Lighting your parking lot

[SCfearfarm]

Our parking lot is in a field with no power. Last year we ran portable lights on tripods off of generators and it did ok, but we had to make more parking this year. The power company wants a monthly fee for lights to be on power polls and a ton to set them up. We thought about renting a light tower but we would have to rent it for the month and it got expensive! Any ideas that we are not thinking of that could work for cheap? We only use it 10 nights a year so I don't want to invest a ton of money into it.

[Howie Slobber Erlich]

Your power company should be able to put a temporary electrical drop from one of the poles. Then you would need an electrical panel (Outdoor breaker box) built and enough outlets to cover what you need. Then you should be able to run outdoor electrical power to any type of weather proof lighting you choose.

In the end all it will cost is a small amount for the electric company put in the power drop meter, the cost of supplies and the electric bill from the electric company for the electric you actually use. If that makes any sense at all.

Howie "Slobber" Erlich
Deadly Intentions Haunted Attraction (The Final Chapter)
www.deadlyintentionshaunt.com

[Jim Warfield]

Our power company, which is supposed to be a co-op got greedy about 4 yrs. ago, now they charge for things that were free before (since it is a co-op) Like $1,100 to set A POLE. The same to run a new service from the pole to your house.
It would have been nice to be able to weld at my other garage 4 blocks away, but, "Oh, well?"
They also began charging $26.00 a month if you have a meter on your house, so you try to save electricity by not running some things and they gouge you for using .. nothing.
Add to all of this the power outages that are never explained every year, no storms, no reason except someone was too timid to reset a big breaker switch (I was told) we had no power for 10 hours because of this !) Of course my haunted house was all lit-up for a few hours since every room has emergency lighting! nobody else in town had lights.!

[Dreamreaper]

We have a lot of trees along our parking lot and the lights are mounted in them and ran with a generator. I'f you don't have trees set your own poles with lights and power them with your generator.

[Howie Slobber Erlich]

Good, simple idea Ken. I would just make sure you fill it every night and have a worker check on it the first night to make sure it doesn't run out of gas. If it makes it through the whole night then you are in good shape. Imagine the lights going out in the parking lot while people are pulling in or walking through to get to the attraction. Scary, but that would suck and could be dangerous.

Another thing I thought of, is to make sure you chain & lock it up somehow. Because people will steal anything and something like a generator would not be hard to steal quickly! The olny other thing would be, if someone wanted to be a jerk they could put something like dirt into the gas tank.

Howie "Slobber" Erlich
Deadly Intentions Haunted Attraction (The Final Chapter)
www.deadlyintentionshaunt.com

[Darksidestew]

I lit up the entire woods with string construction lighting & generator. 100 light bulbs per string. Lit it up like a stadium....

Stew