Rising bollards

A rising bollard is a different kind of product from the rest of the catalogue. It arrives with a hydraulic unit, a control panel and a below-ground housing, and installation involves excavation, drainage and electrical work. The quotation is therefore prepared as a project price rather than a product price.

The below-ground volume is the first constraint of the project. The housing must sit between the existing services. Where water, gas and communications run, the position is planned together with the utility drawing. A quotation given without a pre-excavation survey changes on site.

Drainage is the most frequently skipped detail on this product. Water collecting in the housing pit destroys the hydraulics and the mechanism. A base drain or a pump cuts that risk from the outset. In a freezing climate that detail is not optional.

The power failure scenario belongs in the specification. Whether the bollard stays up or down when the supply fails is a safety decision. At an entrance needing fire access it rests down, where security leads it rests up — the de-energised position and any manual override are model options and must be named in the specification. A manual release is present in both cases.

The maintenance plan is not sold apart from the product. Hydraulic oil, seals and the control board need servicing at intervals. Systems without a service agreement stay out of use for weeks after the first fault. Ask in writing for the spare parts lead time at quotation stage.

The model table reads through seven fields: body diameter and rise height, open-close time, cycles per hour/day, power connection, operating temperature range, protection rating, and the drive-over load in normal service. These come from the model datasheet and are stated in the quotation — the drive-over load is a service figure, not a crash-test result; the two are separate documents.

The control arrangement is a matrix: the detection loop, the warning lamp and sounder, the emergency stop and the command sources (card, remote, plate recognition) appear on one diagram, and the position the bollard holds in each failure case is written into it. Site acceptance runs down a function list too: rise and lower, detection, warning, emergency stop and de-energised behaviour are each exercised; drainage and maintenance access are handed over as drawings, and who owns the servicing is written into the acceptance record.