[SBE] High Intensity Tower Light (1000ft tower) Maintenancebudget

[Reynolds, Paul (CXR-San Antonio)]

I found it horrendously expensive.  The "maint agreement" is misleading.
You WILL pay for parts and that's where they typically make their money.
I was spending about $2-3k per month on my 1129' tower.  4 tiers and an
aol.
I painted the tower and LED redlit it.  I have 3 tiers of two beacons,
the AOl and 4 tiers of 3 marker fixtures. I was feeding 480v 3ph by a
60a CB and now I am feeding 120v one 20a cb.  DUH !  I have Dialight LED
units and a Unimar Controller.  I LOVE it.  I guess it's been 6 years
now.  Warranty was good but slow on the dialights.  I have had a couple
claims.  I have 4-100kw FM's into an 8-bay top mounted Master antenna
and the AOL has been just fine.  Trick is to conduit the wiring and
faithfully keep the 'greens' properly terminated.

-----Original Message-----
From: sbe-bounces at sbe.org [mailto:sbe-bounces at sbe.org] On Behalf Of
Rolin Lintag
Sent: Friday, February 19, 2010 2:07 PM
To: sbe at sbe.org
Subject: Re: [SBE] High Intensity Tower Light (1000ft tower)
Maintenancebudget

Tower light systems can sometimes eat up the maintenance budget. With so
many factors that can influence when the next tower light failure will
occur, it is a challenge as to how much to budget for a high intensity
system on a 1000-ft tower, for example. A maintenance contract may be
appealing but it definitely becomes an annual fixed expense, as in
insurance.

I'm just curious to hear from the group as to how much annual budget in
$$$$ can be considered typical or justifiable for a high intensity tower
light (strobe) system.  I know that the short and quick answer is "It
depends" but you know what the GM will say to that kind of an answer.
There are no statistical data available from the field that I've seen so
far, specially for relatively new systems. 

I just want to hear how your department has come up with a figure for
budgeting purposes and has it worked so far?

Is there some sort of a field tested estimate, say so much $$$ per annum
for every flash head in service?

Aside from arbitrarily picking a number out of the blue, is there a more
engineering way to come up with a figure? :-)
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