Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: ID seats / aisle lighting retrofit brainteaser

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Posted by William Hooper (Member # 71) on 03-03-2003, 03:13 AM:

A non-profit, live theater has no aisle lighting & needs it.

The theater was built in the 60s/early 1970s, obviously by a not-a-theater-architect. It has much screwy with it (for one, no aisle lights when they would have been required) but some nice features, probably by accident, not the least feature is really nice acoustics for stage shows.

The floor is poured concrete. There are 2 aisles: one center section of seats, & two outside sections. Each row of seats was assembled on a long 1x10 or 1x12 board then the board attached to the floor, probably because the folks in the past found it easier to understand that way. Miraculously, they don't wobble, but the hilarious day will someday come when one end gives way & a whole row of patrons will pitch back simultaneously.

The two outside seating sections have the oldest seats, obviously old cinema seats. What kind of seats were these?

They plainly had provision for aisle lights in the end standards. Does anyone have any information about the aisle lighting units' design & installation?

When I visited them, one of them was trying to talk the rest of the the theater into buying rope lights & running them down the steps. I asked what would keep folks from tripping over them as they entered the rows, & got the frozen look of terror of possible ego damage & a "we can work that out when we install them". They're rolling toward calamity.

The center section has newer seats of a different type, with no end standards. My theory is that they should stick the aisle lights on the outside sections & that will be enough. A big problem is still power: usually I've seen power for aisle lights on end standards just in conduit run straight up through the slab at the location of each end standard. It's too late for that now! I suppose conduit could be run down the side walls at baseboard level, & branched off running at the bottom of each riser behind the seats to the end standards. Making that 90 deg bend at each row going down the wall would be a monster pain, though. 15 rows.

I really don't think some of the LED tread lights would be appropriate in this application. The auditorium already has some appearance issues, & mixing space-age design & plastics as fixtures for aisle lighting into it would be awful. Something sort of incandescent, concealed or retro would be best, certainly not something modern-looking.

Can the end standard aisle lights for those seats be fairly easily fabricated & mounted?

Does anyone have any observations related to other aisle light retrofits, or ideas about how to get something in here?

Posted by Ken Layton (Member # 133) on 03-03-2003, 08:55 AM:

Boy that piece of wood is PHONY!

Seats could be Heywood-Wakefield late 1940's vintage?

The original concrete floor should have had conduit in it for seat lights, but the architect obviously was not versed in theaters was he?

I believe Leviton makes a wall light assembly (I've seen it at Home Depot) with a "6S6" screw base lamp in it that I have seen used on brand new Seating Concepts chairs for seat lights. The guts of that assembly ought to fit inside your existing seats.

I agree that the rope lights idea is a lawsuit waiting to happen!

Posted by William Hooper (Member # 71) on 03-04-2003, 01:07 AM:

Thanks Ken, I'll hunt those assemblies Wednesday (everything closed tomorrow for Moon Pie Day).

I also thought today about telling them to cannibalize some low voltage lighting units to put in the standards.

My favorite idea would be for them to install Tiki torches at the end of each row, but the smoke detectors would probably go off.

Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 03-04-2003, 01:17 AM:

William: I LOVE the Tiki Torches idea! That would be sooooo cool! But I think it would be hard to dim them during the show! [Smile]

>>> Phil

Posted by Richard Fowler (Member # 893) on 03-04-2003, 08:58 PM:

Tivoli makes a low voltage light kit for seat mounted aisle lights and would be safer than 110 volt lighting.
Richard Fowler
Kinoton America Inc.

Posted by William Hooper (Member # 71) on 03-06-2003, 02:27 AM:

The Tivoli site has nice .pdf specs for their units. I'll get a copy of it to the theater.

Who sells Tivoli's products? I've had no reply to an e-mail sent to the Tivoli "contact" address on the website.

Posted by Kenneth Wuepper (Member # 1174) on 03-06-2003, 06:32 AM:

William,

Please share the URL for Tivoli with the rest of us.

KEN

Posted by Barry Floyd (Member # 385) on 03-06-2003, 09:07 AM:

A Google search returned this result:

Tivoli Lighting Products