Our tennis courts are lit with modern 1000w metal halide fixtures.  The lighting control box is located inside the courts (accessible once you use your key to access the courts) in the corner closest to the road and to the pool.  The lighting control is a simple twist timer, similar to a kitchen timer.  A full clockwise twist will provide an hour of lighting, and you can re-position the timer to any position at any time.

It is a characteristics of the metal halide fixtures and their corresponding ballast units to take around 5 minutes to come up to full intensity after being initially turned on.  If the lights are allowed to extinguish (timer runs out) and you turn them on again, it will take around 20 minutes for the now hot lights to come back up to full intensity.  You can see that it would be to your advantage not to let the lights extinguish if you desire to play for longer than an hour.

When you leave the courts after using the lights, adjust the timer so there are just a few minutes remaining when you leave.  That will allow you to use the lights to exit the courts, lock the gate, and find your way to your car before they extinguish without leaving a long period of wasted time/electricity remaining on the timer.

Top | Revised21 Feb 2010 | Webmaster