re: The lights have been on at a Mass. school for over a year because no one can turn them off

quote:

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Are we that goshdamned fricking lazy nowadays that we can't be bothered to fricking switch on and off a light?

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Almost all local/state energy codes will require automatic lighting shutoff in schools.

This is a large school, so the lights are almost certainly 277V. The amount of equipment that runs at 277V is pretty limited (mostly smaller HVAC equipment like cassettes, unit ventilators, etc). Definitely no refrigerators.

Aside from bathroom fart fans in residential type construction, I've never put other equipment on the same circuit with lighting. And I've never seen existing drawings by other engineers that called for it, either. I think that the teachers/maintenance are just being lazy.

The only excuse that I can think of is that, once the circuits are switched off, the battery backups in some of the corridor/stair fixtures are liable to drain overnight (they only provide 90 minutes worth of power). Maybe the school doesn't want to be in a situation where the building is occupied while the batteries are recharging in the morning.