The last post covered replacing the glass in three of the courtyard lights in June 2018. We held off replacing the glass in the remaining two until we could sort out a better way to seal them.
On February 1, 2019, we had a small storm with moderately strong winds.
We had a work crew scheduled the next morning to help finish some cleanup, and when they rolled in they remarked that one of the courtyard lights had toppled over. Needless to say, we were pretty upset to discover this. Thankfully only one of the two lights at the boundary of the courtyard and driveway was toppled, but such a catastrophe made us worry for the lights we had “fixed” three months earlier.
The bright side was that none of the glass in the top portion of the fallen lantern shattered, and while the plastic bottom inserts got blown about, the lantern itself was mostly undamaged, so we moved things to safety and assessment. The base of the column sustained some damage, and the source of the collapse soon became apparent–the steel rods supporting the structure had rusted through, and with the gusty storms here, it was only a matter of time.
In the spring, I started the process of getting the toppled light back up and insuring the other four were revamped to prevent something similar. I called F & F Steel, the same mob who fabricated and installed the absolutely wonderful new ladders to the great room and studio building. They were pretty backed up with big projects and recommended a smaller shop, so I had said shop send a guy out to take a look. Then I waited…and waited. The guy ignored my many calls and messages asking for the quote so we could review the scope of work they were prepared to complete. I ended up calling F & F back, and apparently since we’re not terrible people to work for, Carlos, their lead foreman type, came out to see what was going on, and suggested one of their steel guys come out on a weekend to handle the project on a time-and-materials basis. So I gave F & F the go-ahead to order new rods and we waited for those to be ready.
Finally in mid-September last year, everything was in place, so I called United Rentals and we purchased our very own man-lift. Amusingly enough, we also had at that time a rental scissor-lift for another project, so when Ysrael from F & F arrived one Sunday morning, he was spoiled for choice.
It didn’t take Ysreal very long to get all five lights sorted. He replaced all the rods and cleaned up the majority of rust on the bases. Using the lifts to pull the columns up and out of the way made the job pretty easy.
It’s a good thing we did this project–several of the lights would have suffered similar fates to the one that toppled. That would have made us very, very sad.
Our project for this spring/summer is to finish some cleanup on all five by replacing the light sockets and sealing the lanterns a bit better against the elements.