Newcastle City Council has started using a new portable, inflatable light tower that is making night works a whole lot brighter.
Currently many Councils are using lighting that is bulky, not always reliable, noisy and once set up, is confined to the one position until the job is completed.
The Aust Light Tower is mobile and only weighs 25 kilograms, so it can be picked up easily and moved to wherever light is needed. It consists of an inflatable, adjustable semi-transparent tube and stands up to five metres high and is capable of illuminating an area of up to 10,000 square metres in less than three minutes from switch on.
Newcastle City Council has recently bought seven of the Aust Light Towers and is looking to purchase more in the near future.
"We had been looking to purchase lights that gave off good light and were easily manoeuvrable," said Shane Humphries, manager of City Wide Services for the Newcastle City Council.
"The Aust Light Towers are extremely compact for storage, they don’t take up much room on the job site and they can be easily moved around a site to suit the situation. They make hardly any noise from the small generator that runs them and they are easy to remove when we are finished with a job," Humphries added.
The Aust Light Tower can be used in places where electricity is not available as it can be powered by a 1.5 kilowatt fuel efficient four stroke generator. It is made of a special semi-transparent material that helps to defuse the light, giving a softer light so that users have better visibility.
Shadows that normally accompany flood lights are greatly reduced and as the Light Tower is lit from above, users can focus on the task at hand rather than be distracted by strong lighting.
"I find the light the Aust Light Tower produces is perfect, as it is not too glary for motorists. We use the Aust Light Towers for a number of things, such as emergency lighting for call outs, night works for sign and line marking crews, night patch works and we plan on using them for mowing medium strips on main roads in the late winter afternoons when the light is fading.
"Where the Aust Light Towers have really helped us is to highlight traffic controllers, to the extent we now go without day markers as the Light Towers produce all the light we need. This goes a long way for ensuring the safety of my crews," said Humphries.
The Aust Light Tower is stable and can withstand wind gusts of 70 kilometres per hour with the assistance of tension ropes. The Light Tower can also operate under harsh conditions, for instance from sub zero temperatures to the heat of the Australian desert.
The Aust Light Tower is affordable and economical selling for under $5,000, a third of the cost for similar lighting devices and it is also much cheaper to run. It is available in a low-frame and high-frame model, with the high-frame
model made to fit a generator.
