The Newsmagazine of Long Beach Island and Southern Ocean County

By Maria Scandale | on September 15, 2022

NEW VIEW: New glass, refurbished brick and a retooled lantern room ready for a new beacon are features of a spring and summer’s worth of work. (Photo by Diane Gormley)

The “sight of the light” changed dramatically again on Monday, Sept. 12, as the scaffolding that made it look like an open-air skyscraper all summer started coming down. Barnegat Lighthouse is about a month away from being reopened to the public after a seven-month, $1.3 million refurbishment.

“The project is on schedule for completion in October,” announced the N.J. Department of Environmental Protection’s Division of Parks and Forestry, declining to give an exact date. “The process of removing the scaffolding will take approximately three weeks. The State Park Service looks forward to relighting the lighthouse beacon and welcoming visitors into the restored lighthouse soon.”

The state directed a complete exterior restoration of the lighthouse, masonry re-coating and repairs to the brick facade, roof repairs and the installation of new windows. “Additional interior repairs to the lighthouse include interior lantern steel platform repairs and the installation of a new beacon light.”

State funding for the restoration project comes from the corporate business tax. Stepping in to supplement, as they have in past very visible ways, is the Friends of Barnegat Lighthouse State Park. The nonprofit organization is paying for a new lantern to brightly top off the project, a new fence surrounding the tower, and a new security system, among other details.

Friends’ new president, Chris Lane, gave The SandPaper an overview of repairs last week, as he was kept informed by project leaders. The fascinating details answer questions that viewers of the tourist attraction, and Island neighbors, were asking as summer turns to fall. A formal reopening by the state will follow.

“From the top,” he began, “the roof has been refurbished. There was so much water going through that we actually had a tarp over our beacon last winter.

“We’re so happy the state did this. It’s a $1.3 million project and it’s something that the Friends could never afford. Everything we do is to enhance; everything the state does is to maintain and continue.” He listed among Friends group contributions the pavilion, the bronze statue, the security system, running the interpretive center. And, spectacularly, the Friends through donations paid for the beacon that in 2009 re-lit the lighthouse in an event that drew thousands of onlookers on a freezing New Year’s Day night.

The retired middle school principal from Oaklyn, who resides in Spray Beach, continued his verbal “from the top down” tour of renovations.

“There is all new glass in what’s called the lamp room, which is where the actual light exists. Inside of that, the Friends group has purchased a $29,000 new beacon. It has to be positioned up there right in the middle of the three sets of glass that are there.”

To answer the questions of why a new beacon was needed, the short answer is, lightning.

“The lighthouse had basically a faulty ground connection to its lightning rod,” Lane explained. He can think of at least three or four substantial hits in the last three years. Besides destroying the cameras that linked to screens in the interpretive center to give a view to people who could not climb 217 steps, lightning had zapped other key systems.

“It took out the beacon, it took out our security system,” Lane said. “But we had a power supply on our beacon, so we didn’t have to get a brand-new beacon (at that time). We did buy a new power supply, but the entire beacon has kind of been limping along. It’s 13 years old and they say the life of it is 10 to 15 years.”

The reasons that the new electric-powered beacon must be installed precisely are technical, navigational and historical.

“It has to turn at the correct rate. Every lighthouse has a turning rotation. It might be a minute, it might be 26 seconds, it might be a blink and a dash so that when you were out in the ocean back in the 1800s, you knew, ‘Oh, that’s Barnegat Light.’”

These considerations came up last time the Friends bought a beacon, he explained. “So, when we bought (the most recent beacon) in ’09, the company said, ‘What are your specs; what is the rotation?’ We said, ‘We just want a new light.’ They said, ‘Oh, no, we want it to be accurate.’ So, everything from what the focal plane is to the exact amount of time it takes to turn around is part of this new piece.

“The first one was $15,000. This new one is $29,000. It’s got one LED bulb in it, which they say is going to last forever.”

At this writing on Sept. 13, the new beacon was expected to arrive in Barnegat Light any day. From its origin in the country of Estonia, it had sat at a rest stop in East Windsor, N.J., for several days going through U.S. Customs procedures.

The light from the beacon will extend 21.5 miles, exactly the distance that the light from the Fresnel lens cast in 1859, using whale oil as its fuel.

The repainting of the lighthouse tower itself was a procedure specific to preserving old brick.

“All of the old paint has been removed,” Lane said, as a flock of pelicans soared past the top on the breezy Friday. “And where they have iron on the outside where the visitors can go out and walk around, all of that was stripped and all fresh paint applied on that. To take the paint off, they used this process that painters are familiar with – they put this giant piece of what looks like paper on the wall and they peel it off.

New Friends of Barnegat Lighthouse State Park President Chris Lane took a look last week before the scaffolding started to be removed. (Photo by Jack Reynolds)

“They peel the paint off because you cannot power wash, nor can you sandblast, 162-year-old brick. It would dissolve.”

Specialists know that the brick needs to “breathe.” As they told Lane, “It actually has to let some moisture in, but also mainly to let moisture out.” The lighthouse structure is a tube inside of a cone. “All of the ventilation is between those two brick pieces.”

Vents could be adjusted to regulate air flow through the functional gap between the cone-shaped and the tube-shaped towers. This served a particular purpose in the old days. “In order to make the whale oil glow brighter you would open these little openings.”

And here’s another piece of trivia: The exact height of the lighthouse was confirmed during the renovation. Conflicting data had been on file for many years.

“Now we know it’s 168 feet,” Lane declared.

The question arose in a conversation between Lane and Reilly Sharp, author and curator with the Barnegat Light Historical Society and Museum.

“He wanted to know the height of the lighthouse. Lighthouses are usually defined by their focal length – how high the light will shine …” said Lane. “With the Fresnel lens, it was (listed at) 178 feet, and that didn’t make sense because George Meade, when he built it, said 150-foot for the tower. All our numbers say 165, 163. So when we wanted to know from the ground to the top of the stack, Jeff Rapp, who is the construction manager … went up and measured the entire thing.”

Continuing to outline the recent repairs that started in March 2020, Lane detailed, “All of the windows have been replaced; they were leaking like mad. Everything was pointed and painted.”

Friends of Barnegat Lighthouse State have been able to make additions to the visitor experience thanks to private donations, memberships and proceeds from sales of water, T-shirts, hats and souvenirs at the Interpretive Center. The day of this interview, artist John Fiorella stopped in. An artist, he creates and donates attractive wood boxes and ornaments to benefit Friends fundraising efforts.

“Donations inside the center are big,” Lane added, of contributions from visitors that add up. “People come in and say, ‘Do we have to pay?’ We say, ‘No, but you’re welcome to donate.’”

There are no night climbs scheduled at the lighthouse for this fall-winter season due to ongoing COVID concerns at the time of scheduling. The 2022 Lighthouse Challenge will bring hundreds more visitors to that annual attraction, but the renovation project made it impossible to so far tell visitors whether the steps would be open for climbing. Meanwhile, the lighthouse encircled with draped scaffolding was a rare sight this summer season.

As new Friends president, Lane invites people to join the group and volunteer their time. There are a variety of ways to get involved in blocks of time that ask for just three hours per week in, for example, the interpretive center or helping to educate visitors who make Barnegat Lighthouse a stop on the statewide Lighthouse Challenge.

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