Value Engineering Pathway Lighting

[ccschoch]

Hey y'all, got a customer that needs about 1500' of sidewalk illuminated. The design they wanted (120v, poles with concrete base, all in conduit) is outside of their price range. There's the obvious ways to get it cheaper (direct burial poles/wire), but they have that already and - shocker - it failed, and they want to start fresh.

So, how would y'all value engineer it? Solar/low voltage? Any manufacturer you'd recommend?

Thanks for any input!

 

[d0nut]

So they don't have enough money to do it right the first time, but apparently have enough money to do it wrong several times.

A higher voltage will get you smaller conductors.

 

[ccschoch]

So they don't have enough money to do it right the first time, but apparently have enough money to do it wrong several times.

A higher voltage will get you smaller conductors.

Basically. That's why I'm exploring low voltage and solar options primarily. If there's something along those lines that makes sense I'll propose it, otherwise I'm inclined to tell them their budget doesn't work and move on.

 

[tom baker]

What is the location, ie how much and what kind of traffic, potential for abuse?
How many lumens is the design and what uniformity?
Was the design for 10ft metal poles, foundations?
240 or 120/240 would cut voltage drop,
use pressure treated poles and direct bury.

 

[tom baker]

Basically. That's why I'm exploring low voltage and solar options primarily. If there's something along those lines that makes sense I'll propose it, otherwise I'm inclined to tell them their budget doesn't work and move on.

Solar would require batteries and battery replacements, panels would need cleaning.
I like your answer about budget and moving on

 

[GeorgeB]

Hey y'all, got a customer that needs about 1500' of sidewalk illuminated. The design they wanted (120v, poles with concrete base, all in conduit) is outside of their price range. There's the obvious ways to get it cheaper (direct burial poles/wire), but they have that already and - shocker - it failed, and they want to start fresh.

I'm surprised that direct buried and pole in ground have failed. Our neighborhood has Duke Energy (rented) residential poles and fixtures, black anodized aluminum tapered poles with buried cables and has had no problems except the older style lamps. They switched us to LED last year.

I would think that technology with 14-2 UF would work fine? Less than 0.5A/pole?

 

[Barbqranch]

If they can't afford the whole project, I would suggest running the first one or two lights, but w/ everything designed for the eventual addition of more lamps.

 

[ccschoch]

What is the location, ie how much and what kind of traffic, potential for abuse?
How many lumens is the design and what uniformity?
Was the design for 10ft metal poles, foundations?
240 or 120/240 would cut voltage drop,
use pressure treated poles and direct bury.

Yeah, 10' poles with foundations. Honestly, they're so far under with their budget, voltage drop considerations are a drop in the bucket.

It's sidewalk lighting for a large apartment complex. Foot traffic, nothing too busy. Fixture every 150', lamps unspecified.

 

[Chamuit]

If they can't afford the whole project, I would suggest running the first one or two lights, but w/ everything designed for the eventual addition of more lamps.

Yep. Break it up into affordable pieces with the design charge included. In case they shop you after design or 1st phase.

 

[petersonra]

Hey y'all, got a customer that needs about 1500' of sidewalk illuminated. The design they wanted (120v, poles with concrete base, all in conduit) is outside of their price range. There's the obvious ways to get it cheaper (direct burial poles/wire), but they have that already and - shocker - it failed, and they want to start fresh.

So, how would y'all value engineer it? Solar/low voltage? Any manufacturer you'd recommend?

Thanks for any input!

So how is it that the DB failed? If it is done right, it is pretty reliable.

 

[ccschoch]

So how is it that the DB failed? If it is done right, it is pretty reliable.

No idea. Hot out of the panel, dead at the first pole. Didn't spend a lot of time investigating it for free. Proposals for troubleshooting existing will be part of the VE process, but there's a significant amount of additional lighting they want regardless.

 

[petersonra]

If it is fairly recent it may well be defective materials or workmanship. It should be looked at so the contractor responsible can be sued.

Incidentally, solar is not real practical for this kind of thing. Db or PVC is likely the way to go.

My limited experience with lv lighting is that is is not real reliable. Just how would you feed 1500 feet of lv lighting anyway?

 

[roger]

My limited experience with lv lighting is that is is not real reliable. Just how would you feed 1500 feet of lv lighting anyway?

I would use a ring circuit

 

[ccschoch]

If it is fairly recent it may well be defective materials or workmanship. It should be looked at so the contractor responsible can be sued.

Incidentally, solar is not real practical for this kind of thing. Db or PVC is likely the way to go.

My limited experience with lv lighting is that is is not real reliable. Just how would you feed 1500 feet of lv lighting anyway?

My experience with it is about the same, was mostly curious if anyone has had any luck with that route.

There's multiple spots along the route I could place transformers, so it wouldn't be all 1500'.

 

[LarryFine]

There's multiple spots along the route I could place transformers, so it wouldn't be all 1500'.

That addresses my first question. Can you give us an idea of the intervals?

And, what's available at each location? A single 120v circuit? What size wire?

Or, has nothing been run yet? Do you know what their materials budget is?

 

[ccschoch]

That addresses my first question. Can you give us an idea of the intervals?

And, what's available at each location? A single 120v circuit? What size wire?

Or, has nothing been run yet? Do you know what the materials budget is yet?

There are two 120/240 house panels available roughly 1/3rd of the way each way (so ~500'), plus multiple outdoor receptacles for maintenance along the way (don't have exact distances on those). These are all on structures ~25' from the sidewalk.

Existing lighting is direct burial, fed from both those house panels.

Entire budget is 50k. My GC already bid that just for trenching/sonos pours/asphalt repair on (customer owned) street crossings.

For what it's worth, there's other work ongoing for these folks that pays well, hence the extra effort to cobble something together here.

 

[Dsg319]

277v Multi wire branch circuits. PVC conduit would be the route I would personally be comfortable with. All lights obviously turned on at once and loaded equal circuit voltage drop will be way less.

 

[James L]

There are two 120/240 house panels available roughly 1/3rd of the way each way (so ~500'), plus multiple outdoor receptacles for maintenance along the way (don't have exact distances on those). These are all on structures ~25' from the sidewalk.

Existing lighting is direct burial, fed from both those house panels.

I'm curious. You said there's no power to the first light, but it sounds like there might be multiple circuits. Is part of it working and part of it not?

Entire budget is 50k. My GC already bid that just for trenching/sonos pours/asphalt repair on (customer owned) street crossings.

So the budget is 10 lights at $5,000 each?

For what it's worth, there's other work ongoing for these folks that pays well, hence the extra effort to cobble something together here.

I would like to go back to the question of why the existing is not working. Typically a direct bury system works fine. What happened?

I would suggest trying to talk them into spending $1,500 to troubleshoot everything and make a more viable plan once you have more info.

It may just be that you have some bad connections, and you might be able to reuse all the circuiting that's there. Possibly sleeve the existing cables into sonos tubes and go from there

 

[ccschoch]

I'm curious. You said there's no power to the first light, but it sounds like there might be multiple circuits. Is part of it working and part of it not?

So the budget is 10 lights at $5,000 each?

I would like to go back to the question of why the existing is not working. Typically a direct bury system works fine. What happened?

I would suggest trying to talk them into spending $1,500 to troubleshoot everything and make a more viable plan once you have more info.

It may just be that you have some bad connections, and you might be able to reuse all the circuiting that's there. Possibly sleeve the existing cables into sonos tubes and go from there

Yup, definitely talking them into troubleshooting. All of the lighting is out, only one circuit appears to be (but not completely confirmed) DB wire failure. That's from a previous electrician, and me spending about 5 seconds on it on a site walk. I'll definitely be finding out why everything has failed once I'm getting paid for it.

The folks at corporate want an entire plan from me before they sign off on troubleshooting. Which I've told them is stupid. But I did offer to look into lower cost options to at least get an idea of what they can get (most likely just fewer lights, but I was curious if there's other options as far as LV that y'all have seen out there) on their budget.

Budget is $50k regardless of number of lights. If I can work something out that's cheaper, they want more than 10. If I can't, they're getting $50ks worth of lights. Which will have a lot more to do with mitigating trenching and labor costs than electrical material.

 

[hillbilly1]

A lot of times, the cause of direct burial failures, is the guys driving the ramp trucks with a bunch of lawnmowers and weed eaters planting trees and bushes! (Conduit doesn’t even help with those) Direct lightning strikes are another cause. Another cause is utilities. In a corridor where upgrades and repairs are being done, private lines do not get marked in the locate, and the utility contractors will just cover it back up after they are done, and if they told anybody, it wasn’t anyone that had a clue. I have fixed too many where that happens.