RIG-A-LITE · Avail Infrastructure Solutions
RIG-A-LITE Hazardous Location and Washdown Industrial Lighting
RIG-A-LITE has built fixtures for places that destroy ordinary luminaires since 1938, when the job was lighting drilling rigs. In South Florida that translates to wastewater plants, marine terminals, food processing floors and any structure sitting in salt air. This page is the working guide to the line: which family survives which environment, and where the ratings actually differ.
- Class I and II, Divisions 1 and 2
- Zone 1, 2, 21 and 22
- NSF-certified washdown
- IP65 to IP69K
- NEMA 4X
- marine brass and 316 stainless
- ASTM B117 salt spray tested
- 5 and 7 year warranties
The distinction that decides the fixture
Hazardous-rated and harsh-rated are not the same thing
Half the RIG-A-LITE quotes I price go wrong at this step, so it is worth being blunt about it. A hazardous location is one where an explosive atmosphere may be present: flammable gas, combustible dust, ignitable fibers. The fixture has to be incapable of igniting it, and the rating is written as a Class, a Division or Zone, and a gas or dust Group. A harsh location is merely brutal: hose-down, salt, chemicals, vibration, heat. Nothing there will explode. The fixture only has to survive.
They cost very different money. Specifying a Class I Division 1 luminaire for a car wash throws budget away; specifying a vaportight for a Division 2 room is a code violation and a life safety problem. RIG-A-LITE splits the catalog along exactly this line, which is helpful once you know the split is there.
Hazardous-rated — 53 products
The AVPH, CHL, EHRL, EHRS, EHSL, EHSM, ELA, EHLV and EHE families, plus the EX-Series (EXA03, EXA04, EXA05, EXA06, EXA10) for globally certified Zone work and the EXJB01 and EXJB02 junction boxes. Ratings reach Class I Division 2 Groups A through D, Class II Divisions 1 and 2 Groups E, F and G, Class III, and Zone 1, 2, 21 and 22.
Harsh-rated — 22 products
The AVP and BVP globe and guard area lights, the CML, ML, MLS, NMF2 and RVT linears, the FPF, FPF2, FPHB and WFHN NSF-certified washdown range, and the HLB, LFL, LFLJ, IALJ, EST and ESM high-bay and flood families. No explosive atmosphere, but hose-down, marine and corrosive service.
Which one is my job?
If a code official, a process engineer or an insurer has classified the area, that classification governs and it will be on the drawings. If nobody has classified it, it is almost certainly a harsh location, not a hazardous one. Send me the room and I will tell you which side of the catalog it falls on before you price anything.
Harsh-rated, verified against rigalite.com
The families I put on South Florida jobs
These are the harsh-rated fixtures, not the hazardous ones. The category descriptions are RIG-A-LITE’s own wording from the current product pages; the numbers below each are taken from the published specification sheets and are dated where the sheet gives a date.
The hazardous side
EHRS LED, read off the sheet
One hazardous fixture in full, because it shows what the ratings on this side of the catalog actually look like. The EHRS is the E-Series jelly-jar area light — the small, cheap, everywhere fixture of a classified area, and the one most likely to be value-engineered into something that does not carry the rating.
| Item | EHRS LED, published values |
|---|---|
| Gas classification | Class I Division 2 Groups A, B, C and D |
| Dust classification | Class II Divisions 1 and 2 Groups E, F and G; Class III |
| Zone classification | Class I Zone 1 Group IIB; Class I Zone 2 Group IIC; Zone 21; Zone 22 |
| Output | 1,500 to 4,500 lm, up to 150 lm/W |
| Color temperature | 3000K, 4000K, 5000K adjustable |
| Electrical | AC 100–277V, 50/60 Hz; 1-10VDC dimming standard |
| Surge | 10kV standard, 20kV optional |
| Ambient | minus 40 to 65 degrees C |
| Lumen maintenance | L70 at 150,000 hours |
| Housing | Die-cast copper-free aluminum, baked powder epoxy/polyester finish |
| Lens and gaskets | Heat, shock and impact-resistant diffuse glass drop; high-temperature silicone; stainless hardware |
| Enclosure | IP67, IK09, NEMA 4X, 5G vibration |
| Corrosion | ASTM B117-11 salt spray tested, 1,000 hours |
| Listings | UL 844, UL 1598, UL 1598A, UL 8750; CSA C22.2 No. 137-M1981 and No. 250.0-08 |
| Access | Single barrel nut and hinge, one-hand operation |
| Weight | 5.73 to 8.82 lbs shipping |
| Warranty | 5 years |
Two things on that table matter more than the rest in this market. Copper-free aluminum is not a marketing word — it is what keeps the housing from sparking and what the listing depends on. And 1,000 hours of ASTM B117 salt spray is the number to quote back when somebody proposes a substitution: most general-purpose industrial fixtures are not tested to it at all.
Why this line, here
What salt air does to a light fixture, and who pays for it
Every coastal building in Broward, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Monroe runs the same experiment: a painted steel or standard aluminum housing goes up, and somewhere between year three and year seven the fasteners bleed, the gasket hardens, the door will not close on the gasket any more, and water gets to the driver. The fixture did not fail because the LED died. It failed because the enclosure stopped being an enclosure.
That is the whole argument for this line on a waterfront job, and it is an argument about materials rather than lumens. Marine brass on the BVP. 316-grade stainless hardware. Silicone gaskets instead of neoprene where the temperature swings. Non-metallic bodies on the CML where there is nothing to corrode at all. Copper-free die-cast aluminum with a baked powder finish on the hazardous range, salt-spray tested for a thousand hours.
The counter-argument is honest too: this is not the cheap fixture. On a dry interior office job it is the wrong specification and I will say so. The line earns its price where replacement is expensive — a fixture over a clarifier, above a production line that has to be shut down and sanitized to reach it, or forty feet up in a parking structure that needs a lift and a lane closure.
The buildings this lands on here
Where RIG-A-LITE actually shows up in South Florida
RIG-A-LITE names oil and gas, chemical, food processing, water and wastewater, marine, steel and petrochemical as its markets. Three of those are a large part of what gets built and renovated in this territory.
- Water and wastewater treatment. Headworks, digesters and chemical feed rooms are frequently classified; the rest of the plant is wet, corrosive and hosed down. Both halves of the catalog end up on the same drawing set, which is exactly where the hazardous-versus-harsh confusion costs money.
- Marine and port. Port Everglades, PortMiami, the fuel terminals and the working waterfront. UL 1598A marine outside type and ABS type approval on the BVP are the listings that get asked for and that most lines cannot produce.
- Food processing and commissary. NSF-certified food equipment with an IP69K body is a short list of manufacturers, and high-pressure cleaning is what separates a genuine washdown fixture from a vaportight that will be full of water within a year.
- Parking structures and back-of-house. Not glamorous and not classified, but this is where the RVT goes by the hundred, and where a color-tunable SKU means one part number covers a garage, a loading dock and a trash room.
- Generator rooms, fuel storage and pump rooms. Small classified areas inside otherwise ordinary buildings — hospitals, data centers, high-rise residential. Usually a handful of EHRS or EHRM fixtures, and usually the part of the schedule nobody checked.
Questions
Questions I get about RIG-A-LITE
What is the difference between a hazardous-rated and a harsh-rated RIG-A-LITE fixture?
A hazardous-rated fixture is built so it cannot ignite an explosive atmosphere, and it carries a Class, a Division or Zone, and a gas or dust Group. A harsh-rated fixture is built to survive water, salt, chemicals, vibration or heat, and carries no such classification. RIG-A-LITE lists 53 hazardous-rated products and 22 harsh-rated ones. If your area has been classified by a code official, a process engineer or an insurer, that classification governs. If nobody has classified it, it is almost certainly harsh rather than hazardous.
Which RIG-A-LITE fixture do I use for a washdown food processing area?
The FPF LED for linear runs and the FPHB LED where there is height. Both are NSF-certified food equipment with a patented liquid- and debris-shedding body, and the FPF LED is rated IP69K, which is the rating that covers high-pressure cleaning specifically. A vaportight rated only IP65 is not a washdown fixture, and a lot of schedules confuse the two.
Is the RVT LED suitable for a parking garage?
Yes, and it is usually what I quote for one. It is rated IP65 and IK10 for impact, runs 2,240 to 6,720 lumens, and is color tunable across 3500K, 4000K and 5000K on a single part number, so one SKU covers the garage, the loading dock and the back-of-house. It carries a UL 1598 wet location listing and a 5-year warranty. What it is not is a washdown fixture or a classified-area fixture.
What do I specify on a dock or a waterfront walkway?
The BVP LED. Marine brass body and guard, borosilicate glass globe, silicone gasket and stainless hardware, listed to UL 1598A marine outside type and ABS type approved, NEMA 3, 4 and 4X. It is 1,769 lumens, so it is an area and egress fixture rather than a floodlight, and it carries a 7-year warranty. The AVP LED is the same architecture without the brass where the exposure is less severe.
Are RIG-A-LITE fixtures Buy American compliant?
The published sheets for the BVP LED and the FPF LED both state Buy American Act compliance. BAA and BABA are not the same standard and the requirement varies by funding source, so if the job is federally funded send me the specification language and I will get written confirmation from the factory for the exact configuration rather than reading it off a catalog page.
Who owns RIG-A-LITE and where is it made?
RIG-A-LITE was founded in 1938 to light drilling rigs and is headquartered at 8500 Hansen Road in Houston, Texas. It is part of Avail Infrastructure Solutions. For a specific fixture’s country of origin, ask me and I will confirm it against the current sheet rather than guess.
What warranty does RIG-A-LITE give?
It varies by family. The BVP LED and FPF LED sheets both state 7 years. The RVT LED and EHRS LED sheets both state 5 years. Warranty terms change between sheet revisions, so I confirm the term against the current sheet at quote rather than quoting a blanket figure for the line.
Can you get me RIG-A-LITE pricing outside South Florida?
No. SESCO holds this line for Broward, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Monroe counties and I am the rep here. For a job in another territory I will point you to the agency that holds it there — that is faster for you than going through me.
What do you need from me to price a RIG-A-LITE package?
The fixture schedule and the reflected ceiling or site plan, and for anything classified, the area classification drawing. Without the classification I cannot tell a Division 1 room from a Division 2 room, and the price difference between them is large. Mounting height, ambient temperature and whether the space gets hosed down are the other three things that change the answer.
Next step
Send me the schedule and the classification drawing
I price this line by the job. Send the fixture schedule, the plan, and for anything classified the area classification drawing, and I will come back with pricing, lead times and any substitution risk I can see on the schedule before it becomes a submittal problem.
Send me the projectCall 786-395-1222RIG-A-LITE on the line card