JANUARY 9, 2006Bennett's Beacon
For nearly 10 years, Milwaukee’s Dave Bennett
and family have made their home at Kevich Light,
a Wisconsin lighthouse on the shores of Lake Michiganby Richard Hellmann | BC WATER NEWS
This lighthouse was built by the Kevich family in 1981 and is certified by the U.S. Coast Guard. When the Bennett family has to change a light bulb, they can't just run down to the local hardware store. And, please, no "How many does it take…?" jokes.
Other than that, owning a lighthouse is pretty cool. And after almost 10 years, Dave Bennett has no regrets.
Bennett, infrastructure practice leader for BC since 2001, and wife Mary had been looking to purchase property on the shores of Lake Michigan for some time, and Kevich Light caught their eye almost immediately. "We've always been interested in lighthouses, and after a few years of watching the housing market, we kept following this particular property. So we finally made a deal and bought it."
The lighthouse is in the town of Grafton, Wis., just north of Milwaukee, and marks the site of the 19th century town of Port Ulao, a once-thriving port where lake steamers stopped to load wood for fuel.
This 40-foot-tall, white stucco-clad tower with its attached residence sits atop a high bluff overlooking Lake Michigan. Built in 1981, Kevich Light is the youngest lighthouse in Wisconsin and the second highest light on the lake. It was certified as a Class II Private Aid to Navigation by the U.S. Coast Guard in 1990, and is still operational.
But the best thing about living next to a lighthouse is watching the lake. "We love watching the water," Bennett says, "seeing how it changes throughout the day, with the sunlight coming off the water. We also love watching the boats, like the Great Lakes freighters that pass by, along with pleasure boats and sailboats."
His least-favorite part is one shared by most homeowners: upkeep. "Doing maintenance when it's zero degrees isn’t something I look forward to," Bennett says. And he has to keep the lights on, too.
The light source consists of 1,000- and 400-watt metal halide bulbs. The top lamp is 400 watts and mounted in a base with a wide-beam reflector. This serves to spread the light out for a wide view from the lake. The bottom lamp is 1,000 watts and mounted in a base with a narrow-beam reflector. This provides a narrower beam of light that projects a longer distance.
The 400-watt lamp (top) has a life of about 20,000 hours (4½ years) while the 1,000-watt lamp has a life of about 12,000 hours (2½ years).
Care must be taken to not touch the lamps with bare hands when installing them because oil from the skin can get on the lamps and create a "hot spot" that may break the glass when it heats up during operation. Heat produced by the lamps keeps the lantern room about 10 degrees warmer than the ambient outside temperature.
The lamps are turned on and off automatically by photoelectric cells. A shield rotates around the lights once every 8 seconds, providing 4 seconds of light and 4 seconds of darkness, known as a 4-second isophase characteristic, so that navigators can distinguish it from other aids to navigation in the area.
The Bennetts share the lighthouse with their three children — Peter, Eileen and Mark — and their dog Cassie. Kevich Light is one of only a few privately owned, operating residence lighthouses in the United States.
Named after Brana Kevich, an ordained Serbian Orthodox priest, Bennett says he has no plans to change it to Bennett Light. "We decided when we bought it to keep the name," he says.
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