Tennis Court Lighting Question:
We are an architectural design and project management company developing a new residential construction project on a Caribbean island. The project calls for a tennis court to be constructed on the second floor over a garage space. As energy is very expensive and maintenance is difficult, the client is requiring the tennis court lighting be LED. Also, the property is on the oceanfront so the lighting equipment must be able to withstand salt air. What do you recommend?
Answer:
Access Fixtures can provide LED tennis court lighting for your project and answer all of your questions. First, your client is correct stating that LED will lower energy use. Access Fixtures LED recreational tennis court lighting packages use 2640 watts v. 6600 for the pulse start metal halide recreational lighting package. Cost is also lowered with LED as maintenance is virtually eliminated. The LED luminaires are rated for 100,000 hours at LM80. This means after 100,000 hours of use, the LEDs will still emit 80% of the initial lumens.
The tennis court lighting must not only be able to withstand salt air, it must be able to withstand the winds of a Class V hurricane. The salt air is easy. All components are designed with a special powder-coat finish protecting them from the elements including salt air.
To meet class 5 hurricane winds, the pole rating has to be greater than the Effective projected area (EPA) of the luminaire(s) and mounting equipment employed. EPA numbers represent the area visible to the wind at a particular angle. The luminaire and mounting equipment come with an EPA. The total EPA cannot exceed the pole EPA rating for the specified level of wind. Poles can be direct burial or bolt down. While we always recommend bolt down poles as opposed to direct burial poles, in this case, there are very specific advantages. Bolted down poles are easier to ship as they are shorter. Also, should there ever be corrosion at the base of the poles, bolt on poles are easier to replace than those buried in cement, especially cement that is part of the building structure.
While 20′ is the most frequently used pole height, we use with LED luminaires, the photometric analysis reveals 25′ is the best height for your project. At 25′ the angle of the luminaires can be reduced. This mitigates light trespass issues on your property. Fifty feet away from the sides of the tennis court, light levels fall to a negligible 0.03Fc. Twenty-five-foot poles also facilitated minimizing light level variance. The lighting achieves an average light level of 21Fc on the court and very even light with a Max/Min of 2.83. The layout of the poles, the quantity of luminaires, photometric data, and project pricing were all sent to the architectural design/project management company.
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