ROBERT- (TMR)

found the answer to my question in the your studio thread.

gr8 going,

If you are careful to put these under a floor joist, or right at the edge of the room where there are likely to be headers, I find it hard to imagine them causing damage to the floor above them. Its not necessary to apply great pressure to hold it in place since the weight of the lights and modifiers is applied mostly down on the foot.

Good stuff, Mike. I'd love to stop by sometime and see the studio in person.

dmward wrote in post #12130736
If you are careful to put these under a floor joist, or right at the edge of the room where there are likely to be headers, I find it hard to imagine them causing damage to the floor above them. Its not necessary to apply great pressure to hold it in place since the weight of the lights and modifiers is applied mostly down on the foot.

Generally speaking, I agree. I'm not worried about the weight of the lights and modifiers, though, I'm worried about my 2 year old bumping into them and knocking them down. To prevent that, I feel inclined to apply a good deal of pressure, and I'm not comfortable pushing up too hard in one spot on a floor with ceramic tile. That's partly because I installed that ceramic tile myself, and I'm neither a professional photographer nor a professional floor installer.

You might want to enlarge the foot print a bit and let the load spread by putting a piece of 1/4" plywood between the base of the pole and the actual tile on the floor.

TMR Design wrote in post #12131408
You might want to enlarge the foot print a bit and let the load spread by putting a piece of 1/4" plywood between the base of the pole and the actual tile on the floor.

I should probably have been more clear. I'm shooting in the basement, which has a concrete floor, the tile is on the kitchen floor above. But yes, if using it on any other type of flooring that could be damaged, I'd highly recommmend something like this to help spread the load a bit.

The other thing I like about my idea of using EMT is that I can drill a hole in it where the light mounts and run the power cord down through the EMT, which should help clean things up a bit.