Sports lighting for pitches, tracks and courts
Sports lighting is bought against a class, and the class is a conversation with the people who use the ground. Get the class wrong and the installation is either unusable for matches or paid for and never needed.
Specification
What the sheet states for this build, and what is confirmed per project.
| Topic | What the sheet states |
|---|---|
| Class | Agreed with the client and stated on the drawing |
| Light level | Maintained, from the calculation for that class |
| Uniformity | Minimum over average, checked in the calculation |
| Glare | Rating limit, aimed away from the main view |
| Colour | Rendering and temperature agreed per venue |
| Flicker | Driver specified where super slow motion is used |
| Mount | Corner poles, side frame or column, per geometry |
| Control | Scenes for training and match levels |
| Data sheet | Current revision, naming the delivered model |
The class is the whole specification. A quotation that starts with a fixture and works back to a class is a sales document, and it will not survive a tender.
Choosing the class honestly
The class sets the level a surface is maintained at and the uniformity around it. A training ground and a competition venue are different classes, and a venue that hosts occasional matches sits between them. Over specifying is common and expensive: the installation costs more, runs more power and is dimmed for most of its life.
The honest method is to ask what the ground is used for on its busiest night, and to specify for that. A second scene at a lower level covers the rest of the week without changing the aiming.
- The busiest use, and the sport, which changes the class and the aiming.
- Whether the venue is ever filmed, and at what level.
- Whether a lower scene is wanted for training.
Uniformity, on a small ground
Small grounds are the hard case. Four corner poles at modest height have to cover a surface that is wide relative to the pole spacing, so the beams cross at shallow angles and the corners fall off. Raising the poles helps the uniformity and increases the spill behind them.
The practical trade on a club ground is a side frame instead of corner poles: more mounting points, shallower angles, better uniformity, and a frame that has to be engineered and paid for. It is worth modelling both before either is bought.
- A calculation for the pole layout the site can actually provide.
- The spill behind each pole, against the boundary rule.
- The cost of the frame against the cost of taller poles.
Colour and camera
A pitch that looks right to the eye can band on camera. Broadcast work raises the colour rendering requirement and adds a flicker requirement, because a camera sampling at high frame rates sees the driver switching that the eye averages out.
If the venue might ever be filmed, ask for the flicker figure and the rendering index now. Retrofitting a driver family across a lit pitch costs more than choosing the right one at the order.
- The rendering index at the level the venue wants.
- A flicker statement from the driver supplier, not from the fixture page.
- Colour temperature consistency between batches, for a pitch lit in stages.
Before the order
- Class in writing, with the calculation that achieves it at the agreed maintenance factor.
- Aiming chart per pole, so a re lamp does not become a redesign.
- Scenes for training and match, if the ground has both uses.
- Build
- Sports lighting
- Line
- Stadium lights
- Ask for
- Specification sheet, photometric file, aiming drawing
Send the space, get the sheet.
Build, specification sheet and the option list for each line item, in one reply.