For many facility managers, lighting is a necessary headache. In high activity areas, such as car parks and logistics yards, flood lighting is essential to safety and security. Yet, for the team in charge of maintenance, flood lighting can present an access challenge. To reduce the burden of flood light maintenance, many businesses are making the switch to long life, reliable LED flood lighting. Here, there is an opportunity to rethink how flood lights are accessed.
In this guide, we explore how a flood light winch can transform working practices for maintenance teams. The simple yet highly effective flood light winch lowers a lighting installation to ground level for rapid maintenance.
Flood lighting is suited to open, high activity areas. The purpose is to provide high-powered illumination, evenly spread across a large area. Day or night, people working in or using a space benefit from better security and safety. Flood lighting is a proven deterrent to crime and increases the quality of CCTV capture in the event of an incident.
In an industrial setting, such a distribution centre, flood lighting is essential to 24/7 operations. Forklift trucks handling goods in all light levels and weather conditions need absolute clarity for maximum safety and productivity. In a sports environment, flood lighting is essential for both players and spectators. Your average pitch or stadium is used throughout the year for training, in the long days of summer and the shorter days of winter. In all applications, flood lighting is an essential facet of operations:
✓ Railway marshalling yards
✓ Car parks and concourse areas
✓ Sports pitches and stadiums
✓ Distribution and logistics
✓ Hangars and airports
✓ Factories and warehouses
The role of the maintenance team is critical to keep flood lighting operational at all times. Accessing flood lights for maintenance, however, is the tricky bit. Every facilities manager knows, where possible, working at height is to be avoided. This is where the flood light winch comes into its own.
Also known as a high mast lighting winch, this access system enables a flood light installation to be lowered to ground level on a single wire rope with no trailing electrical cable. Available with a variety of operating methods, a light winch provides ground level lighting access in minutes. This allows maintenance teams to completely avoid the need to work at height. A light winch eliminates the need to purchase and maintain access equipment, such as a scissor lift or scaffold tower, and PASMA certification. Furthermore, the disruption associated with working at height is massively reduced.
High mast light poles are available in heights to suit all kinds of applications with the most common pole heights reaching from 8 to 30 metres. High mast winch systems are available in standard lowering distances of 10 and 15 metres, with custom configurations available for longer drops. The majority of flood light winches use a dual wire system attached to either side of the flood light rig for stability.
Flood light winch systems are electrically powered using contact plates to isolate the power supply when maintenance is being undertaken. Each light winch can raise and lower light rigs weighing up to 15kg, with heavier loads accommodated via custom configuration.
In certain environments, aesthetics are important. A flood light winch is a self-sustaining system fitted in the light pole base. High mast winch systems are designed so that no mechanisms are visible once raised and in place.
Flood light winch operating systems are available to suit most environments. Manually operated winches are not as cumbersome as you might think. Hand cranked winches still deliver all the benefits of a light winch system, in terms of reduced downtime and eliminating the need to work at height. To speed up lowering and raising of a manual light winch, a power tool is a useful option. This operating method tends to be used for lower volumes of flood lights, in smaller areas.
Electrically operated light winch systems are used in the majority of large-scale flood light installations. Electric light winches can be operated by a wall mounted push button, a flying lead-style plug in remote, or a full radio remote system.
Whichever operating method is preferred, all light winch systems are built to an IP – ingress protection – rating of 54 with the option to add an IP65 rated cover for the most extreme environments (dusty, wet, and corrosive).
Lifting equipment, from light winches to scaffold towers, is subject to Health and safety Executive (HSE) legislation. LOLER – Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations – places a duty of care on both the lifting equipment installer and operator. All equipment must be inspected in accordance with LOLER by a competent person with complete records maintained, in the event of a visit from the HSE.
While lifting equipment legislation may be off putting, the benefits of installing a flood light winch far outweigh the need to perform annual inspections. For more information on weighing up the costs and benefits of investing in a light winch system, read the guide to how mechanical lifting aids reduce risk and cost.
For expertise in mechanical lifting solutions, with UK in-house design, manufacturing, and support, discover flood light winch systems from Penny Hydraulics.
