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kaysd_gw

Does CA Title 24 compliant track lighting exist? (wood ceiling)

kaysd
12 years ago

We have a real problem with lighting in our new house. It is a 1960 ranch, and the south half of the house has a vaulted ceiling that is just over 8' high at the edge of the house and about 11' high at the center line of the house. 10" tall wood beams are placed every 6', with T&G placed in between and perpendicular to the beams (we think it may be fir). The roof is right over the wood ceiling; there is no attic space in between.

We have several rooms with no ceiling lights. The dining room has a chandelier that is swagged over from a corner with a white cord running down the wall to an outlet. The kitchen has 3 pendants that are drilled through a beam, but the kitchen layout will change a lot when we remodel and lights where the 3 pendants hang now will not work. The living room, guest bedroom and office have no lights. For those 3 rooms, we would like to install ceiling fans with light kits (no AC in house, but cool ocean breezes through windows). I don't know if ceiling fans with lights are title 24 compliant, but the stores are full of them here. To hang the fans, we have to run wiring along the beams and try to hide it with trim or paint, or else run wiring across the roof in pipes and patch the roof where it goes through.

Adding lights when we re-model the kitchen is the biggest problem. Title 24 requires half the wattage in the kitchen to be from "high efficacy" (led or fluorescent) lights. We will use led or fluorescent under cabinet lights for task lighting, but that will not be enough watts to be able to use low efficacy lights for general lighting in the room. Track lighting seems like the easiest solution to light a room with a wood ceiling, but I have not been able to find a system online that is labeled as high efficacy for Title 24. CA counts regular track lighting as 45W per foot, and my kitchen is 15' x 14', so it just will not work under title 24.

I would appreciate any suggestions. Our architect thinks we should install a new ceiling below the existing one so we can add recessed lights, but I hate the idea of covering the original wood ceiling so we can have can lights.

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