Wild weather

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Perth 8^th May 2013

As I write my blog, autumn as seriously begun in Perth. After a long hot summer wild weather has arrived. Driving winds and rain, heavy storms predicted overnight, possibly with hail. I have out of precaution put my car inside the garage…a few years back heavy hail with hail as big as stones, damaged a fortune of cars around the city…better safe than sorry. It is a nice contrast with Singapore with its “boring” climate” of always the same weather. I even put a sweater on for a change! It may seem strange but the change of climate invigorates me every time. I love seasons and hence if you stay permanently in Singapore, it sort of gets to you. I am fortunate that I can alternate my working environments and believe it or not (despite the travel) the change of environment energises me, the cold mornings, a bit of rain and wind. It stimulates my creativity…

While today has mostly been an administrative day (correspondence, reports and accounts) I plan to dive into creative work tomorrow with more rainy, stormy weather predicted…I don’t think we often stand still as whether our designs can stand the test of wild weather. Generally common sense dictate how to integrate our lighting properly and safely, but lighting installations that are really exposed to the weather elements like outdoor sports installations, street lights, traffic lights, beach front lighting, advertisement lighting and so on can get a serious hit. It is not for nothing that professional lighting manufacturers provide wind loading data of their outdoor light fixtures. I have done a few sports installation in which the wind load criteria and wind surface of a floodlight were critical in approving tender submissions. Any design has to consider extreme situations, it is part of our due diligence as a designer. While it may not happen in 99% of the time, it is exactly for that 1% that our design has to be properly specified. Often value engineering means removing that extra safety and quality level that covers for that 1% extreme situation, argument being that it will probably never happen. As a designer we have a professional duty to make sure the client understands that decision and takes full responsibility for it…

Light Watch 4-80: Weather in Perth is generally really nice (see the weather chart) with average sunshine per day about 10 hours in the summer! About 8 hours average a day throughout the year!