An issue that’s taking more and more of the spotlight in churches’ quests for video systems is that of liability — a problem that could take a church from bargain to bankrupt at the drop of a hat.
Or the drop of a video system, said Michael Thompson, president of Thompson Sound Inc. in Trinity. “Even if a seven-pound projector falls 15 feet and hits someone on the head, it’s going to hurt,” Thompson said. “I’m seeing more and more people, though, who try to save money by hanging heavy equipment themselves with hardware they bought themselves.”
Hardware, he said, that often isn’t made to handle hanging even small objects from overhead.
Thompson said one Alabama church he worked in recently had a 300-pound television hanging from the ceiling by two such bolts fixed into a two-by-four. Another church had heavy equipment hung from the ceiling with screws bent to nearly breaking under the weight.
“It could’ve hung there for another 20 years, or it could’ve fallen Sunday,” Thompson said. Either way, he said, complaints about the cost of having equipment installed properly don’t hold up in the face of accident liability. “That heavy equipment could have killed an adult if it fell,” Thompson said.
The most important move a church can make in its equipment installation is to have a professional trained in rigging to suspend the light and video systems securely.
The rule of thumb he said he goes by is to allow at least a five-to-one ratio when hanging heavy equipment overhead. “When something weighs 100 pounds, attachments must be capable of holding up 500 pounds, minimum,” he explained.
“Three-to-one will work, but it’s so cheap to go to the next level with strengthening hanging gear, and the only way the equipment will fall with it is if the building collapses around it.”
Thompson said it allows him — and the churches he installs systems for — to sleep better at night.
“Having a professional install it will make sure the customer is not only safe from harm but also safe from being sued,” Thompson said. “Just because someone’s brother has a video projection system at home doesn’t mean saving installation cost will protect you from liability.”
In the rare instance that professionally hung equipment does fall, liability can then be traced to a manufacturing problem or installation error rather than the church.
Being sued could put a church out of business faster than anything, Thompson said. “And I see stuff all the time that could fall at any moment.”
Mike Evans, vice president and chief audio engineer of Alpha Sound in Mobile, said every worker in his company who hangs lighting and other heavy equipment overhead in churches first learns the ropes of rigging.
“There’s a reason I send these guys to rigging school,” Evans said. “There are things we have to be careful how we do.”
In addition to using the five-to-one ratio with the equipment’s weight, Evans said they always add an extra “point” — or safety feature — to ensure the lighting won’t fall.
“We wrap our equipment usually with an extra safety cable and back ourselves up with safety lines,” Evans said.
One mistake churches make is hanging equipment from the rock or ceiling grid rather than the building’s structure, Evans said.
“You have to go to the actual structure of the building to hang it up,” he noted.
Being uneducated and trying to install equipment is a big danger, Evans said. “We’ve seen some questionable things.
“It scares me. When we’re hanging equipment 30 or 40 feet in the air, we’ve got to make sure that — Lord willing — they stay there.”
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