What You Need to Know About Wall-Mounting Exterior Vertical Banners

Increasingly, our outdoor street light banner bracket sales folks receive questions regarding wall mounting vertical banners on exterior walls. Because there is much to know before you install this type of banner, KBW/Consort does have dependable and creative solutions to accomplish this.

The challenges in selecting the proper mounting methods include several factors such as the width and length of the banners, how high off the ground the mounting will be, what construction the wall surface material is and what surrounding environmental conditions exist that would either increase or reduce potential wind load on the banner.

What most new-comers to the wall-mounted banner world don't realize is that wind force is a formidable and relentless force with which to be reckoned and typically the higher off the ground the more intense the wind force. The wind seems to want to remove what man puts up. And, the constant breezes and resulting vibrations on banners tend to slowly eat away at the wall at the edges of the Main Casting with banner installations that are not properly planned and executed. For this reason, we almost always recommend the use of an intermediate steel or aluminum mounting plate between the Main Casting of the Banner Bracket and the wall. This plate spreads the wind force vibrations onto a much wider surface area. And, subsequently will keep the banner bracket's Main Casting from wearing away at the wall surface material. Even if the wall is concrete a plate is recommended to disperse the force and to provide extra fastening points. With our plates, we provide four (4) mounting holes as shown on the photo. Note that our plates are provided with two threaded studs welded onto the front to secure the Main Casting. Also, custom powdercoat colors and ornamental shapes are available.

With weaker wall materials, we will often suggest that through-bolts be used, if possible, where the bolts would go all the way through the wall to a second plate or large washers on the interior of the wall. As for whether to use lag bolts, anchor bolts, screws or through-bolts - if you have questions about which to use - we suggest you contact a local architect, engineer or contractor to assist with those decisions. That person can inspect the site if necessary and determine what sort of fastening is appropriate for the construction and materials involved. In some cases the location of an intended exterior wall banner may be significantly protected from excessive wind force due to neighboring buildings or trees or, the opposite effect is possible, where certain conditions will intensify wind force in a sort of wind tunnel effect. A professional can assist with that determination. They will need to know the size and height of the banner to determine wind load.

This particular blog is meant as a primer for this topic and may raise more questions than it answers. But, they are very important questions and we encourage all of this be taken very seriously. For more complete information, please see these links: our BannerFlex Banner Bracket Wall-Mount website and our Wind Force Calculator as well as the KBW BannerFlex Banner Bracket options including the new more flexible Airow bracket.

Questions? Email or call us today!  info@consort.com and 800.525.6424, ext 0
Roger Lepley

Banner Brackets and Fly Fishing! - The Third and Last In This Series

In the past couple of posts, I related how our company was the originator of the fiberglass street banner bracket and I described where the inspiration came for using fiberglass (fly fishing!) and then how the "canting" of the banner arms came about in 1985. Our most recent innovation in the banner bracket arm business is the BannerFlex Airow, which we first introduced in 2004 but for which we had spent about three years researching and developing.

The Airow is an eccentrically milled pultruded fiberglass rod that allows up to 50% of the wind force on the banner to be dissipated through the extreme flexing of the rod. For a visual description of this see the video at the upper right of this blog site or view it at www.kalamazoobanner.com. By using modern materials like milled pultruded fiberglass in this innovative way, we are able to provide a product that will last for many, many years in windy outdoor environments. That is, there are no mechanical parts in our system that involve wear, friction or even rust as in the case of springs or mechanical levers, and so on, that might be termed "machines" (and we all know machines wear out). Instead, we have incorporated what I term "space age" materials, for lack of a better description, that include high performance synthetic composite chemistry to do over the long term what older mechanical technology cannot do. Other examples of these "modern materials" are easily found in our current automobiles, sports equipment and even office chairs, such as the Herman Miller Aeron chair or, for that matter, the space shuttle!

The actual shape of the Airow rod is a bit hard to describe so I've included an image here but please visit this link to see it in action: www.kalamazoobanner.com/br_airow.php. As you may be able to observe, the top arm in an Airow banner bracket installation has a rounded top surface and an angled and tapered bottom surface (and the opposite for mounting the bottom of the banner). These rounded surfaces are to protect the banner fabric and the angled surfaces give the arm the increased flexibility that a standard full-round arm does not.

And, to bring the title of my last three posts into the discussion again, this shape takes its inspiration from my fly fishing rod back in 1984 and '85 that was so inspirational to me in deciding upon using fiberglass. So, in a way, we've come full circle back to that fly rod but have modified the typical cone or whip shape that tapers down from the fly rod handle to the tip and have made it an eccentric taper to accomplish the extreme flex and add necessary longitudinal strength as well as provide protection to the banner hem.

If all this seems a bit technical it's because it is! But, since our technology is well-researched and field-tested in thousands of applications over the past four years, I hope you'll take my word and guarantee that it works!

Roger