# I enjoy a good parking lot lighting job



## erics37 (May 7, 2009)

Had a job I'm finishing up to replace 9 parking lot lights at a movie theater. The old ones were steel poles, probably 25 years old, rusted clean through in some spots. One of them fell over a few months ago, so the theater chain company called us to replace them.

Old bolts and J-bolts were in bad shape. Somehow managed to bust all of the nuts loose with a sledge hammer and some big channel locks. Half-hitched a rigging strap to the pole a few times and pulled it up with a rental boom forklift. Worked great.

Then we went around with a cutting torch, cut all the old poles in half and hauled them to the scrap yard down the road, and then cut all the old J-bolts out and cleaned up the concrete pole bases.

Had an engineer determine new anchoring hardware; he speced 3/4" stainless threaded rod set with concrete epoxy. Made a couple templates out of scrap plywood and had a concrete cutting company come and drill all the holes. Then we sucked, blew, and torched the holes clean and dry, set the new anchor bolts, and then left it alone for a few days.

Got all the new poles in today. LED heads on 15' aluminum poles. Light as a feather, could almost stand them up by hand. But they were top-heavy and we still had the rental lift so we set the poles by hand and plopped the heads on top with the forklift.

All that's left to do is go around and grout the pole bases.

Original pole, missing a head (it fell off too):










It's nice having a big empty parking lot to work in:










The only pole we couldn't bust the nuts loose on (it's rigged up to the boom lift during cutting so it won't fall over)










Old mounting base:










Cleaned up mounting base. We put the new hardware in later, and pulled new wires from pole to pole. They used RGC in the ground here (big no-no) but fortunately the wire pulls all went okay. Kinda sorta got new ground bushings on the pipes :laughing:










I want to go see Ant-Man this weekend so I can see how the new poles look at night :thumbup:


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## MTW (Aug 28, 2013)

You raise job site description to an art form. :nerd:

And nice job. :thumbsup:


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## erics37 (May 7, 2009)

MTW said:


> You raise job site description to an art form. :nerd:
> 
> And nice job. :thumbsup:


I just noticed how high up that new pole is sitting on its bolts. That's a huge gap to grout. :blink:

I think I'll have my apprentice crank it down a few threads tomorrow.


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## Bootss (Dec 30, 2011)

erics37 said:


> I just noticed how high up that new pole is sitting on its bolts. That's a huge gap to grout. :blink:
> 
> I think I'll have my apprentice crank it down a few threads tomorrow.


Is that parking lot at the fish cannery?
I must say I do like sardines in mustard sauce :thumbup:


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## MXer774 (Sep 1, 2014)

erics37 said:


> I just noticed how high up that new pole is sitting on its bolts. That's a huge gap to grout. :blink:
> 
> I think I'll have my apprentice crank it down a few threads tomorrow.


:laughing:. That's some funny crap. 
As for the open parking lot, the working space is nice. However, come check out Houston open landscapes right now. I don't remember it ever being this friggin hot. It's damn near unbearable. One of my projects a guy caught some heat illness today.Sent him to the local clinic and home. Afterwards, jumped in my truck and the thermo read off 108*. WTF


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## bjjohns (Jun 10, 2015)

Looks like you got lucky on that conduit. Nice job.


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## Cow (Jan 16, 2008)

Looks good! 

One tip I learned is to use never sieze with stainless bolts. We had an engineer spec all stainless bolts for our crimp connections on one job a few years ago. We had one or two bolts gall up and sieze on us just trying to get the nut ran down the threads, before we had even started tightening it down.


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## RIVETER (Sep 26, 2009)

I like your web page.


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