July 26, 2016 Bright Business

Volume 5 | Issue 2

Hadco Lighting believes that outdoor lighting can be beautiful, creative and functional. David Gill verifies Hadco’s devotion to design.

Hadco Lighting, the Littlestown, Pa.-based unit of Genlyte Thomas Group, has successfully proven that sources of outdoor light can be attractive. The ISO 9001-registered manufacturer offers a complete package of outdoor lighting products, all artfully designed to enhance the look of homes, commercial structures, parking lots and even the street where you live.

As part of Genlyte Thomas, Hadco is a key operating entity in a corporation whose annual sales are about $1 billion a year. Hadco played a crucial role in its parent company’s strong earnings for 2001 – which Genlyte Thomas accomplished in spite of the declining health of the overall economy. The Hadco business closely follows the shape of the overall construction industry.

Even as the rest of the economy softened during 2001, housing remained strong; housing starts, probably the chief indicator of the building industry’s health, finished 2001 at near-record levels. All systems are going for this sector of the economy for the new year as well, thanks to the continuing low level of mortgage interest rates. The commercial slice of the construction business has a strong future, too. New areas of the country are developing as places to live and work; as this process continues, these locations will require both new housing and new commercial developments.

And, when the designers and builders are ready to decide on how to light the outside of these new structures, Hadco stands ready as their one-stop lighting resource. The company’s numerous brands include HADCO®, Bronzelite® NightLife® and Profiler®. The brands are different in their product offerings, designs and end uses. They are similar in that they enhance every environment that they illuminate.

Taking a Shine
The HADCO brand includes lighting products for streets and walkways. This line includes architectural bollards, traditional-style streetlights, refractive globes and in-ground lights. HADCO encompasses an extensive array of bollards, which are targeted at making it easy to decide on what kind of lighting a walkway should have. They blend top-quality function with a variety of alternatives for optics, roofs and finishes – giving customers plenty of options for products that adapt to any environment and style. Hadco will very soon be releasing a product marketing brochure highlighting over two dozen different stylish decorative fixtures that address light pollution, glare and light trespass. The company also manufactures each bollard to withstand bad weather and heavy traffic.

Hadco designed its refractive globes to solve a problem that comes with alternative forms of street illumination. Many street light fixtures project light downward, which means that trees and car roofs get plenty of light but that shadows and silhouettes are common everywhere else. The resulting “dark spots” and hiding areas create an environment in which people think twice before going out at night.

With the refractive globes, the lighting is mounted below the tree canopies, eliminating shadows and covering the streets, sidewalks and people in a uniform, controlled field of light. The globes create a safer and more comforting environment for both pedestrians and motorists. They can play a huge part in restoring life to a community, with people less afraid to come out at night. The refractive globes have garnered a strong customer base with their array of styles and colors, which include custom styles and detailing. Their 12- to 16-foot mounting heights also make them a less expensive alternative to so-called cobra lighting, which requires poles between 25 and 30 feet with 6- to 8-foot arms. Additionally, the company is positioning itself to leap frog ahead of the industry with its “StreetGraphics” program, allowing the customer to add illuminated signage of his choosing with refractive globes. Hadco is not just a fixture manufacturer, but rather a manufacturer of complete lighting solutions that includes decorative fluted and non fluted poles with an array of different base styles, mounting arms and banner arms.

Luminaires Extraordinaire
Hadco’s Bronzelite® brand has become a symbol of both craftsmanship and innovation in specification-grade landscape including ingrounds, area and walkway, and underwater lighting. Bronzelite has set the standards in both engineering and manufacturing, being the innovator in the following areas: introducing UV-and corrosion-resistant composite housings to the inground market, offering drive-over capabilities, utilizing die cast stainless steel for enhanced durability, utilizing injection molded die cast brass in place of sand cast bronze, and utilizing solid (not plated) brass.

All of the Bronzelite branded products have a rugged construction, including the best available materials and the highest grades of weather-resistant finishes, that assures long-lasting, low maintenance service. Their unique designs adapt to both architectural and commercial applications. They also deliver optimum performance with either standard light sources or with the new, high-efficiency miniature lamps. The result is a Bronzelite line that is a highly flexible grouping of quality illumination that will meet the demands of all lighting applications.

Systems for Elegance
NightLife®, Hadco’s landscape residential and commercial lighting brand, offers lighting options that imbue a whole new level of style to outdoor environments, using a variety of lighting techniques. Not only do these fixtures offer a sense of nighttime security, but they also give both homeowners and commercial projects the opportunity to add beauty and mystery to the design of their properties. Besides residential applications, NightLife fixtures have limitless possibilities in the commercial arena, such as illuminating professional centers, golf courses, restaurant entrances or hotel gardens.

NightLife systems encompass three forms: 1) Low Voltage Systems use 12-volt electric power supplied by a transformer mounted and plugged into a 120-volt GFI outlet, or hard-wired to a 120-volt power source. These systems are ideal for residential applications, where ease of installation, flexibility and voltage safety are paramount; 2) The 120-Volt System is designed for permanent installations, or when the customer needs longer runs from the power supply to finish a larger landscape lighting project; 3) The HID (High Intensity Discharge) System, which is used primarily in commercial applications, operates from line voltage power (120, 208, 240, 277 or 347 volts) and includes a ballast for lamp operation. HID sources are used when a higher lumen output is needed, or when longer lamp life is important.

The NightLife program is grouped according to each fixture’s specific function or application. Classifications include Garden Art™ and Copper Moon™ as the Copper series, Accent, Flood and Sign Lighting, Underwater Lighting, Step and Deck Lighting, Inground Lighting, Path and Spread Lighting, and Lighting Accessories, such as transformers colored lenses, louvers, and mounting hardware. NightLife is a line that relies on the lighting artistry of the installer, with every product best suited toward particular techniques such as Spot Lighting, Up Lighting, Moon Lighting, Shadowing, Grazing, Down Lighting or Silhouetting.

Creative Brilliance
Architectural designs have superseded the massive, featureless looks seen in outside lighting in recent decades. This design transformation is the basis behind the Profiler™ family of outdoor luminaries. Designed with soft curves, low symmetric profiles and a choice of finishes, this complete family offering of shoeboxes, floodlytes and wallytes allow customers the opportunity for creativity where none had existed before. Finally, it is a complete family of products designed to perform to specific applications with similar style and soft lines, enhancing the appearance of any demanding commercial property.

Profiler luminaires have two attractive functional aspects as well. They are manufactured with segmented optics, which are rotatable in 90-degree increments to allow the customer to tailor the light distribution to the requirements of the site, while maintaining the aesthetic orientation of the pole and the luminaire. Plus, their sleek, aerodynamic design reduces wind resistance almost in half-compared with square, rectilinear “shoebox” light fixtures. This is why, justifiably, Hadco says that Profiler sets the design standard for outdoor luminaires for the 21st century.

That comment could stand to describe Hadco’s standing in the world of outdoor lighting. Through a combination of old-fashioned craftsmanship with the latest in design concepts, lighting techniques and quality processes, Hadco has climbed to top-level status in the world of illumination.

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