Emergency shop lighting

[mklotz]

A safety concern oft overlooked in amateur shops is emergency lighting.

If you work in a windowless garage or basement shop a power outage can leave you literally in the dark. So too if you work in a windowed shop at night.

Depending on what you are doing at the time, loss of light can be dangerous. If the machines are on a separate circuit they may continue running, as will perhaps the power supply on which you were working and the hot soldering iron you were using. If you keep a messy shop, just navigating the floor to reach a flash light or power switch may be a major hazard.

Each individual's situation will be different. The important take-away here is to analyze your personal situation and decide what, if any, emergency lighting you may need.

Power failure lights that come on as soon as mains power fails are readily available. As a bare minimum get one of these...

https://www.amazon.com/Streamlight-N...52&sr=8-2&th=1

to keep on your key ring so you have enough light to find a flashlight or guide you to the exit.

[Frank S]

I haven't seen a key ring around my place in years so a key fob flashlight would not do me much good, However I do carry my phone in a holster on my belt. 1 touch wakes up the screen which is bright enough to navigate by or a second touch switches on the flashlight portion of the phone, I think that sucker is bright enough to use as head lights on a vehicle

[clavius]

That is actually not a bad idea, and is something we don't think about too often. Like Frank, I typically have my phone on my belt, as well as a small flashlight in my pocket that I find very handy for all sorts of things.

I once worked night shift in a windowless factory that made dot matrix printers. One night the power went out and there was about a 30 second delay before the backup generator kicked on. It was the darkest dark that I think I had ever experienced, a total utter lack of any light as this was long before we all carried battery powered doo-dads of all sorts on our persons. You really didn't dare move as the place was like a rat maze of roller track and benches. That thirty or so seconds seemed pretty long.

[mklotz]

Speaking of "the darkest dark that I think I had ever experienced", I once toured the Carlsbad Caverns in southern New Mexico. When we reached the deepest point in the tour, the guide told us to keep our eyes open as he turned out the lights. It becomes so dark that one's brain registers the firing of a single retinal nerve ending hit by the high energy particles from space that can penetrate that deeply into the earth. A spectacular experience for a physicist indeed.

[Frank S]

I was changing a hydraulic motor on a conveyor one night in a paper mill when the power went out due to a storm. the first thing I heard over all of the equipment slowly cycling down was the Plant Foreman yelling at the top of his lungs EVRYONE FREEZSE IN PLACE NOBODY MOVE A MUSCLE. I thought that was sound advice, even though anything powered by hydraulics would have stopped almost the instant the pumps stopped supplying pressure not everything is run by hydraulics there must have been 100s of electric motors many not having auto braking electromagnetic release, plus the rotating kinetic energy in just one of those 5000lb rolls of paper is enough to do some serious damage. There was not a lot of battery backup powered emergency lighting either just mainly at the exit doors and some along the main escape pathway in case of a fire, those switched on instantly but added very little illumination to the couple hundred thousand sq ft plant

[clavius]

...A spectacular experience for a physicist indeed.

Yes, I can imagine it would be. Quite an experience.
In my case, it was just a matter of "don't move until the lights come back on!"