Haldo Ecco (With Signature 'Superior' Base Light)

The Ecco was a popular bollard type throughout Derby in the early-mid 2000s, but became as good as extinct owing to the commencement of Derby's Street Lighting PFI towards the end of the decade, when most were replaced, along with a subsequent decision to de-illuminate many of the City's bollards completely and install reflective bollards instead.

The Ecco is made of a flexible plastic (or rubber), although it is not as pliable as the Simmonsigns Simbol bollard shell is. The front and sides have rectangular orange/yellow graphics whilst the back is plain. A single reflective strip is fitted to the front graphic. This is my first bollard to employ the now-common base-lit illumination method, as opposed to the internal vertical lighting spine design employed with earlier bollard types.

A Signature 'Superior' base-light unit provides the illumination. Thanks to most bollard shells employing a standard fixing method, they can be mated with most bases, despite the manufacturers being different. The base-light's lid is secured by a single tri-head bolt, although the spaces for a further two can be seen on either side - these are blanked out with rubber seals on this example. This is actually the 'back' of the unit - not that the orientation will affect the bollard's optical performance! Unusually, the base-light is fitted with a miniature photocell - a SELC 101-B infrared unit, which can be seen between the two 11 Watt lamps.

With the bolt removed, the cover hinges back and the glazing panel can be removed. Two plastic handles are positioned on either side of the gear tray, in order to allow access to the wiring on the other side of the tray.

The infrared nature of the photocell is a requirement, as standard photocells could detect the light emitted from the lamps, and keep switching the base-light on and off.

The lamps run on individual ballasts, although a single capacitor is wired in parallel with both circuits.

A small backboard is fitted inside the base-light, allowing a cut-out to be fitted.

At first, nothing happened when I powered the base-light up but after a few seconds, the lamps decided to illuminate.

I then placed the bollard shell on top of the base light to see how things looked - surprisingly, it didn't appear to be lit very uniformly - though this might be due to the inside of the shell being quite dirty.

With the acquiring of a Haldo base light in 2006 for my Simmonsigns Simbol bollard shell, I decided later to unite the two Haldo products, for a more authentic example of the Derby units.

A Haldo 'Triplex' was created, with the name appearing thrice in quick succession on the front of the bollard base and shell!

By 2020, LED retrofit lamps were available that fitted directly into G23 lampholders and ran without needing to remove the ballast; thus, the 11 Watt compact fluorescent lamps were substituted by 6 Watt LED equivalents instead. The only modification made to the wiring was to disconnect the Power Factor Correction capacitor.

Testing with my energy monitoring device revealed the following results:

Test Voltage (V)	Current being drawn at full power (A)	Measured wattage (W)	Apparent Power (VA)	Frequency (Hz)	Power Factor	True Power (W)	Difference to rated wattage (2 × 6 Watt)	Percentage Difference
241.5	0.04	10	10	50	0.97	9.37	-2.63	-21.92%