St Patrick's Church
Soho, London

The Grade II listed building it occupies and the sumptuous ornate interior presented many challenges during the £3.5M restoration of St Patrick’s Church in Soho, London, all of which have been overcome with solutions by Multiload Technology.

Challenge
St Patrick’s Church demanded lighting that could be installed discreetly while illuminating the building to its best potential. In addition, the lighting designers in charge of the project, Jin Yee Lim’s Liminaires, decided that LED lighting is not yet ready for this type application. IRC low voltage halogen and cold cathode lighting was specified and a solution was required that could drive and control these for now, while being future proof against further developments in lamp technology.

 

Solution
Liminaires specified a complete Multiload Technology solution stating that its products were “the only ones up to the task”.

Many of the lamps needed be hidden from view and are installed in inaccessible places or at high level, some as high at 10m. Cable runs in excess of 30 metres between the lamps and the transformers were needed and VoltMaster Intelligent Transformer made this possible as well as greatly extending the lamp life and ensuring stabilised voltage to the Halogen loads at all times. Analogue Dimmers were used to integrate the cold cathode drivers to the 0-10V control system, all of which is managed from a MoodMaker Scene Setting System.

 

MoodMaker was specified for the control system on the basis of its simplicity and reliability. The ease with which Jin Lee could configure lighting scenes and communicate this to others was particularly appealing.

 

Results
“Multiload Technology’s products offer excellent value for money”, says Jin-Yee, enabling the creation of a highly reliable and effective lighting environment within challenging surroundings. Extended lamp life and the remote placement of drives have minimised maintenance and the cost of ownership. MoodMaker meanwhile completely obviates the need for configuration and maintenance visits by costly programming engineers, a regular requirement of the alternative digital systems, and is simple enough to be used by the church staff.

 

Noise too has been minimised thanks to removal of all dimming electronics from the sensitive nave environment.