traditional gas lantern

Should You Utilize Gas Lanterns Indoor When Restoring Your Period Home?

Gaslighting has not been popular for interior or exterior use since 1900, but some period homes yet have old gas fixtures installed. When renovating, some homeowners who wish to retain historical accuracy wonder whether to restore the erstwhile traditional gas lanterns forth with other updates. While there are ways to utilize gas-fueled fixtures inside the dwelling house, information technology is risky.

The Problem With Indoor Gas Lights

Gas fixtures can be configured to produce an open flame or utilize a gas mantle, which utilizes a bag made of material or wire mesh filled with rare earth metallic salts that burn away when the mantle is heated. In dissimilarity to the open flame, which produces a soft flickering light equivalent to a 25-watt lightbulb, the gas mantle offers a steady white light equivalent to a 50 or 60-watt bulb.

The problem with using gas fixtures inside is that they can produce excessive heat that can ignite combustible materials such as wallboard, forest, and fabric, especially if the lights are placed too close to them. Lanterns are designed so that gas escapes the vents at the top and bottom at temperatures approaching 450 to 500 degrees F.

In addition, gas lights miscarry carbon monoxide (CPO) that can be mortiferous when absorbed into the blood. The fumes a lantern can produce are the same fumes that a running car would requite off in a closed garage. CPO is both odorless and colorless, which ways that it tin potentially impale y'all without your realizing danger.

These dangers are somewhat lessened with gas mantle lamps vs. open flame models. Similarly, fixtures that are made for propane or converted to utilize bottled gas are somewhat safer as this product burns to produce carbon dioxide and h2o vapor, which poses no danger. However, similar open flame models, propane fuel fixtures expel unsafe methane gas. When you couple this data with the fact that lighting in mod homes is used for longer periods of time in the past, not even propane fixtures that apply gas mantles are not recommended solution within the house. Considering that mod homes and other buildings are amend insulated in in times by, gas lamps are both a burn and a wellness risk.

Additional Issues With Installing Gas Lanterns Indoors

Surprisingly, some lantern manufacturers claim that gas fixtures are acceptable indoors, so long as they are properly vented, equipped with an electronic ignition, CSA-approved, and professionally installed. Even if gas lanterns meet ANSI standards for indoor or outdoor apply established by CSA, a body that sets codes and standards, there are no national standards for interior gas lights. Most manufacturers volition not warranty interior installations.

Another problem is that local municipalities must approve the installation afterwards pressure testing. If the lamp fails the inspection after installation, yous could be out time and coin and you would be left with an unusable fixture,

Where Traditional Gas Lanterns Can Be Safely Installed

Installing gas lanterns inside is problematic, but outdoor usage poses fewer threats even on open-air porches, entryways, and decks, besides every bit on driveways and lawns. Many manufacturers offer brackets and posts for gas lights.

In an outdoor setting, fifty-fifty open flame lanterns are safe. Currently, these models are popular because of the romantic ambiance the flame offers.

Although exterior gas lanterns poses fewer risks than indoor relations, building codes require that a licensed plumber to install them

Restoring Traditional Gas Lanterns

Despite the temptation to restore beautiful gas lanterns in period homes, the best mode to preserve look of the fixture is to rewire it for electricity. According toThis Old House, the steps you should take include:

  • Verify that the fixture is in adept enough shape to exist rewired.
  • Clean it up by removing paint splatters and dirt. Past using a cleaner such as Simple Green, you lot can remove dirt while keeping many original finishes intact. For thorough job, you will need to disassemble the fixture. If the whole fixture has been painted, you should remove all pigment, varnish, and lacquer.
  • If the terminate is "spelter,"' a zinc alloy fabricated to expect like brass, y'all will need to completely strip and refinish it. You can tell if the fixture is spelter by scratching it off in an unobtrusive spot and seeing if the surface beneath the finish is white or silver.
  • Freeze the gas valve shot with a drop of Loctite then boom compressed air through the gas line to free information technology of debris and burr before you starting time rewiring.
  • Rewire the fixture, keeping in heed that electric wire is thicker than streams of gas. The pros suggest using 18 approximate wire that you have pre-lubricated with a dry bar of Ivory soap earlier threading it through the narrow arms of the fixture. (Attaching the wire to 18 that you lot can snake through first can aid y'all pull the wire through.) If the wire won't fit, you may have to run it on the outside.
  • Set up your refurbished fixture for apply past installing LED bulbs that look like gas flames.

The results of your efforts volition be a refurbished fixture that looks like the original, is safe to utilize, and offers light that is like to gas.

Culling Ways To Complete Your Lighting Renovation

Equally you lot prepare to renovate historic light fixtures, you lot may notice that the original is also deteriorated to restore without a serious outlay of time and money. A pleasing alternative is to buy reproduction fixtures from Lantern & Scroll, which offers many electrified versions of traditional gas lanterns that will give yous dwelling house the proper period await.

As you peruse our many collections, you may observe just the correct lantern in our Charleston and other collections, which you tin can personalize with scrolls, loops, and other detail. If y'all want something you lot don't see, we will work with you lot to create a custom piece that is just right for your habitation. Whatsoever of our lanterns can be used with candelabra-based flickering flame bulbs that replicate the await of gas flames.

Contact us today for information nigh replacing your outdated gas fixtures with prophylactic, modernistic electric lanterns that expect authentic to the catamenia of your home.