Strood Leisure Centre LED lighting upgrade.
Earlsmann was asked to propose lighting upgrades for the swimming pool, corridors, sports hall and hydro pool at the Strood leisure centre.
The main pool was lit with traditional flood lights with light levels as low as 20 lux in some places making it gloomy and unwelcoming for swimmers. The ceiling is dark wood panelling which, whilst looking very attractive, absorbed much of the light.
Earlsmann, working with Medway Council and NCS technology, replaced the lighting with 130Watt CREE 304 series LED lights. A 4000K colour temperature was chosen to light the area to make it brighter and more invigorating.
A key issue to overcome was how to achieve good uniformity as the lights could only be mounted at 3.5m. CREE have an excellent range of lenses to choose from and, by carefully selecting an appropriate beam, a good uniformity was achieved over the entire pool area.
One of the design briefs was to reduce energy usage as much as possible. Converting to LED was a given but, since there is reasonable daylight available, individual daylight harvesting sensors were fitted. This allows light levels to be maintained whilst reducing unnecessary waste of power during the day. An additional benefit is that by controlling the light to a required level the lights are rarely at maximum brightness thus increasing their projected life.
Besides the main pool new lighting has been installed in the sports hall. Again the CREE 304 series LED canopy light was used with daylight harvesting sensors but with a different lens due to their location directly above the playing area.
The Hydro pool was particularly dingy with old fluorescent non-corrosive fittings. These were upgraded to modern 5000K LED non corrosives.
Next, LED tubes were fitted in the existing non-corrosive changing room luminaires as they were in condition and,
Finally, 600mm LED panels were installed, replacing 2×26 watt downlights, to provide a modern, bright look to the corridors.
With many years experience in the LED lighting market place, Earlsmann were able to bring together products from different sources and combined them to create a total solution.