Last year Goulburn Soldiers Club received an exterior face lift with the rendering and painting of the building. The colours for the render and paint job were designed to fit in with the heritage precinct guidelines and were decided upon in conjunction with Dulux consultants.
The result was spectacular and certainly revived a tired exterior however the Club felt that something was missing.
“I saw an article in Venue magazine detailing the use of coloured lighting to bring an exterior to life,” said Toni Mitchell, Goulburn Soldiers Club’s general manager. “The article in the magazine was about a venue that used coloured lighting to light up from the awning on the ground floor to enhance the second and third floor exterior. We thought that we could do something similar.”
It was decided that the lighting had to be modern and something different that is not currently seen elsewhere in Goulburn. FM Solutions, the Club’s facility managers, recommended Show Technology to provide a solution and Toni was impressed by their professionalism.
“The most important factor was to create a presence and interest, a wow factor, from the main street and areas surrounding the Club,” added Toni. “We also wanted to be able to easily theme the Club for important events such as pink for Breast Cancer Fund Raising Events, green and gold for the Olympics, blue for State of Origin etc. The rendered exterior supplied an ideal blank canvas for the coloured lighting.”
The installation project was managed by FM solutions and Show Technology provided commissioning and expert programming advice. Thirty-eight Studio Due Archileds were strategically placed around the building to enable the structure to be painted in coloured light. The Archileds were an ideal choice as they house 3 Watt LEDs resulting is no lack of punch regardless of whatever colour you program. This coupled with their 1 Watt Amber LEDs really makes these fixtures value for money.
Archileds are IP66 rated straight out of the box so there are no exterior mounting concerns. A number of different lenses were used in order to be able to light each area of the building as evenly as possible.
“We used 10, 23, and 45 degree lenses in various places,” explains Mark McInnes, Show Technology’s National Sales & Marketing Manager. “For programming and control we’ve used a simple Martin Lightjockey 2 system set to ‘scheduler’ – the lights automatically come on as night starts to fall and then turn off as a predetermined time after the venue closes.”
The beauty of the scheduler is that it has an astronomical clock included so, as summer approaches, the program start time gets a little later each evening to correspond with the sun going down. This means no program updates are required and less use of the fixtures makes it very cost effective to run. Of course using LED here instead of any other lighting source means the entire installation is extremely energy efficient.
“It was a really good experience to work with the Soldiers Club,” commented Mark. “Usually I find that as we walk through the quotation and demonstration processes with venues they try to reduce the amount of fittings we recommend in order to attempt to save money. In some cases these installations become compromised due the financial restraints applied by the venue management. Toni Mitchell and her team were precisely the opposite. Toni wanted even more fittings on this job and I was trying to wind back her enthusiasm!
“The results here really speak for themselves. The vision the club had from day one was of a completed job done correctly first time and I believe that they have achieved their aim. The custom-made brackets, with their swivel access system, are a good indication of the lengths they went to – well done Goulburn Soldiers and FM solutions.”
“In general, the reaction from members has been very positive,” concluded Toni. “In fact, the night we were programming the lighting, from Belmore Park across the street, cars were pulling up and taking photos! Patrons have also been requesting ‘special lighting’ for their functions.”
www.showtech.com.au
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