Site lighting

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Alwayslearningelec

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NJ
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Estimator
HAve small outside lighting job. (7) 12' poles for a park.
The job is a year long a there a lot of civil etc. work.
Our work is only a few weeks.
Would the light poles go up at the very end of the job?
Trying to gauge when we would be off site and finished not to come back in comparison the the overall year schedule.

I'm think we install out underground conduits, boxes, pull wire and then go back to install poles.

So we would demob off the site and come back once.
 
I have done quite a few parking lot lights over the years. Depending on what your responsibilities are, you may have to set the sonotube forms, establish the bolt pattern, make a template with your anchor bolts. I know this next step may sound crazy because it doesn't do much, but your specs may require that you chunk a ground rod in the augered hole and use a #6 to ground the light pole. A neat trick that I always did which worked wonders was to have a load of sand delivered to the site. You will most likely be doing your underground before they auger the holes. You should know the diameter of the hole by the prints. Install your underground keeping the conduit 2"-3" outside the hole and put a coupling on and duct tape over it. Put 2" of white sand both under and on top of the conduit, then backfill. Later when they auger the holes you can look down and see a nice little white dot in the backfill which can be easily removed with your hand, cut out the duct tape and put your PVC 90 and pipe through your anchor bolt form.
 
We had a foreman that ran his conduits straight through, then came back and ran the auger through a finished paved parking lot. Auger grabbed the conduit, ripped it out about 20’ back in each direction. How he kept his job, I will never know. He screwed that one up, so they give him an even bigger job! The bigger the corporation, the smaller the brain!
 
hillbilly1 said:
We had a foreman that ran his conduits straight through, then came back and ran the auger through a finished paved parking lot. Auger grabbed the conduit, ripped it out about 20’ back in each direction. How he kept his job, I will never know. He screwed that one up, so they give him an even bigger job! The bigger the corporation, the smaller the brain!
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Screw up, move up.
 
gadfly56 said:
Screw up, move up.
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What was real funny, I started a high rise for him because he was finishing another job. I did all the block outs in the mechanical and electrical rooms for the first three floors. When he came onto the job, he said all the blockouts were wrong, and moved them on the rest of the floors. Guess whose blockouts were right, and guess who had to sawcut floors 4+ because they were off the wall by three feet! LOL!
 
I would not put them up till the end, if they are still doing the civil work, the poles and fixtures WILL be damaged, and no one would take responsibility, and you would be stuck fixing it for free. Pole bases would be ok, they are relatively cheap to repair unless they get wacked by a dozer or concrete truck. As far as wiring goes, you have to contend with copper theives, but if you wait, the landscapers will damage your conduit, and you will not know till everything is almost complete, and the GC will claim it was your bad conduit running instead of the landscaper that denied they damaged it.
 
horsegoer said:
Thanks guys. But I was referring to the sequence on when the light poles would go up.
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in a parking lot or other roadway lighting probably close to end of project.

in a park or similar, might need to coordinate with different phases of what else is going on with the project. You don't want to have to repair damaged landscaping because you brought in heavy equipment to put up the light poles but you don't want to be in there too soon and still have other heavy equipment around and possibly damage your installation either.
 
kwired said:
in a parking lot or other roadway lighting probably close to end of project.

in a park or similar, might need to coordinate with different phases of what else is going on with the project. You don't want to have to repair damaged landscaping because you brought in heavy equipment to put up the light poles but you don't want to be in there too soon and still have other heavy equipment around and possibly damage your installation either.
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The op said 12’ poles, so probably set by hand. We did an office building where the architect decided he wanted full grown trees in the parking lot, so the landscapers were digging 6-8’ deep holes with a power spade. Got the call all of the parking lot lights were tripping the breakers. The landscapers hit every run between the poles, and didn’t bother to tell anybody.
 
hillbilly1 said:
The op said 12’ poles, so probably set by hand. We did an office building where the architect decided he wanted full grown trees in the parking lot, so the landscapers were digging 6-8’ deep holes with a power spade. Got the call all of the parking lot lights were tripping the breakers. The landscapers hit every run between the poles, and didn’t bother to tell anybody.
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Always look at the site plan and find those trees. Redline your drawing showing your conduit path and present it to the landscaper before he sets his trees. If he decides to set a tree different from what is shown........can you say backcharge???? :)
 
hillbilly1 said:
The op said 12’ poles, so probably set by hand. We did an office building where the architect decided he wanted full grown trees in the parking lot, so the landscapers were digging 6-8’ deep holes with a power spade. Got the call all of the parking lot lights were tripping the breakers. The landscapers hit every run between the poles, and didn’t bother to tell anybody.
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They likely didn't even know they hit them, but like Rick 0920 said might be on your people to some extent if these were on plans
 
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