GreenYour.com

Fiber optics are the latest way to save significant amounts of energy on lighting. Because this innovative technology is so new, only commercial niche markets like swimming pool suppliers have adopted it. What does this mean? Pool owners are lucky enough to be among the first to use it.

Find it! Fiber optics for lighting your pool

How to light your pool with fiber optics

• Contact a pool professional for underwater fiber optic lighting. Professionals are the only ones allowed to sell and install it. As well as lighting up an entire body of water, fiber optic lighting can also provide underwater accents for places like steps and shelves.
• For areas of the pool outside the water, you can buy and install the lighting yourself. There are complete fiber optic lighting kits for pools that include flood, spot, accent, path, step, and wall lights. These are excellent for lighting up landscapes or other features around the pool such as pathways. Since fiber optics light in a very focused manner, they can guide the way without illuminating an entire area.
• Although less reliable, you can also use solar-powered lamps for areas outside the water. At dusk, their LED lights begin to glow for eight to 10 hours; they use rechargeable AA batteries.

Lighting with fiber optics helps you go green because...

• They shed light, not heat. Fiber optics are capable of putting out 90 lumens per watt of energy compared to a typical incandescent bulb that produces 15 lumens per watt or less. Most of the energy in typical lightbulbs actually gets converted into wasted heat.[1]
• They are light years ahead of fluorescents. Fiber optic lighting consumes about one-third of the energy of the highest-quality fluorescents.[1]
• You need much fewer of them. A single 70-watt lamp can provide as much lighting as eight 50-watt incandescent bulbs.[1]

A pool and the area around it is like a second home in many ways. It's an entire living space, often becoming the outdoor replacement for the living and dining rooms during the summer. So the light for it can use as much energy as does lighting the interior of the house itself. Fiber optic lighting uses as little as one-fifth the energy of conventional sources like incandescents, and one-third that of LEDs.[2] All and all, energy bills for pool lighting could be slashed 80 percent less when using fiber optics in lieu of traditional lighting.[3]
Fiber optics are also safer as all the electronics are located outside the water, eliminating the threat of electrocution.[4]

Glossary

• lumen: a lumen is a measure of emitted visible light.
• LED (light-emitting diode): LED is a semiconductor diode that glows when a voltage is applied; it is energy-saving and can be conveniently used in small places.

External links

• Consumer Energy Center - Outdoor lighting
• Dulley.com - New fiber optics and low-voltage kits make outdoor lighting safe, easy A site dedicated to "saving money in an earth-friendly manner"