Easy Roadside Banner Setup
Posted on 03. Sep, 2009 by Steve Swisher in Church Planter University, Marketing, Set Up
Street banner with one of our feather flags in the background.
We put our banners in the grassy area next to the road. The set up is cheap, quick, compact, simple, and looks nice. Here’s how to do it.
1. Order your signs with pole pockets on the left and right sides. While many banners come with grommets which are more common, they are a real pain to work with. Over time the banner will tear at the grommet since the banner doesn’t get stretched evenly. Pole pockets are sleeves that a pole can slide through that runs down either both the right and left sides or the top and bottom. This allows you to evenly stretch the banner making it look really nice. The place I get my banners from is www.Just4Banners.com. They don’t charge extra for pole pockets and only charge $2 per sqft for full color banners. Let me know if you find a better deal on banners. We ordered our banners 4′x4′. (Keeping the width to 4 or 5 feet makes hauling around the gear needed to put them up easier since it’s hard to put stuff longer than 4 or 6 feet long in a car or SUV.
2. Go to your local hardware store (Home Depot) and buy the following supplies:
- 2, 10ft x 1/2 inch diameter aluminum electrical conduit. It’s cheaper and stronger than PVC pipe and looks much better. It’s also really light weight. It’s up to you what size you get. The 3/4 inch stuff doesn’t bend as easy, but I’ve had good success with the 1/2 inch stuff. Currently I am using the 1/2 inch poles on my banner.
- While on the eletrical aisle, get a piece of grey plastic electrical conduit that the aluminum pole will fit into. If you buy a 1/2 inch pole, it will fit snugly into a 3/4 plastic conduit.
- You will also need something lightweight to use as a tension bar. The tension bar will need to easily attach to the top of the conduit poles. Since my banners are only 4 foot wide, I was able to use a dowrod. You could also use a lightweight piece of 1/4 round molding or something similar if you need something longer than 4 feet.
- A pack of zip ties.
- An auger drill bit that is the diameter of the grey plastic conduit (probably need a 1 inch bit) that is 18 inches long.
3. When you get home from the hardware store, drill a hole in the top of the conduit for your dow rod to fit into. Don’t drill the hole through both sides of the pole. This will give the dowrod something to butt up against. Just below the dow rod hole, put a small hole that goes all the way through the pole for the zip tie to go through.
4. Cut the poles down to the desired height. Keep in mind that the pole will be down in the ground one foot deep. You might also want the sign up off the ground a bit. Check with local restrictions about how high your sign can be. Most cities let your sign be up around ten feet. We have ours about a foot off the ground. You can cut the aluminum conduit with a jig saw or a special pipe cutter. Be sure to file off the edge you cut otherwise you’ll slice your finger on it at some point. (Been there, done that)
5. Cut two pieces of the grey plastic conduit 1 foot each.
6. Run the aluminum conduit poles into the banner pole pockets. Use a drill with a small bit to put a hole in top of banner’s pole pockets for the zip tie to go through. Then run the zip tie through the hole in the aluminum pole and through the hole in the top of the banner’s pole pocket. The zip tie will keep the banner at the top of the pole.
7. Stretch out the the banner and cut the tension rod (dow rod/trim molding) to fit between the left and right poles. You want enough tension so that it’s almost about to bow out but doesn’t. This will keep the banner stretched out and allow the tension to hold the banner up. The zip ties are really there just to hold the banner up until the tension rod is in place.
8. Take the banner and other equipment out to the site. Choose a spot that is at least 7-12 feet from the street. Most cities require that signs are at least this far off the road. Check your city ordinance and look to see where other signs around town are placed. If you are putting a sign near an entrance or an intersection, make sure you are not blocking the visibility of cars wanting to pull out. This can be both dangerous and land you in some serious trouble if there is an accident.
9. Using a cordless drill with the big auger bit in it, drill your first hole in the ground. Get it as straight up and down as possible. Then insert the 1 foot long gray plastic conduit in the drilled hole. That will stay in the ground from this point on. It makes putting the sign in each week quick and easy and isn’t obtrusive to the property.
10. Put one of the poles in that pipe sleeve that’s in the ground. Pull the banner out to where you want it. This will tell you where your other hole needs to be. You want it out far enough that the banner will be stretched, but if it’s too far it will be hard to put the banner in it. Once again, make sure your drill is perpendicular to the ground. Follow the same step as above with the grey pipe sleeve.
11. Now just put in your tension rod and your done. From this point on, putting up the banner is just a matter of slipping it into the sleeves and inserting the tension rod. When you take it down, the banner will role up and be easy to transport.
Here’s some pictures of the system.
Inserting the perminant pvc sleeve in the drilled hole
You can see the tension rod (before we painted it black) and the black zip tie here. We manually put in a grommet. It's not necessary, but is a good idea. You can buy a grommet kit from Home Depot.
Notice that the banner is stretched and has a nice clean look to it. You just can't get this kind of result with grommets and bungee cords or rope mounts.
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