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School Parking Lot Lighting Project: Budget Challenges Montessori School Parking Lot Lighting Project.
This was a new construction project, with the majority of the parking mostly in the front. The school wanted this parking lot to be well-lit because many members of the faculty often worked past dark. The school’s exterior lighting system would have to use a minimum amount of equipment and still fulfill a dual function for both safety and security lighting.

Parking Lot Lighting Challenges Client Was Facing
The first challenge the client faced was budget. As a private institution, they had only a certain amount of money to work with. Added to that, there were some city planning ordinances that had to be strictly followed. The school’s parking lot lighting poles could be no more than 16’ in height, and required a minimum of 1 foot candle at any point in the parking lot.

Design Considerations
To keep the number of light poles to a minimum and make the most of the number of fixtures we would be using, we decided from the beginning that we would use forward throw fixtures to concentrate as much of the light into the parking lot for the purposes of visibility and security.

Photometric Analysis Software
The school sent us a CAD file which provided us with the raw data necessary to run a detailed photometric analysis of the facility. We were able to conceptualize and render a number of hypothetical lighting systems for the school by placing different types and intensities of fixtures at the proposed pole locations and heights. We then sent the plan back to the client, who had to in turn obtain approval from the city council.

Final Lighting System Proposed
Meeting the unusual 16’ pole height requirement required some creativity on our part. Custom manufacturing an odd size pole of this sort was bound to go over the client’s budget. Shaving down a 25’ pole would cost almost as much. We already knew the client could not afford either option, so what we ended up doing was installing a 1’ base at the location of each pole, and then mounting a 15’ pole on the base.

This saved the school a tremendous amount of money that would otherwise have had to pay for shaving down 25’ poles to 16’, or paying extra to custom order 16’ poles from the manufacturer. This way, we met required pole heights and client budget with a simple improvisation. We placed the lighting poles around the perimeter of the school parking lot and installed 250W MH lighting fixtures on the poles. The fixtures chosen featured forward throw design with Type IV optics intended to contain lighting within the parking lot and avoid spilling light pollution into the surrounding neighborhood.

Parking Lot Lighting Benefits For Now And The Future
While there currently are no light trespass laws in the area surrounding this school, it is very possible that in the next few years new legislation may pass that would require restrict the types of fixtures we could install. Because the client made it clear they wanted their school lighting system to last as long as possible, we proactively worked to avert a potentially mandated future retrofit by eliminating light spillage in the here and now.

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