Brightness turned up throughout school district

LACONIA — It is simply brighter this year in the Laconia School District.

Nearly every bulb in every classroom, hallway, gymnasium and office has been replaced with LEDs that are casting a whole new light on things.

They are more energy-efficient and come with dimmers and sensors that turn them on when someone enters a room and off when no one is around.

District Facilities Director Bill Caruso showed off the new equipment in a tour of Laconia Middle School on Tuesday.

“They are quite amazing,” he said. “Each light fixture has its own sensor. They did a one-for-one replacement. They would take out one fixture and put in one fixture.

“The amount of light we have is amazing compared to what it looked like before. You just wouldn’t think of that until after the fact.”

A contractor did the $4.8 million project. A total of 6,100 light fixtures – about three for each of the district's roughly 2,000 students – were upgraded in work that is to eventually pay for itself in energy savings. Other work and equipment upgrades will reduce heating costs and save water.

Maintenance will be easier.

“The great thing is that the difference in maintenance in replacing ballasts and things like that,” Caruso said. “Most of these fixtures have a 15- to 20-year lifespan.

“You might get one or two of these that go out, but we were replacing a lot of ballasts. That was just an old technology type of thing and a lot of maintenance went into keeping those up.”

As part of the project, new switches were installed that dim the lights.

Also, the new lights are bright as soon as they are turned on. Gone are the days when gymnasium lights had to warm up before they were bright.

“It almost felt like 10 minutes,” Caruso said. “It might have been five. But everybody was like, ‘What’s taking so long?’

“So now it’s like instant on, instant off. People are happy with that.”

There’s also a safety advantage. If a ball hits a light, no glass rains down.

Caruso removed the lens of a hallway fixture. A single strand of LED lights replace and are much brighter than the four fluorescent bulbs that were in use before the fixture was converted.

There are retrofit kits that allow workers to use the shell of the old fixtures and replace the inner workings.

Superintendent Steve Tucker said the work was done under a “performance contract” where an audit is done to determine costs and a solution is conceived to reduce that expense enough to ultimately pay for the upgrade.

“It makes sense to try to conserve energy and save costs down the road,” Tucker said.

“I like how the lights work. They can dim. They shut off automatically. And I like that they are saving taxpayers’ money.”