Why do we always reccomend dim lights with long runtime during outage?

LEDBE
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D-Dog

Enlightened
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Nov 10, 2006
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I understand conserving power is important, however, does it really hurt things to run a fenix/other multi-level at say medium instead of low?

I also understand that your eyes adjust to the lower light, however, one brighter light in the middle of the room with a diffuser could be sufficient for a whole room or two.

Not to mention the fact that I have seen pictures of numerous people on CPF filling up entire ammo boxes with batteries... I'm sure running through a pair every day won't kill the battery bank. Heck, if your using ni-mh/li-ion rechargeables first, you might not lose any batteries at all as all you have to do is recharge after the outage.

So why do we the "different" people choose to conserve like the common man while we aren't stuck with stock M@glites?
 
Having had to deal with 3 weeks with no power with no idea when it would be restored, in sunny florida mind you, and the lack of supplies/batteries that a major natural disaster tends to cause, the LAST thing you want to worry about is trying to ration light usage because you're worried about running out of batteries. A malkoff M60LL is 80 lumens, that's LOTS of light, and at 8 hours of runtime you may very well get through the whole 2 weeks of no power with just one pair of batteries, and if they do run out the 20 extras you have sitting around will be plenty, and then some. When all the power for 30 miles around is out, it doesn't take much to see. I took showers in the evening using a green photon II with a single 2032 battery as my main light source, it was plenty of light. Something like a fenix on low and tailstanding would be overkill, and there's no worry about not having high power when you need it in an emergency (bumps in the night, looters, animals coming in through the broken windows).
 
this reminds me of the parable of the ant and the grasshopper.
plus, the more i use my lights the more i appreciate low or low low.
 
It's an interesting question really when you consider how much actual light you need during a power outage that lasts a few days. You sleep for some portion of the dark hours, and daylight ought to do OK for most of the waking hours, so you're talking about, what 5 hours a night or so plus some spot usage? So a MagLED 3D on fresh batteries will get you through 4 days or so and provide a pretty good amount of light. Heck my Novatac on low will run for 30+ days constant on a fresh CR123 primary and if I need much more burn time than that I likely have much bigger issues at hand and better break out the zombie plans...

But I think what is in most of our minds, or at least mine, is the variability factor - I don't know how long the power will be out, or how much light I might need given other emergencies, etc... Plus some of us have kids so a small amount of light to run all night as a night light and to help with late night potty trips is beneficial. It's probably overkill in most respects, but there is a certain comfort in knowing I can pull out a 3D mag with a NiteIze drop in and run it almost indefinitely on fresh cells. And FWIW I don't keep a huge supply of batteries on hand - I have a reasonable supply of slow discharge AAs and backup charged 18650 for the CL1H and CR123 for the Novatac but certainly not weeks worth - so conservation does become something of an issue.
 
Thanks for the quick responses :cool:

I guess I just thought that it was odd that we as CPF members certainly have atypical lights when compared to other members of the general public, yet we don't run them above what we need. However, a 60LL is exactly what I had in mind... not too much light but enough to light up a room or two if need be. I think you would be alright with a fenix on low though... more than enough runtime to last over a week on one set of batteries.

Why the general public is different-
Last night a friend of mine was using my M20 on max to spot a patch of trees to find out if any freezing rain was falling. He was impressed, said "nice m@glight"(because it really looks like one :rolleyes:) and proceeded to shoot himself in the eye before I could stop him...
 
D-Dog said:
I understand conserving power is important, however, does it really hurt things to run a fenix/other multi-level at say medium instead of low?
Click to expand...
Why be wasteful? You don't know how long the outage will last. Just because I have bright lights doesn't mean I break out my HID to light up the bathroom when I take a shower. I use enough light to accomplish the task.

Do you use your brightest light on the brightness setting to get around your house at night? :poke:
 
I actually just asked for recommend me for dim lights with very loooooong run time. I already got the Markoff 4D, Mag85, and TLE300M. They all are very bright and fun. I have small children and old parents in the house. I need something small for everyone in the house, and since I don't have full cases of batteries, and don't know how long the power going to be out. I need something will have loooooong runtime.

I guess I just worry too much, but that's just me.
 
bunbut said:
I actually just asked for recommend me for dim lights with very loooooong run time. I already got the Markoff 4D, Mag85, and TLE300M. They all are very bright and fun. I have small children and old parents in the house. I need something small for everyone in the house, and since I don't have full cases of batteries, and don't know how long the power going to be out. I need something will have loooooong runtime.

I guess I just worry too much, but that's just me.
Click to expand...

nah... I think it is a legitimate concern as you don't know how long the power is going to be out and as was mentioned before, batteries aren't the easiest to come by during an extended outage.

Case and point- I have something called the Xpower 300 from Xantrex which is basically a 20Ah battery and a 300 watt inverter in a case. I always have it topped off, however, when an actual power outage occurs, I am hesitant to use it because although you can charge a lot of cell phones/batteries/even run a laptop off a 200+Wh battery, you don't want to waste power early on.

Still, with lights, for me at least, it is a little different. I find that if use lights which I consider "too" dim, the color rendition is so "greyscaleish"... it's depressing. On the other hand, even running a fenix on low (probably 6-10 lumens) gives a much more "cozy" feel to an otherwise dark house.

Just a thought :)
 
Once you are a little dark adapted, even a very dim light is enough to light a fair sized room when bounced off the ceiling. Not light enough to read by, but enough to see other people and furniture in the room and not bump into things. It is handy to be able to leave a light running in that situation, but I'd say not really vital most of the time. I had several lights with me during the big east coast blackout a few years back, the most useful of them being a 3 lumen Arc AAA.
 
Bright lights are good for morale, especially if there are women and children in the house. Only few hours every night of course...
In really long term survival situation you don't need lights, at least here in Finland. It never gets dark during the summer and in the winter you need to have fire almost constantly burning.
 
1) If the power is out, there is no light pollution. It takes very little light to light up a room sufficiently. 5-10lms is really all you need, sometimes less.

2) You don't know how long the power will be out. It could be 2 hours, it could be 2 weeks. It depends on your usage and just how large of a stockpile you have.
 
Marduke said:
1) If the power is out, there is no light pollution. It takes very little light to light up a room sufficiently. 5-10lms is really all you need, sometimes less.

2) You don't know how long the power will be out. It could be 2 hours, it could be 2 weeks. It depends on your usage and just how large of a stockpile you have.
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The other thing most overlook is the fact you don't want to attract attention to your house by having bright lights visible from outside.
Think about it...:whistle:
 
  1. you never know how long your going to be out:thinking:
  2. you are never certain about how much juice is left in the batteries:crazy:
  3. you are never certain about the runtimes bright lights seem to claim:thinking:
  4. you will never be certain whether or not you can find your spare cells in an emergency:shakehead
  5. you will never realize how well a dim light works in a dark room compared to a bright light in a dark room until all the streetlights go out. I sort of swear by dim lights after a couple outages:laughing:
  6. you don't need the extra attention from your neighbors, once I was showering in the middle of the light when the power went out. I was cycling my N30 HID on the table while I was in the stall so I didn't notice anything was amiss, until my neighbor rang the doorbell a couple times then rapped on my window to ask if they can plug an extension chord on a outside receptacle of my house so they can finish watching their movie:faint:
 
The power outage nuts around here" I know there are a few" like having lights that will last for many, many days but rather have crazy power during outages, still with good run time:twothumbs.

Stereodude said:
Do you use your brightest light on the brightness setting to get around your house at night? :poke:
Click to expand...

I for one, do:devil: "insert manically laughing smiley that I can't find" Though for serious power during an outage you can't typically use normal carry lights in my opinion this is were the specialty lights come in to play:naughty:. My weapons of choice are: Bigbeam 166 "16 lumens for 16 hours X 4 batteries =64 hours" in bathroom, and I'll strategically place my 12 watt emergency light "300 lumens for 18 hours X 5 batteries (90 hours:thumbsup:) and the BigBeam 1000 Ultra Mod (either): 22 lumens for 750 hours or 650 lumens for 6 hours X 22 batteries = 22,000 hours! "low 15 lumens" low or 72 hours high respectfully:crazy:! And that's not even using auxiliary power:ohgeez: "insert another 333+ hours of low" it's not my problem I like over doing things…….:whistle:

The Kings of Power Outages:bow:
 
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Personally I break out the Coleman lanterns after a while. Then you can have it really bright and leave it on for a really long time. :eek:oo:
 
I always have a long term power outage in mind. It goes back to early childhood when the power was out all the time in the winter. We would thumbtack blankets over the doors to the room that our woodstove was in and let the faucets drip so the pipes didn't freeze. We lived in that room and cooked on the woodstove, trips to the bathroom were pretty cold. Coleman lanterns are great for the bathroom, heat and light! Things like that stick with you luckily.

It just makes sense to have at least 1 light that is bright enough to get you safely through your house for as long as possible on whatever it uses as a power supply. The M60LL would be considered almost too bright and too short running to be the primary illuminator.

I am trying to gear towards 1000 hours of useable light on 2 CR123. Useable in this case means that I can navigate fully unhampered with dark adapted vision through the entire room that the light is in.

My little fantasy is to be the last man on earth with a flashlight still running long after TEOTWAWKI. :tinfoil: Even if that means a 5mm led running off of car batteries.
 
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