Wieland's gesis® Highlights The Great Gallery at The RAC Club
Wieland Electric's gesis® IP+ pluggable electrical installation system has played a pivotal role in the illumination of The Great Gallery at the Royal Automobile Club in London's Pall Mall. The Royal Automobile Club is a private members club steeped in over 100 years of history and tradition as a social and automotive club. This prestigious location offers restaurant dining, banqueting, accommodation and sport facilities to members. The building is listed, making the lighting installation more complicated as the local council decreed that none of the illumination could be fixed. Therefore the lighting had to be connected via a pluggable system that could easily be moved.
Electrical contractors S J Martin & Co were given the task of installing low voltage spike lights with integral transformers, in planters on The Great Gallery. The exact location of the spike lights could not be determined prior to installation so a wiring system had to be found that was sufficiently flexible to cope with last minute alterations. The lighting fixtures were also to be switched on two circuits to allow for a lower level of illumination during off peak times.
The project also required an extremely quick system of wiring as approximately 70 light fixtures had to be installed in the two day period between the completion of planting to the opening of the area. Wieland's gesis® IP+ pluggable electrical installation system was chosen as it fulfilled all the criteria in addition to being of the high quality expected at such a prestigious location.
Wieland's gesis® IP+ pluggable electrical installation system has been designed for the safe installation of lighting and other building services components, especially where a high degree of protection is required. gesis® IP+ offers ingress protection against continuous submersion for two hours at depths up to three metres and is rated IP65, IP66, IP67 and IP68. The entire system is designed for a rated current of 20A and available in 2, 3, 4 or 5 pole connectors. Mating components are interlocked by simply snapping the parts together; if required, male and female connectors can be separated easily using a screwdriver. Extensions and additions are quickly implemented on the 'Lego principle', reducing any downtime to a minimum and reducing installation times of up to 80%.
The spike lights were installed between decking and trellis units using starter/extender leads. As most of the fixtures were to be located in planters, the cabling had to be exposed and run on the surface and then hidden by foliage. In addition to the wiring, all structures had to be removable to comply with listed building consents, which presented a demanding task for the structural engineers who had to work around large bespoke canopies and with fixed seating beneath.
Chris Begley, of S J Martin, commented "The only wiring system that we could find to fit the bill was the gesis® IP+ system which provides a high quality, rapid, weatherproof system of pre-manufactured cables and miniature weatherproof distribution blocks that can be assembled and disassembled within hours".