Street pole banner brackets come in many different styles and price ranges. How do you know what’s right for your city and what are the advantages and disadvantages of each kind of bracket?
Fixed versus Adjustable Lamp Post Banner Brackets
Fixed banner brackets are, well, fixed to one position. Street pole banner brackets can be fixed in multiple ways: with strapping and by being welded onto the lamp pole.
Many decorative lamp posts are purchased by cities or towns with banner brackets pre-welded onto the lamp posts. Cities do this to save cost but also to provide a unified and clean look for their street scape. Welded fixed street pole brackets have a few disadvantages: namely, you cannot accommodate for different sizes of banners and if the bracket get damaged there is no easy way to simply replace it.
Fixed Lamp Post banners can also come in the form of banners brackets that, once banded to the lamp post, cannot be moved. The majority of banner brackets purchased and installed throughout the nation are of this variety. The major advantage of fixed banner brackets is price as they offer the basic functionality needed without additional pieces needed for adjustability. The biggest disadvantage with fixed street pole banner brackets is that you cannot accommodate different sizes of banners without breaking/releasing the banding, moving the bracket and reattaching the banding.
Adjustable street pole banner brackets allow for the movement (or travel) of the banner bracket slightly in order to accommodate a slightly variant size.
Adjustability of street pole banner brackets helps to mitigate risks around street pole banner production inaccuracy in sizing. It is common for a banner manufactures to make their banners within 1” of accuracy, this poses a problem if the banner is 1” too small and thus does not fit the lamp post banner bracket spacing. Adjustability is also convenient in winter months when vinyl street pole banners do not stretch as much and what would normally fit when installed in the summer does not fit when installed in the winter.
On the above note, it is important to ensure street pole banners are installed as tight as possible to prevent billowing (and premature degradation) and thus a “balance” of tightness need to be struck whereby the brackets are spaced far enough to keep the banner tight but not so far as to make banner change outs difficult, especially as the seasons change.
It is easy to think of situations or contexts in which adjustability would be favoured. For example, if your city or town plans to allow any private group to produce and install banners through a permitting process and they need not go through the City for production and installation for the banners, it is quite probable that inconsistency in banner sizing will occur. If an incorrect banner size is produced, the private group will likely instruct their installer to remove the existing banding and reposition it to ensure the banner fits (instead of reprinting the incorrectly sized banner). It is highly probably that the private group will not move the banner bracket back when their campaign is completed as well.
With many private groups, manufacturers and installers involved, the result over a period of years is various banner bracket spacing throughout the city and possibly low quality installation as well (the installation company uses low quality banding when rebanding the bracket to the lamp post so it fits the incorrectly sized banner). It’s easy to see how non-adjustable or fixed banner brackets in this context is problematic.
If you are looking to install street pole banners on a permanent basis and do not plan to change them out seasonally, then this lack of adjustability is only relevant when the inevitable banner replacement needs to occur every few years. If you are looking to make seasonal banner changes, run a banner program that requires many change outs or give public access to the banner bracket infrastructure, adjustable banner brackets will likely save your install team time and be considerably more economical over the long run.
Spring Loaded or Stress-Reducing Street Pole Banner Brackets
Spring loaded pole banner brackets are a premium product that is purchased for the purpose of maintaining banner lifespan. These banner brackets allow for the entire banner bracket system to move when encountered by strong winds. The idea with these brackets is to reduce wind load primarily on the banner and also, to a lesser extent, the lamp pole.
Spring loaded banner brackets are often non-adjustable (fixed), heavier (requires stronger banding and higher risk, should the bracket fall) and much more expensive than other banner brackets on the market. It should also be noted that, generally, spring loaded banner brackets have a wider base which make them harder to install on smaller poles or octagonal poles with smaller side walls.
From our experience, spring loaded banners are not worth the extra expense that comes with them. The initial installation is more time consuming due to the heavy nature of the bracket itself plus the wide nature of the base. Often times a gasket or rubber layer is required to go between the pole and the bracket to prevent slippage due to the wide nature of the bracket base. It is also important to note that if banners are a reasonable size, constructed properly (strong seams that are welded or sewn with a seatbelt liner) and installed properly (tight, with no billowing), the banners will only rip under extreme weather conditions. It is only when a poorly constructed banner is installed that spring-loaded banner brackets may provide additional protection.
Note: The Street Pole Banner Company only supplies fixed and adjustable Jr Windspill banner brackets. Our company has used these lamp pole banners brackets for 20+ years and have supplied and installed tens of thousands across the nation. The only times we see the brackets break is when large trucks hit them. The only times we see our banners rip due to severe weather is when they were improperly installed (they were loose and billowing).
I hope this helps define the general types of street pole banners brackets on the market as well as the differences between them. Please feel free to give us a shoutas our team of experts would be happy to help you with more information
