Case Study of Building a Skateboard Park Located in a 120 MHP Typhoon Wind Zone

A skate park in Guam needed a new light system. They initially contacted RLLD through our international phone number. To help save them money on international calls, we were able to immediately begin protecting their budget by working out most of the details on this project through email correspondence.

The client faced a number of challenges due to both the geography of their location and the design of the skate park itself. Lighting was severely limited due to the skating area’s basic “bowl-like” design. Lighting levels varied extremely in different elevations, and some areas toward the bottom were even covered in shadow.

Additionally, the skate park faced another challenge as a result of their location in a typhoon zone. Guam lies in a 120 MHP wind zone, which limits the height of lighting pole options they could choose from. A new system had to be developed that could evenly distribute light throughout the skate park without using poles that would become unstable in the high winds of a Pacific typhoon.

Design Considerations

Our work consisted of determining a number of key factors relative to equipment recommendations that would ultimately address each of these concerns. We had to use fixtures with superior forward throw capability which could be tilted in a manner so as to deliver luminance at all elevations in the skate park. Light fixtures had to chosen that had the proper wattage and reflector types to deliver a 30 FT candle distribution throughout the facility. We had to determine the wattage of the luminaires we would ultimately recommend to the client, and then factor in pole height versus the limitation of wind zone safety requirements. Determining these factors, and the actual number of skate park light fixtures we would need to ship to the client, required the use of our photometric design software.

Photometric Analysis Software Helped Us Develop A Custom Skate Park Lighting System Unique To This Challenging Environment

We were fortunate to be working with a client that had already taken photometric readings and itemized the dimensions of the park. We then entered this data into our design program and generated a series of drawings and schematics that helped us select new skate park lights with a remarkable degree of precision. The first thing we created was a 3D CAD file that allowed us to render an exact model of the park, specify the desired lighting levels at varying elevations within the bowl, and manipulate foot candles and luminance angles accordingly. This data was then interpreted into scientific/numeric formulas which told us exactly how many fixtures to use, what wattage to select, and what angles of incidence to direct the light into the skate park.

Final System Proposed

The system RLLD finally proposed to the client was Spartan in both size and delivery power. The new system rested on six 25’ round tapered poles that we galvanized to protect them against salt air. Since we needed a bit more height than 25’ to place the luminaires at just the right position, we worked around the limitations of the wind zone by installing the skate park light poles on rugged 3’ concrete bases which elevated the fixtures to exactly the right height.

We chose shoebox, sharp cutoff fixtures because of their remarkably streamlined design which minimizes wind drag. These fixtures were then tilted at 20 degrees and arranged in a 90 degree pattern from one another. The luminaires themselves contained 1000W lamps and were fitted with reflectors to throw as much light into the skate park as possible.

Expeditious Shipping Was Provided To The Client

Because this was an offshore job that required reliable and expeditious shipping, we actually arranged for a two-part process to make certain the skate park received its new lighting system with the least amount of wait-time. The products were all made in Texas, and then shipped by ground freight to California, where they were then loaded onto a ship and taken to Guam. We coordinated the ground and ocean freight all on behalf of the client and completed everything from order to delivery in only 1 ½ months time.