lighting layout (left) represents the only design recommended, in the 28 page manual developed by the California Lighting Technolgy Center at UC, Davis, that incorporates any incandescent luminaires (two 60 watt pendants on a dimmer).  The reasons that we are in this situation are very well chronicled by Michael Brown,  but I would like to focus on generating ideas to cope with these difficult regulations.

The majority of the Center's recommendations to meet the 2005 standards use the 6" fluorescent can lights with electronic ballasts with no dimming capability.   The material costs for the approved can lights, that have bayonet mount holders and lamps (left), are 3.75 more than conventional incandescent. 

For 19 years we have been installing dimming features throughout the kitchen, giving you control of the moods in the kitchen and saving some electricity.  THIS IS HITTING THE HARDEST, dimming the approved fluorescents increases the material costs by a factor of 10.  Our installed prices are now $309.00/can vs. $169.00 for standard cans adding $2,500 to the average lighting budget.

An approved design before the 2005 changes was to have the first switch (primary) control under cabinet fluorescent lights and then they could use incandescent can lights for task and ambient light (unlimited).

The rule now is that up to 50% of total wattage can be from low efficacy luminaires (incandescent,halogen,low voltage).  The undercabient fluorescents (left) have three 13 watt fluorescents which would allow 39 watts of incandescent or 78% of a 65watt can light.

The lighting design (top) incorporates 2 25watt undercabinet fluorescents and 5 26watt fluorescent can lights, which allows for the 2 pendant lights on a dimmer.  Unfortunately this is one of the most creative designs allowed under the new regulations.  Most new construction simply is 100% non dimmable fluorescent cans and undercabinet fluorescent.  

We have all of the approved fluorescent can variations on display in our showroom and are finding that most consumers are very unhappy with the look of these lights and are opting to put glass baffles covering what they think are ugly lamps and in doing so are cutting the lumen output of the can light by 50% thus cutting the savings of this mandated fixture.

In my mind the real debacle is that Compact Fluorescent Lamps(CFLs) are coming onto the market in all shapes and sizes from many manufacturers and the subsidized California retail prices ($.25 each) make them a great value. Dimming compact fluorescent lamps work with inexpensive dimmers that we already have in our homes.   The dimming lamps perform poorly compared with incandescent colors, but will improve in the near future and are subsidized.

So the good news is, that we will have no difficulty relamping our standard can lights with CFLs.  Objections to the "Dairy Queen" ice cream cone shaped CFLs is being overcome by shaping glass around the CFLs to look like incandescent bulbs (you can "kinda" see the CFL in these lamps and they have lower lumens).

But the bad news is if you are remodeling you can not use CFLs to help comply with Title 24, even though you are paying for CFLs through your electric bill.

As ridiculous as this situation seems I'm afraid that the California home improvement industry is gearing up to comply with these new regulations. Installing fluorescent cans and under counter fluorescent fixtures in order to comply with these regulations.
 

 
Now what we have overlooked so far is the super efficient flourescent strip light.  Title 24 requires that the strip lights have electronic ballasts and use T8 or smaller lamps.  The good news is that strip lights have greatly improved in the past few years.  The new electronic ballasts are quiet, no flicker and are instant on like incandescent.  The new ballasts are also available with accurate dimming as an affordable option. 

Designing Fixtures with strips has been difficult and produced very few attractive surface mount styles.  New homes with 9 foot ceilings have room above the cabinets that is a great place to use strips as ambient or accent lighitng.

So new home lighting options are limited, but we are in the remodelling business where our customers are faced with a different set of design issues.

Many of our potential customers (left) have light wells (we call them soffits) that house an old fluorescent lighting system.  If you install new electronic fixtures and T8 lamps this will become a Title 24 compliant fixture.  Historically fixtures size 4'x6' (left) would have four 40 watt fluorescent fixtures, replacement electronic fixtures are 32 watt.

This upgrade provides 128watts of compliant (high efficacy) lighting, which allows for 128watts of incandescent, halogen, low voltage (mr16) or other noncompliant lighting.  This allows for 2 4" halogen cans on a dimmer or 6 undercabinet halogen recessed puck lights.

Over the last 19 years that we have been remodeling kitchen lighting throughout the Bay Area and the recessed puck lighting (left) has been a hit with our customers.  These halogen pucks are low voltage and use 20 watt lamps.  Dimming these great lights provides a lot of control to set the right mood in the kitchen, along with excellent task lighting.  

Because 6 halogen puck lights are often not enough fixtures to light the entire counter area, our above design would need to add more fluorescent.  The most likely way to do this would be to add fixtures to your soffit light, enough to "pay" watts for the pucks.  I would also suggest incorporating dimming fixtures.

By now you see how difficult it is to incorporate anything but fluorescent lighting into an approved lighting plan that will meet Title 24.

The showroom picture to the left has been a popular design that was compliant with pre 2005 Title 24 rules.  It has undercabinet mini fluorescent strips on the first switch which allows as many can lights as the customer desired.  The lights we selected for this showroom display are mathmatically equal to the wattage of the fluorescent light that we replaced (below).  For this soffit treatment and can light fixtures to be incorporated into a compliant plan all lights would to be fluorescent.

This pretty much somes up where I think we are with Title 24 and kitchen lighting designs that will comply.  We specialize in designing custom fluorescent lights that use strip fixtures please check out some of the work we have completed for customers throughout the U.S.

All our our custom fluorescent designs are Title 24 compliant and because they are custom you are limited  only by your imagination.  Check out our trademarked Dome It® designs (above) or our custom kitchen designs (below).

 
Title 24 is not restrictive only in the kitchen but in the bathrooms as well.
You can comply by installing fluorescent fixtures or installing an
occupency senser on incandescent fixtures (no limit).  Below are a
couple of our many designs for compliant flourescent bathroom lighting.