car park lighting

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adammid

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I am designing a large car park lighting scheme. I have received lux plots back from a manufacturer and will be installing 56no. Lights on 6m columns with 70w lamps. The lights will be in 8 rows of 6. As the car park is so large I will have a supply feeder pillar with dist. Board. This will feed 3 rows of lighting and barriers, cameras etc and a further 2no. Feeder pillars with dis boards. I am wiring 6 lights on one circuit but wondered what peoples thoughts were. Should I wire each light on a separate circuit with its own NBC or would it be ok to wire 6 lights in each circuit. There will be a 2 way consumer unit in each lighting column so each light can be isolated individually. The only thing is there will be 2no. 2.5mm2 or 4mm2 2 core armoured terminating in the board ad i will be looping in to go to the next light.

 
wired a carpark as an apprentice on a 4mm ring. duno if it was strictly speaking compliant or not.

 
Putting each column on it's own MCB is overkill , Adammid, loop as many together as you can . Economics. 3 rows per circuit perhaps?

And use street lighting cut-outs as Noz says.

Were 6 mtr columns specified by lighting company ? Wondering if a 70W is too high . Are they SONs , Metal halide ?

Are LEDs too expensive ? B,ham council are fitting them in the streets now.

 
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Evans electric, when you say 70W too high do you mean the 6m columns will be too high for 70W lamps? We have had lux plots done and they are adequate levels. Approx 20lux throughout. We are proposing an LED option too. In terms of economics I was going to install 6 lights on one cable run (8 rows of 6 lights) and then I could always double up the circuits at the board and feed 12 lights off one 6 amp Mcb. In the past I have seen each light fed off its own but as mentioned, a bit excessive.

 
My worry would be the length of the cabling I was surprised how many amps were being used on the car park I did due to the length of cables.

 
I'm sure the lighting guys know what they're doing Adammin , just thinking 6mtr columns are ...well...erm ....6mtrs high ... I fitted some 70w SONs around that height to illuminate a loading bay where the fork truck comes outside to offload deliveries.

Was dissapointed with the light levels in the dark TBH and went up a size next time .

20 lux is the recomondation for car parks so I'm sure you'll be fine . Because there was a fork truck operating I was looking for higher levels TBH.

And your wiring method sounds good to me .

Are you thinking of installing the columns yourself by the way ?

I ask because we did some for British Gas once, the ones that can hinge down with a hydraulic device that you fit to the base.

They were really heavy , you couldn't lift them off the ground TBH.

 
Andy- they will be switched via a photocell and contactors. What makes you think 12 lights would be difficult to switch with one contactor if it's sized correctly?

Batty- there will be some long runs so I've gone for the option of installing another 2 sub boards around the site to reduce the length of run to each row of lights otherwise I would have had to run 10mm armoured to combat the volt drop. With the sub boards the largest would be 4mm2 for the furthest circuit.

 
Evans- there will be a team of us and the main contractor will be helping with the positioning of the columns.

Thanks for all your advice guys.

I've just got to design the duct work lay out now to submit to the main contractor. Any advice on that? There will be an access pits at the end of each row and it's approx 15m between each light so wasn't go to bother installing access pits between the lights. How many cables do you think will comfortably pull through 100 mm duct if at different times?

 
Taking a guess at 10 but when you pull one in you must always have a nylon rope added ready for the next one .

Builder lays ducts and must thread a nylon rope through for wiring .

We had to hire a crane to lift the poles vertical , they were dropped into a Cubic mtr of concrete with hole down middle to take the post.

 
Should be no problem running 10mm SWA loop in loop out in a lamp column if you use a proper cutout unit with an extension box and brass gland plate, we use this size quite often biggest I've ever done in a column base was 25mm 2-c SWA.

Try giving a supplier called Marwood electrical a shout for these parts. Main makes of lighting cutout are Lucy, TOFCO and Charles en Direct these firms also supply premiered feeder pillars if you require them.

 
Should be no problem running 10mm SWA loop in loop out in a lamp column if you use a proper cutout unit with an extension box and brass gland plate, we use this size quite often biggest I've ever done in a column base was 25mm 2-c SWA.Try giving a supplier called Marwood electrical a shout for these parts. Main makes of lighting cutout are Lucy, TOFCO and Charles en Direct these firms also supply premiered feeder pillars if you require them.
done a few 2c35 & 3c 25 before. fortunately, there isnt many lights wired in that

but still, always fun trying to get 3x 10 or 16 into a cutout, especially when you only have a short extension box

 
I work in street lighting and most of the time we use 16mm 3c swa, as previous folk have said get yourselves streetlighting cutouts, they are made for for the job and 3x 16mm 3c swa can easily be made off into them with 2 fuses for outgoing circuits. Hong kong units have 3 outputs and outgoing cables can also be configured to be protected

 
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