How many people does it take to change a light?

[Nick]

About 5 months ago the local kremlin (council) wrote to me saying that the street light at the end of my drive will be replaced with a super efficient led equivalent. Good plan thinks I and 3 months later I had forgotten.

A few days back: Day 1. 4 kremlin wallahs and 2 consultants turn up in 3 vehicles. All equipped with yellow jackets. Yep, they say, that's a lamp post and put a splodge of red paint on the ground. Day 2. 2 labourers turn up without high viz, barricade my drive and the lane that approaches it. Dig a hole, by hand to their credit, to expose the mains supply to the lamp post. All neatly left and then they were gone. Day 3. 2 electricians turned up in super hi-viz kit and isolated the mains supply. This by turning off a switch and pulling the relay module out. Day 4. A hiab type lorry turns up accompanied by 3 other vehicles. 11 people in total, the glare from hi-viz was quite hurtful. 2 blokes lifted the pole out, and replaced it with the new. Day 5. 2 electricians & 4 others turn up with a cherry picker. Mount new lamp head on the pole and reconnect electric supply in the base. New light now working. Day 6. Weekend Day 7. Weekend. Day 8. 2 labourers turn up, fill the hole and make good. Remove barriers and barricades. Day 9. A huge contingent of kremlin staff, perhaps 15, turned up. This to congratulate themselves on their good work. I had to put my sunglasses on as the glare from hi-viz was too much for my old eyes. I wish I had worn ear muffs as well.

I quite despair of this method of getting a job done. No wonder this country is going to hell. Damned ludicrous.

Nick.

[Tim Watts]

Conversely, in my Dad's day as an LEB engineer:

The Engineer (him) would predict the position of the fault in an underground cable (proper Wheatstone bridge stuff then);

Labourer or two would turn up and dig hole where Engineer directed;

Jointer would turn up and fix the cable;

Labourers would come back and temporarily reinstate the ground;

Council men would come by a few weeks later and repair the surface properly.

Now:

Engineer predicts position of fault;

Bloke comes, digs hole, fixes cable, fills hole in;

Council bloke does a proper job a few week later.

[alan_m]

It is the result of a service industry economy.

Pointless jobs for the boys in Southend on Sea seem to be closing one lane of a busy road to replace the kerb stones with identical stones so that the final result looks no different to the original.

[Adrian Caspersz]

Labour run council? Do they have a carbon neutral standing for all that?

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Not quite sure why they need to inform you of a change of bulb. ;-)

My local council did the entire street in a day or less. Didn't even know it had been done until the lights came on that evening. They managed to do it without needed parked cars moved.

[tabbypurr]

funny how they're proud of spending our money fitting less efficient lighting

NT

[PeteFJ]

It reminds me of my time in the R.A.F. back in the 50"s. We had three technical ranks in each skilled trade. Assistant, Mechanic and Fitter. The joke was that if the equipment was faulty the Assistant would diagnose it so and suggest the dodgy item needed a kick, but only the Mechanic was skilled enough to know where to kick it, at this point enter the Technically trained Fitter who was the only one who knew how hard to kick it.

Great days. I still wonder at how the West won the Co;d War. pfj

[Brian Gaff]

Sub sun contractors and then they wonder how it is that a certain council has gone bankrupt and the gov have had to step in. It appears that an independent report, not commissioned by the gov says it wasted too much money on outsourcing inappropriate services it could have provided cheaper itself in house. Of course I bet gov come up with a different reason due to their dogma.

Incidentally were these people doing your light called Hans, as we all know Many Hans make Light work. Brian

[Chris J Dixon]

Same round here, they only needed to change the heads and control gear.

The resulting coverage does appear far more patchy, and since there is also less spill reaching property frontages, it feels a much darker environment if you are walking.

Chris

[PeterC]

I like the lack of glare through the upstairs windows. With the old lights there was no point in looking out if there was a strange noise at wee o'clock as the lights prevented seeing anything. Now, I can clearly see the road and gardens and I'm not too obvious to any scrote lurking about.

[Huge]

[22 lines snipped]

The waste of money is horrifying.

"They" recently replaced a perfectly good signpost near our house showing the route of a long-distance footpath. It took 2 people an entire day to dig up and a replace a wooden post with a "finger pointing" sign on the top of it, something I could have done by myself in about an hour. And it didn't need replacing anyway.

[Huge]

Because the Russkis were worse.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Our previous lighting was high pressure sodium, so pretty good. The LED replacments seem equally as good in coverage. One nice thing is they dim them after about midnight. So hopefully save on some energy over the previous. Only time will tell if they require less maintenance.

[Harry Bloomfield]

It happens that Huge formulated :

Did we? I thought it was a draw :-)

[whisky-dave]

I filled in an on-line form about the lamp post outside not lighting up at night or at anytime, it was mid december 2016, a few days later I got an em ail saying it had been fixed, although I don't know how they fixed it as no m light came from it and it has remained that way every since, so yes over a year now, I think they've spend all their money on cycle highways and win ning a cultural award.

[Andrew Gabriel]

A few years ago, I went for a cycle ride around the area, and sent the council a list of 20 or so lamps which were not working (and most had not been working for some time). At that time, they would only repair streetlamps in response to reports of them not working. I did get a reponse saying they would be fixed in 2 weeks, except for those where the supply had failed and needed to be fixed by the electricity supplier.

[mechanic]

The poles seem taller.

[Harry Bloomfield]

[e-mail] pretended :

Figures suggest they might produce between the same and a little more lumens per watt, when compared to HPS. Their big advantage is that the light produced from LED is white and much more concentrated, directed down to where it is required, rather than scattered through the 360 degrees and needing reflectors and masks.

[Tim Lamb]

In message , Harry Bloomfield writes

Hmm.. More light certainly. Also a lot more dazzle. ISTR a lecturer explaining that low pressure sodium street lighting was prismatically directed away from oncoming traffic. They seem to not bother with LEDs.

[tabbypurr]

LPS/HPS street light fittings were designed to give wide spread, it reduces the number of poles thus costs.

I gather HPS do now come in white too, I'm not really familiar with those though.

NT