The light goes on for TSV Benediktbeuern.
A light with a power of 7000 watts, distributed over six floodlight masts around the small field and training area.
In addition, the footballers now have a sprinkler system on all three fields.
The total cost: 80,000 euros - the third largest investment in the club's history.
Benediktbeuern
- The previous floodlights no longer really corresponded to the current state of the art.
The wooden masts were 35 years old and should have been replaced long ago.
The just as old mercury vapor lamps were more suitable as a light source for a scary movie than for proper football training.
"On the small field in particular, these were only larger flashlights," says Rudolf Thumann, who heads the project, was department head until 2019 and is now an assessor.
The dim light wasn't the only disadvantage of the outdated lamps: it took ten minutes for them to develop their full brightness.
If there was a power failure, they were not allowed to be switched on for half an hour.
To make matters worse, the historic floodlights also used an enormous amount of electricity, around 18,000 watts.
Significantly lower power consumption
Now everything is very different.
Modern LED lamps burn in the floodlights installed by the Amberg-based company Hudson.
They do not need any warm-up time, are many times brighter and use less than half as much electricity.
The joy is correspondingly great.
“Everyone is enthusiastic - from the youth to the elderly,” says Thumann.
"Better light also enables better training."
There is applause not only from the association, but also from the Federal Environment Ministry, which is supporting the construction of the new floodlights with 25 percent.
Another 30 percent subsidy for the overall project is provided by the Bavarian State Sports Association.
The community donates 35,000 euros, the main association also a decent sum.
The costs for the soccer department are therefore manageable.
The association had to provide 15 percent of the total through its own contribution and donations, says the project manager, “and we easily managed that”.
Members helped
A total of 25 association members took part in the construction work.
One of their tasks was to lower the old masts, to shred them and to dispose of them.
They also tore out the old concrete foundations and applied the humus layer.
The idea of building a new floodlight had already arisen in 2019.
"And then the suggestion came that we should also put an irrigation system in the middle when the trenches are already open." The effort should be kept within limits.
Sometimes the devil is in the details.
First of all, it was necessary to conclude a long-term lease agreement with the Bavarian State Forests, which owns the training ground.
When construction workers approached, they were surprised to find that the sub-floor consists of old, coarse railway gravel: “The stones are the size of a fist and have sharp edges,” says Thumann.
“Some of them even have a diameter of half a meter.” The consequence: the milling machine used failed after just ten meters.
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The irrigation system has already gone into operation.
© TSV Benediktbeuern
An excavator had to come.
"A huge additional effort," says Thumann.
It's good that the newly elected department head Christian Schmid is the owner of an excavator company.
Suddenly the trenches were half a meter wide and not ten centimeters as intended.
In addition, the work did not take a week or two, but five weeks.
“An investment in the future,” says Thumann.
He emphasizes that the new sprinkler system, which the company Bieber from Roßtal near Nuremberg has installed, has a number of advantages.
The training field can now also be watered - and not just the main and small fields as before.
A conversion is also no longer necessary.
“It was always an incredible effort and took two to three hours,” says Thumann.
Place can be watered at night
There are many other advantages: “We can now irrigate the square at night.
That means: we have less wind, it evaporates far less, and we save an incredible amount of water. ”A moisture sensor also detects when it suddenly starts to rain at night.
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For the TSV it is the third largest construction project after the construction of the club house led by Franz Pölt in 2002/03 and the reconstruction of the main field with the installation of the old irrigation system in 2013.
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