How many people does it take to change a light bulb? Well, if we’re talking about the fluorescent lights in the lobby of the Humanities Building at Lee University, it takes three.
 
Three members from the university’s maintenance team must be on hand to help replace burned out bulbs in the 30-foot ceiling. To get to the lights they must first cover the ceramic tile floor with plywood so the floor won’t be damaged when they steer a scissor lift into the building.
 
It’s a labor-intensive, time consuming task, taking about four hours from start to finish. And they must change the lights after-hours when the lobby is empty. So instead of doing it every time one of the fluorescent bulbs burns out, they wait and replace them all every two years, whether they’re burned out or not.
 
But it should be a long time before maintenance has to break out the scissor lift again. That’s because the school recently replaced the fluorescent lighting in the lobby with longer-lasting Cree LED lighting.
 
“We were trying to find locations that were either high risk, difficult to get to or inconvenient, and that’s how we came up with this lobby -- It’s hard to get to,” university electrician Ron Broach said of the lobby placement of the school’s new LED lights.
 
In all, 18 fluorescent can lights were replaced with 17 Cree LR24 LED lights in the lobby of the Humanities Building at Lee University, a private college in Cleveland, Tenn. The university worked with Lytestyles, a distributor of Cree LED lighting in Tennessee, to purchase the fixtures.
 
The new Cree lights are designed to last 50,000 hours. That means Lee University could leave them on for 12 hours per day, 7 days a week and not have to worry about changing them for at least 11 years.
Ron said based on current usage, he’s hopeful a three-person crew won’t be have to be dispatched to replace lights in the lobby for at least seven to 10 years.
 
Initially, the university planned to replace all 18 fluorescent lights with Cree LED lights. But there was one fixture over the staircase that was particularly tricky to reach, Ron said. Once the other Cree LED lights were installed, Ron said the light quality was so improved that it wasn’t necessary to replace the precariously placed 18th fixture.
 
The LED lights also makes a piece of art in the lobby stand out, he said. The Humanities Building lobby features a floor-to-ceiling mural displaying the university’s history through enlarged newspaper clippings and photos from school events.
 
Ron says the mural looks better than ever thanks to the improved light quality provided by the LR24 LED lights.
 
“It has exceeded our expectations,” Ron said of the Cree LED lighting. “It was a new thing for us when we put these in, and we’ve been happy with the results. The lighting is even, it’s constant, it doesn’t flicker and the lights don’t go out.”