Canaday tackled and on to Merion. Merion Hall made it to the long list of buildings for analysis. Due to the building’s age, we felt there would be some serious replacement potential. We did, however, come across a couple of snags along the way.
First, how do we get in? Usually we have had no trouble getting access to these buildings. Most of the time it takes a swipe of a card, a quick greeting with explanation of the project, and some serious counting skills. Merion falls into another category due to summer activity. Summer means one thing to the Conferences & Events department. CAMPS!!!!!
Many camps use the campus during the summer. We have encountered academic, music, sports, and fitness camps throughout the entire summer. Most of these campers, surprisingly, reside in Merion. Access to rooms was very limited requiring us to look at the poor common area lighting.
We concluded after our initial count that the building could not be a candidate for LED replacement. The building had very few fixtures to begin with and many of them had side ballasts. This means that the entire fixture as well as the bulb would have to be replaced. The cost of this procedure would be too great to be considered a good investment.
This being our first building to fall into this category, we wanted to look farther into the matter. LED replacements for side ballast fixtures, sadly, are nowhere to be found. We predict with the coming years that the required bulbs will show up on the market. The college will have to decide whether to wait for the technology or save for the larger investment of replacement.
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