Lighting Photometric Of A Basketball Court Lighting System

A client in Alameda, CA named of Tim Fitz hired us to design needed a basketball court lighting system for his home sport court.  He already had a contractor to handle installing the equipment, and he found us online as a source of American made sport lighting equipment.

This is important.  When people buy basketball court lighting fixtures from overseas vendors, they don’t know what they are getting.  When they buy them from reputable American companies, they can count on quality assurance and trustworthy warranties.

Mr. Fitz also needed us to do a photometric lighting design that would show his contractor how to best install the equipment we provided.  In this particular instance, the most important thing the photometric design did for him was to calculate how many light poles would be needed for the project. 

We also had to factor into our calculations the need to minimize light pollution.   The light would have to be at optimal levels of brightness on the court itself, but it would have to be contained in the play area within the court boundaries.   

Designing a basketball court lighting system like this is not as easy as you might think it to be if you don’t have the right 3D modeling software.  Even with the best of math, it is impossible to see what your lighting system will actually do without having some kind of visual frame of reference to work with.

RLLD has this kind of  lighting design software and knows how to use it to customize basketball court lighting and other types of sport lighting configurations.  No two courts or stadiums are exactly alike—especially in the home sport court industry. 

Using this design software in service to Mr. Fitz, we experimented with several different pole configurations light fixture types.  We eventually came up with a design that offered the best possible outcome. It was a 4 pole layout supporting full cutoff CXL sport lighting fixtures.

Full cutoff sport lights keep light from shining outside of designated boundaries.  This ensures compliance with increasingly strict dark sky laws now being passed in many places.  It is also a courtesy, regardless of local law, to show to neighbors who may find nearby bright lights disturbing to their sleep. 

We capped off the project by adding a shipment of anchor bolts to secure the poles to concrete bases that Mr. Fitz had previously arranged for his contractor to pour onsite.  This fulfilled both the equipment and design requirements of the basketball court lighting project.

RLLD Commercial Lighting carries a wide variety of industrial lights & commercial lighting fixtures. If you can not find what you are looking for call us toll free at 1-866-654-3961 and we will find it for you. Our home office is located in Houston, Texas with warehouses located throughout the United States that enable us to service all 50 states

We recently sold sport court lights to a Malibu, CA resident who owns a small half-court basketball court.

Comparatively speaking, this was a small job to some of the other projects we normally handle.  However, smaller jobs like this are not uncommon in the residential marketplace.

Home sport court lights are often very small themselves.  They are also typically customized to the athletic preferences of the homeowner.  As such, standard sport court lighting kits cannot be used effectively.  Lighting systems have to be customized to the specific dimensions of the court.  They also have to take into account any mitigating factors that come to bear upon the project.

While a half-court basketball lighting system would seem very easy to build at face value, there were some challenges we had to face.    

Malibu, CA has very strict light dark sky laws.  Light trespass into the night sky is strictly prohibited. 

Also, the homeowners’ association to which Mr. Ruth belongs also further restricts light trespass by limiting sport lighting pole heights.  This ensures that all residents can sleep undisturbed, free from light spilling into their windows.

Per regulations, basketball light poles could be no more than sixteen feet tall. 

This height included the height of the pole base, which presented a bit of a difficulty.  No manufacturer of any kind of sport lighting poles makes poles and bases whose combined height total 16 feet.  

Fortunately, we havevery solid relationships with basketball lighting equipment lighting manufacturers throughout the United States, so we were able to negotiate a special order.

We found a manufacturer who would be willing to cut the poles to any height we specified.  Since we already knew how tall the bases were, we were able to relay this information to the factory, who was happy to accommodate us. 

The contractor had previously determined that no more than two poles were required.  After having them customized per spec, we arranged to have them drop shipped directly to Mr. Ruth’s contractor.

We also shipped two CXL series 1000W full cutoff basketball lighting fixtures.  These sport court lighting fixtures strictly restrict luminance within court boundaries and operate within full compliance with IDA standards. 

Once all of this was accomplished, we had one more unforeseen need to meet.

One of the lenses in the CXL light fixtures was broken during shipment.  We assumed responsibility and took action.  We covered the cost of a three day air freight replacement at no additional cost to the client.  The delivery was handled so expeditiously that the replacement arrived in two days.