PowerSwitch

Exeter's Marsh Barton trading estate has one of the highest densities of car showrooms (by manufacturer) in Britain. They're all there. However, I cannot for the life of me understand why every one of these showrooms on an out-of-the-way industrial estate has 80-90% of their lights on at night.

Wrote to MP who wrote to minster for environment re: legislating against this profligate waste of power - no dice.

This subject just isn't on the radar for most, is it?

No, they rely on the lights for their night time drive by advertising. As yet there has been no slowdown in UK car sales. If anything I think high fuel prices and the threat of higher road taxes to come have caused people to buy more cars. Some are buying that gas guzzler now to avoid the high taxes, others are buying the more fuel efficient cars to offset the rising petrol/diesel prices.

Electricity is still very cheap, The lighting load load for a car showroom might be 5KW, thats probably not even 50 pence an hour, say about ?5 a night.
(remember that 7 of those night hours will be at the off peak rate)

Also the showrooms insurers may require all night lighting, and the police often recomend it for high risk premises.

When electricity goes up to say 50 pence a unit, then we may see changes in behavior, but not yet.

adam2 wrote:Also the showrooms insurers may require all night lighting, and the police often recomend it for high risk premises.

This is a mistake, in my opinion, though getting people to see the mistake is hard.

• If I see lights on at night every night, I ignore them to the best of my ability, even though I hate them.
  
  If I see lights on at night where lights are not normally left on (because, for instance, they're on pirs) or lights moving around, I take notice.

In other words, lights help intruders in many cases but motion sensors definitely don't.

Aye, I agree. Was it somewhere in Hertfordshire (or maybes rural Cambridgeshire) where the parish council has decided to turn the street lights off at night and crime fell rather markedly? One of the worst places I ever visited for overlighting was Manchester airport in the early hours of the morning - it was about 1am but as light as midday and the poor blackbirds were singing away, totally confused.

Having moved from near Exeter to somewhere considerably more rural, one thing I have noticed is the complete lack of light pollution in the night sky. I used to be able to look at the night sky and see where Exeter and Torbay/Newton Abbot were from the orange glows,No more. Very refreshing and it makes you realise the incredible waste involved.

great ape wrote:Exeter's Marsh Barton trading estate has one of the highest densities of car showrooms (by manufacturer) in Britain. They're all there. However, I cannot for the life of me understand why every one of these showrooms on an out-of-the-way industrial estate has 80-90% of their lights on at night.

Wrote to MP who wrote to minster for environment re: legislating against this profligate waste of power - no dice.

This subject just isn't on the radar for most, is it?

And seeing as how all their security systems rely on the leecy...first power cut while I'm still here and I'll be off to the Aston Martin showroom with a brick, a crowbar and a wind-up torch.

Oh, speaking of stupidity. The Bentley showroom has a Hummer outside for sale.

I really, really hate Marsh Barton (and I have a fairly dim view of the rest of the city and the majority of it's inhabitants too). It's a giant shrine to the infernal combustion engine. The only good point is there's a council recycle yard there and they sell off the better stuff at a fairly reasonable price. Most of the OH's terracotta plant pots came from there. Their shop is called "Steptoe's". Oh, how original.

The olde Dump in York used to sell off a few choice items...we've had some nice kids' outdoor toys from there. Then they packed it in...WHY??? Probably some idiotic jobsworth or else the insurance wouldn't cover being sued

Needless to say at our shiny new drop-off emporium (complete with straw-bale depot) which you can't get into except by car ( ) they wouldn't dream of such a thing... But I wonder if they clean up owt decent and have an arrangement with some well-camouflaged 2nd-hand emporium who'll flog it off more discretely?..

Car showrooms are usually just plate glass windows along their fronts; many are also far taller than strictly necessary for the display of cars.

The heating and cooling requirements must be substantial, let alone the lighting.

Miss Madam wrote:Aye, I agree. Was it somewhere in Hertfordshire (or maybes rural Cambridgeshire) where the parish council has decided to turn the street lights off at night and crime fell rather markedly? One of the worst places I ever visited for overlighting was Manchester airport in the early hours of the morning - it was about 1am but as light as midday and the poor blackbirds were singing away, totally confused.

Both of those can be explained: Chavs are afraid of the dark!