While visiting San Antonio, Joel Mayor, the owner of Texas Outdoor Lighting in Austin, noticed how dimly lit the iconic fa?????ade of the Alamo shrine was and decided to try to remedy that. After finally getting approval from the proper authorities, he and his crew installed 20 in-grade, integrated IlluminFX fixtures (IG4, IG5, IG6) with custom optics that provided a 30-degree beam angle so the lights could be mounted flush and away from the building. Their lamps varied between 6W and 18W LEDs with a color temperature of 3000K. To mount them, the flagstone paving had to be cored. The wiring was installed in between the flagstones after the mortar was removed with a circular saw and
a masonry blade.




Mayor and his crew were also hired to light some of the shrine's landscaped areas. This large oak tree at the Alamo Fountain is uplit by 5 LS5 bullets with 18W LED lamps with 60-degree beam spreads. IG4s illuminate the wall. The moonlighting is provided by 30W/120V/5000K Kichler down lights mounted high in the tree.




Unique Starburst washes with Brilliance 4W and 5W LEDs are used on these palm trees and the smaller plants throughout the different areas. The wall is lit with more IG5s.




Flush grade fixtures, which better withstand mowing crews, uplight the tree on the right. To help install the downlighting, Mayor asked friends of his, firefighters from New Braunfels, a small town north of San Antonio, to lend their skills and rope-rappelling gear.

One of the top merits of the green industry is the abundant opportunity it offers to people of all backgrounds. And these opportunities provide many success stories; some of which this magazine has the honor of presenting.

Such is the case of Joel Mayor: a service disabled Navy vet, husband and father of three, owner of a landscape lighting company and the person who had the privilege of helping one of this nation's most iconic places continue to inspire, dusk to dawn.

Born and raised in central Texas, Mayor enlisted in the Navy where he served as an airman. And sustained an injury. Not a battle injury and as he sees it, not a big deal.

"Not really much of a story there, just got injured on the job one day," he mentions unassumingly. After Mayor's military stint, he found work with a landscape company in Virginia that was, as he says, "dabbling with lighting." But his home state beckoned him back so Mayor returned to Texas and soon found himself starting a family, and wanting to start a business. Being partial to the landscape lighting work he had done, specializing in that profession was high on his wish list.

"When I really decided to pursue this, I looked online and found that a manufacturer was having a training session in Memphis, Tenn.," Mayor recalls. "So I just jumped in the truck and drove out there the next day. That got the gears turning and on the way back I came up with the name, Texas Outdoor Lighting."

So he jumped in and started his company in Austin in 2007. Reading books by lighting designers and spending a lot of time at night playing around with lights; trying out different lamps and different brands and different techniques, helped Mayor learn his craft. And having to work in 100 degree plus weather, dig through tough terrain, climb 50-foot trees and the like appealed to the can-do mindset and strong work ethic that he got from the military and his dad.

Along the side of the Alamo, Mayor wanted to continue the look established on the front fa?????ade but instead of in-ground lights, he used aboveground LS3 bullets because of the vegetation. They are lamped with 6W LEDs with a 30-degree beam spread.




One of the challenges faced by the lighting crew was overpowering the ambient street lighting enough that it did not influence the look, while making sure that the architectural lighting did not wash out the structure but instead showed the historical details.




More IG5 lights with 12W LEDs illuminate these palm trees and the oak tree in the middle of the photo. The moonlighting effect on the lawn is from a downlight with a BR-40 LED lamp. Twelve transformers were needed to power the many lights. The installation was done in five phases that amounted to about a month and a half of work spread out over two years for a crew of five.

He is happy to report that his business has been growing steadily. Besides Mayor, who does much of the design, the company consists of another lighting designer who also heads up the maintenance department, three or four installers and an office manager, who Mayor refers to as "the central hub to our business."

"We get our projects through word of mouth, mailers, and we put a lot of energy into SEO," he reports. "And I network with landscape designers, pool builders and home builders."

Mayor also says that for the last six years, the company has been all LED, working closely with companies like Brilliance.

"I think they have been making great strides in creating better, more efficient lamps and the customer service has been phenomenal through all these years."

Enhancing Hallowed Ground
After leaving a birthday dinner at the River Walk in San Antonio one night, Mayor and his wife drove past the Alamo and almost missed it because it was so poorly lit. He parked the car to investigate and found the lighting consisted of an old baseball stadium light with half the lamps out. Talking to one of the guards, he was told that it was always dark, which allowed people to hide in the shadows, scale the wall, sleep in the bushes.

"The next few weeks I spent a lot of time calling and bugging whoever I could at the state office for the Alamo," says Mayor. "Finally one of the head operations managers called me back."

Mayor was granted the opportunity to do a mockup of lighting on the famous fa?????ade.

"We did about 20 fixtures," he says. "Our idea was to give more uplighting to the fa?????ade and grazing the surface and really showing the texture and the damage from the battle of the Alamo and all the little imperfections instead of bleaching it out with a big bright wash light." The state officials loved the demonstration but didn't have a source for funding the installation at the time. So Mayor talked with A.J. Hetzke, the owner of IlluninFX. who threw his passionate support behind the effort and donated the fixtures. Texas Outdoor Lighting agreed to install them for free. After a few months of red tape they got approval to do it.

The company chose in-grade, IG4, IG5 and IG6 fixtures with lamps between six watts and 18 watts, and custom optics that bent the light beams 30 degrees, which allowed the lights to be installed flush and back away from the building. To do so, flagstone pavers in the walkways had to be cored. Mortar between the pavers was chipped out, the wiring was installed, and the joints were re-mortared.

"There were a few difficult nights doing a lot of rock work but we got them all done," Mayor says. Again, the Alamo officials were very impressed. And by now, a funding source was found so they asked Texas Outdoor Lighting for a plan to light the rest of the grounds in phases. The resulting five-phase design intended to highlight a lot of the architectural features of the buildings, as well as the cannons and the more impressive trees. Moonlighting the walkways would add safety, and other lights would be used to nicely fill in.

"The Alamo is never open at night," explains Mayor. "Our plan was to make it look beautiful so if they ever wanted to have tours or events or parties at night then people could walk around safely."

Other goals were to end the maintenance issues they were having with the limited existing lights, as well as helping the guards keep the grounds secure. The entire project, which began in 2013, spanned about two years, totaled about a month and a half of work for a crew of five, and involved around 400 fixtures.

According to Mayor, the biggest challenge the company faced was dealing with all the red tape. Other challenges included having to wait for fixtures that had to be special ordered, trying to stay out of the way of hundreds of visitors during the day, and still trying to operate a business from a hotel room. But the results were very well received and the source of great pride for Mayor and his crew.

"The Alamo was a project of a lifetime. I can't think of anything else in the state that I would have rather worked on than that," Mayor enthuses. "I just feel very honored to have been the company to do that."

And LC/DBM is proud to bring this story to light.

Texas Outdoor Lighting installed more than 25 fixtures with LEDs at this residence on Lake Austin. Ten Unique bullets focus on the house. Three Lancer 6 fixtures light the pathway.




The tree on the right side of the photo is uplit with aboveground Bishops. Flush mounted Novas were used on the trees to the left. The blue glow in the lake is from three underwater lights, which were the only LED lamps that were not from Brilliance (PAR-36 12W for the big trees, MR-16 7W for the rest).




To get the ambience in the water around the boat dock that the homeowner wanted, Mayor enlisted IlluminFX to customize three Centauri fixtures. Two are 25W and the third is 40W. Even though the lights are rated for underwater use, these were installed at the waterline.

Brightening Hill Country Homes
As the excellent results achieved at the Alamo show, Texas Outdoor Lighting knows their way around major commercial projects. But the bulk of their work is enhancing residences in the Austin area. One of the more interesting installations lately was at a home on Lake Austin that called for various fixtures with Brilliance LEDs and some extra lights to fulfill the owner's special request.

Mayor relates, "The client wanted blue lighting under the dock and blue lights when they went swimming at night – it was just a fun kind of lighting for the parents and the kids."

To get the desired ambience, Mayor had IlluminFX customize three Centauri fixtures with the right optics and color output. The fixtures with stainless steel housings are rated for underwater submersion but these were installed just above the waterline, which doesn't mean the process was straightforward.

"It was terrible timing because it was winter and we had to get in the water to get up underneath the boat dock and run our wiring and mount the lights," Mayor recalls. "It was pretty chilly."

And that's not all.

"When we were in the water, there were a couple of water moccasins underneath the boat dock," he adds "Some of my guys had to be on snake patrol so I could jump out if they ever returned."