Houston Venue Guide Power, generators and lighting a venue
Power, generators and lighting a venue
Power is invisible until it fails, at which point it is the only thing anyone remembers. Lighting is the opposite: it is the least expensive way to transform a space and the first thing cut from a budget.
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Two related subjects that both live in the same conversation with a venue, and both get answered vaguely by people who have never had to add up the load.
The question that gets a real answer
Do not ask whether there is enough power. Every venue will say yes. Ask instead: how many circuits are available in the event space, at what amperage, and where are the outlets?
Then have your suppliers give you their draw. A band or DJ, stage lighting, uplighting, catering equipment, coffee urns, warming units, a photo booth, heaters or fans, and audiovisual all have known requirements, and the people supplying them can tell you in a sentence. Somebody has to add them up and compare the total against what the building offers. In a hotel or purpose-built venue, the in-house team does this as a matter of routine. In a loft, a gallery, a historic house or a converted warehouse, nobody does it unless you ask.
The failure mode is specific and common: everything works during setup, and the circuit trips when the catering equipment and the lighting rig come on together at the moment the doors open. It is entirely preventable and it is prevented at the planning stage, not on the night.
Confirm where the outlets physically are, too. A room with adequate capacity concentrated at one end still needs cable runs, and cable crossing a guest route needs matting.
When you need a generator
On any site without a building — a field, a ranch, a private property, a car park — the answer is almost always yes, and the generator is a substantial line item rather than an accessory.
Sizing is the first decision and is done from the same load calculation. Undersizing produces failures at peak; wildly oversizing wastes money and fuel. A supplier who asks for your equipment list before quoting is doing the job correctly.
Siting is the second and is where events are quietly ruined. A generator placed for the convenience of the delivery truck will be audible under the speeches. It needs distance, and if distance is impossible it needs acoustic housing, and either way it needs a cable run that has been thought about. This interacts directly with the acoustics of an outdoor event, where there are no walls to help you.
Third is redundancy. If a single generator carries the whole event, its failure ends the event. The common professional arrangement splits critical load — catering refrigeration, essential lighting, sound — from decorative load, and on larger events puts the critical side on its own unit. Ask what happens if the generator stops. A supplier with a real answer has thought about it; one who is surprised by the question has not.
Fuel is fourth and is the one people forget. A generator has a run time, and an event that overruns needs refuelling by someone still on site at midnight. Confirm who that is.
Cooling deserves its own mention. Tent air conditioning in Houston's warm months is often the largest single draw on the site, which is why a tented summer event needs far more generation than the same event in November — and one of the main reasons a tent is not a cheap venue.
Lighting changes a room more than anything else you can buy
Once power is settled, lighting is where the disproportionate return sits. A plain room with good lighting reads better in person and in photographs than a beautiful room with the house fluorescents on.
Four layers do the work, and they are separable so you can buy only what you need.
Ambient light sets the level of the room. The single most common improvement is simply turning the house lighting down and replacing it with something warmer and lower, which costs almost nothing where the venue has dimmable circuits. Ask whether it does — a venue with fixed, undimmable overhead lighting has a real limitation.
Table light is what people actually see during dinner: candles, low lamps, or pin spots aimed at each table. Pin spotting is the trick photographers wish more people bought, because it lifts the centrepieces and lets the rest of the room drop away. Note that open flame is restricted or banned at a great many venues, particularly historic ones — check before designing around it.
Wash and colour on the walls, usually uplighting, transforms a blank industrial space and does very little in a room that already has character. Spend it where the walls are dull, not where they are the reason you booked. Effect lighting — a gobo, a projected pattern, a dance floor rig — is the layer to buy last and the one most likely to be oversold.
Practical constraints on lighting
Rigging points determine what is possible. A venue with a truss, ceiling hooks or a permitted rig is straightforward; a historic room where nothing may be fixed to anything means everything sits on the floor, which is a different and often more expensive design.
Circuit capacity again. A large uplighting package draws real power, and in an older building it may need its own supply.
Setup time matters. Lighting is among the first things in and the last things out, and if your access window is three hours you cannot have an elaborate rig. This is one of the reasons the vendor access time in the twenty questions is not a trivial question.
Safety lighting is not optional and is not decorative. Steps, level changes, thresholds and the route to the car park need to be lit even when the room is dark — a point that overlaps with accessibility and with plain good sense at the end of an evening.
Where it belongs in the budget
For an event in a built venue with in-house capability, lighting is a modest line that returns more per dollar than almost anything else. For a blank-canvas or outdoor site, power and lighting together are a major category and belong in the comparison from the beginning, not as an afterthought once the venue is signed. The cost guide explains why a venue with a low site fee frequently is not the cheaper option, and this is one of the main reasons.