LED lights for my kids' school.

[gafftaper]

My kids' school has a small café-Gym-atorium stage. The lighting system consists of an ancient system of screw in colored floodlights. None of which works at this point. This is a small private K-8 school with not a lot of budget. It will be a fundraiser project for the annual school auction this spring. The Stage is about 25 feet wide x about 12' deep. There are two electrics on stage with a throw straight down of about 13-14 feet. We replaced the curtains last year so I have proper boarders and legs. I'm going to need some frontlight out in the gym which will need cages around them to protect them from basketballs. I'm thinking the console will probably be a Smartfade 1248. I'll probably set up the DMX addresses so that it's all grouped into 4 "fixture groups": 1st electric, 2nd electric, House Left, and House right. Keep it Simple! Budget... Probably around $4,000 max (trying to keep it around $5k after taxes, electric cable, DMX cable, etc). We've got parents who are electricians and a parent who owns an electrical supply store.. so I plan on exploiting free labor and discounted electric supplies for the installation. After buying the Smartfade, I've got a little under $3k left in the budget for fixtures. That means products that are in the $300 each range somewhere between Blizzard and Chauvet in quality. I rented a couple of ADJ LED PARS at Christmas and the color was HORRIBLE. It was so digital and artificial looking. Yuck! But the other parents were SO excited about how "beautiful" the lighting was. We need to avoid that again and give them something nice to look at.

So I need some product suggestions:

1) Downlight from Electrics: I'm leaning more towards wide angled PARS rather than strips here just because you can get a more even wash rather than strips and gaps... I'm thinking something like four wide angled fixtures per electric. One common use of the stage is for concerts where the kids are up on choir risers... so that 12' throw gets down to 7 or 8 when you put a middle school boy on top in the back row. So wide angle is really important. Do you agree with this approach or do you perhaps prefer strips with diffusion?

2) Front light: These are probably going to be about a 30' throw. So I'm thinking going with a little better quality fixture here with some punch, a good quality white, and a tight beam. I need to do some measurements so I can work out the actual photometrics of these... I'll get back to you. I'm thinking McCandless placement with two per side of the stage... maybe two at center as well.

3) Does anyone know of pre-made "baskets" to install over lights in gyms for ball protection?

Thanks! I'll get measurements so we can be more specific with the photometrics.

 

[NateJanota]

Is second-handing used S4s out of the question? You'd be surprised how many schools (in my case churches) obtain some used fixtures from nearby theatres and stages, though you'll probably know the answer to that question better than me.

 

[jxgriffi]

3) Does anyone know of pre-made "baskets" to install over lights in gyms for ball protection?

SSRC makes pre-built cages. They are pricey…but I've used them on a few "court" installs.

http://www.ssrconline.com/spotlight-cage.html

 

[gafftaper]

Is second-handing used S4s out of the question? You'd be surprised how many schools (in my case churches) obtain some used fixtures from nearby theatres and stages, though you'll probably know the answer to that question better than me.

Not out of the question but it adds the complication of needing to deal with a few dimmers. Granted I could get away with a couple of cheap shoe boxes (this is a system that will only be used a few times a year. Not at all a bad idea. White front light and colored LED down. I hadn't thought about that. I was focused on LED's and avoiding dimmers.

 

[NateJanota]

Not out of the question but it adds the complication of needing to deal with a few dimmers. Granted I could get away with a couple of cheap shoe boxes (this is a system that will only be used a few times a year. Not at all a bad idea. White front light and colored LED down. I hadn't thought about that. I was focused on LED's and avoiding dimmers.

I was also thinking that, say down the line a budget increase comes through, an LED retrofit or upgrade could then capitalize on your existing inventory of S4s, further increasing your creative capacity. You could also minimize time spent programming on a non-mover friendly console. Hell, a small Expression could probably do the trick, and my church picked up theirs for $500. Just my thoughts.

 

[BillConnerFASTC]

I've done a lot of cages in past few years. Later ones have been site built - setting fixtures up between joists with an open mesh "pan" setting on lower chords and incord netting at the joists. Does the job.

 

[Catwalker]

If you're looking for a budget LED PAR with good colour, take a look at the Blizzard ProPar Seven-6. I had the chance to demo a bunch recently, and was impressed with the quality, considering the price point. Also, they're tiny, which helps in a low ceiling.


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[microstar]

The Mega-Lite Q70 Baby Color RGBW fixture can be run in 3, 4, or 7-channel mode, and has an included 50 degree diffusion filter which might work well for your over-stage units. 25 degree spread without the filter for longer throws. Built like a brick. Seven 10-watt LEDs. A little over $200 each. I'm going to use some on a small stage with only a 13' high pipe grid overhead.
A point to remember is having a convenient way to switch off power to LED fixtures, especially if they are used only occasionally.

 

[gafftaper]

I just did some rough measurement, counting ceiling tiles and estimating the height of the ceiling vs the basketball hoop rim, minus 3' for stage height, do the math and I come up with about a 20'-22' throw for the front light. So a lot shorter than I previously thought.

 

[microstar]

The 25 degree beamspread I mentioned for the Q70 would give you a 9' -10' diameter circle at 20' throw.

 

[techieman33]

I would look at the monoprice LEDs, they're similar to the blizzard fixtures posted above at half the price.

 

[MikeJ]

If you find someone who is decent at welding, 2x4 hardware cloth and some mild steel can do a decent job for protection from balls. You could even make it a basket that just clamps to the lighting pipe(if there is one). You could get a fancy DMX power relay, but I think having 1-2 circuits per position, and labeled breakers should suffice.

Also, shouldn't a school be tax exempt?

 

[BillConnerFASTC]

Put in switches. Even good 20 amp switches dont cist much. Don't rely on breakers for switching. They're generally not rated for that and it likely results in the whole panel being left open - in a school.