New Shop. Which lights?

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SGBARRACUDA

SGBARRACUDA

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I sold my toy hauler and decided to build a shop out of the carport I built for it.
I figured on using 8' florescent lights in it. What is everyone else using? Do you have a better recommendation? Thanks
 
I have just put another 2 twin fluro's up in my garage and has made a world of difference
 
I read (a long time ago) that if you use any rotating machinery in your shop, you should also have some incandescent lights. Fluorescents have a 60 Hz flicker - if your spinning equipment is running at some multiple of 60 Hz (e.g. 3000 rpm) it may appear to be not spinning (think strobe light).

I had the guy building my garage put in both fluorescents and cans, just to be safe.
 
I had fluorescents in my shop for years. I hated them. Always picky in damp and cool weather. I had the cold weather bulbs and ballasts too. They suck donkey balls. I have long life incandescents now. They come on immediately and I like them.
 
Fluorescent bulbs contain mercury and will be outlaw in a few years. I got that "Heads Up" from an engineer at work. I have a garage full of them fixtures and will be looking for the replacements , very soon. LED is the future, I believe, but not very economical for now.
 
LED is the way to go. not the cheapest but use a fraction of the energy of other bulbs and should outlast them..
 
I made inside corner crown out of plywood around the ceiling / wall edges & mounted my lights to it. This let the light reflect evenly off the lid & walls. It creates a very even, shadow free work space.
 

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Lowe's lights SUCK. They are very poor quality. All of mine failed. Cold weather makes them worse. Alaskan T/A is correct. A45deg angle is best. However, LED's are expensive but use next to nothing in juice. I am changing to strip LED's similar to x-mas lights. It is possible to douoble up or triple up on them if they don't give off enough light. Keep drop lights handy. It's hard to see undercarriage or under dash or under hood with wall lights. Good luck, Tom
 
I have 4 double 8' flourescent fixtures in my 2 car garage and they're great. Come on right away, no issues ever. Tons of light. If I ever can't get flourescent bulbs in the future, I'll replace them with LED, but for now, they're great and they were cheap. Mine don't have guards over the bulbs themselves, but they have the wraparound metal that sort of curves of them, as opposed to the bulbs being completely open, and they've saved me from breaking them with tall tools like the cherrypicker several times already!

EDIT: They are 8 double 4' fixtures, not 8' fixtures.
 
i have multimetal bulbs on my tractor garage. Plenty of light and good natural color
 
This is what I have in my messy garage. 8 fixtures in 2 rows of 4 each. 4' each fixture for 32' total of fixtures in 2 rows. Lights up the garage unbelievably well. I have some moveable fixtures that I can put on the sides on the rare occasion where I need more light from the sides. If I ever need to replace with LED, so be it, these were cheap, and I can't imagine not being able to get flourescent somehow to let these last quite some time.

At the same time as I did this, I upgraded to 220 volt for the compressor and other tools, and put more outlets on the far side of the garage along with extra air piping and outlets. It's a pretty convenient setup. Now I just need to build another 3-4 car garage in back so i can have more room to work!
 

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18x40 building and how high is the celing?
I have 2 4ft 4 bulb T5 flourescents in the work table area, which is 15x15 area of a 30x40x14 building. I have 2 skylight panels, and then 2 400W metal halides with diffusers for when I am in the shop at night.
I friend has a 50x50 and he put 10 of the 4ft 4bulb T5s thoughout, and it lights it well. T5s are super efficient, quick to light, and don't give you a headache after being out in the shop all day.


 
FredS said:
18x40 building and how high is the celing?
I have 2 4ft 4 bulb T5 flourescents in the work table area, which is 15x15 area of a 30x40x14 building. I have 2 skylight panels, and then 2 400W metal halides with diffusers for when I am in the shop at night.
I friend has a 50x50 and he put 10 of the 4ft 4bulb T5s thoughout, and it lights it well. T5s are super efficient, quick to light, and don't give you a headache after being out in the shop all day.


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To the center is 15' tall. about 12' at the walls. I have used those Halides in the past. Problem I've had with those is during lightning storms the power is for ever flickering off every 10 minutes or so. And it rains here in Fl. often. When the power goes off they take several minutes to cool off and relight.
 
i have the T5's at 10' and the light is very white. I got the fixtures at HomeDepot. The fixture was $89 a piece and the bulbs are about $9 a piece, but are supposed to last a long time.
Yeah, the drawback to halides or low pressure sodiums. Don't get any power outages here in the heat.
 
FredS said:
i have the T5's at 10' and the light is very white. I got the fixtures at HomeDepot. The fixture was $89 a piece and the bulbs are about $9 a piece, but are supposed to last a long time.
Yeah, the drawback to halides or low pressure sodiums. Don't get any power outages here in the heat.
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I live in the lightning capital of the world. In the summer it storms every day and we get momentary power outages all the time. I'll look into the T-5's. Thanks
 
I have what "72Dodge" has...5 rows of 4-4' T8 flourescents , each row on a separate switch, for a 24x36 garage....lots of light when I need it, and never one tube or ballast issue in 15 years the garage has been up.
 
I replaced all my T-8 flourescent bulbs with LED's,and what a big difference they made. They are way brighter and use less electric. I will eventually do the same with the basement lights.
 
I just looked those up... I didn't realize they made LED T8 replacements, so when the time comes, I can just snap some new bulbs into my existing fixtures. I'll stick with the flourescents for now, and hopefully the LEDs come down in price a LOT over the years before I need to do that. $105 for 2 bulbs would mean an $840 changeover for me. No Thanks! Still, that's very cool.
 
72Dodge said:
I just looked those up... I didn't realize they made LED T8 replacements, so when the time comes, I can just snap some new bulbs into my existing fixtures. I'll stick with the flourescents for now, and hopefully the LEDs come down in price a LOT over the years before I need to do that. $105 for 2 bulbs would mean an $840 changeover for me. No Thanks! Still, that's very cool.
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When I bought my T-8 LED's, I got a case of 20 for around $800.00 When going to LED's,you will have to re-wire the light fixture and do away with the ballast.
 
j-miller said:
When I bought my T-8 LED's, I got a case of 20 for around $800.00 When going to LED's,you will have to re-wire the light fixture and do away with the ballast.
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I'd need 16 to replace all mine, so sounds like they've already come down in price some (or I was just looking at cheaper ones). Thanks for the info. This is good to know. Sounds doable when the time comes then.
 
72Dodge said:
I'd need 16 to replace all mine, so sounds like they've already come down in price some (or I was just looking at cheaper ones). Thanks for the info. This is good to know. Sounds doable when the time comes then.
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I too had a hard time deciding to switch over to LED's because of the price,but just had to bite the bullit and do it. The other reason I switched over was I only have 120v in the garage and with the florescent lights on and a good bit of the time when the air compressor would start up,it would trip the circuit breaker for the garage. It doesn't trip the breaker now.
 
Ah, I see... I have 240 on the garage on a separate circuit from the lights, plus all my regular outlets on a different circuit as well because my wife got sick of the kitchen electric going out when she was trying to microwave her lunch!
 
I just upgraded to strip LEDs at my garage shop area and they are great! They were cheap too, as I bought plain strip LEDs from TMart.com and figured out the size of the power transformer myself (18W at 12V per 30" strip). I used an old laptop power supply to power the five strips I installed. The power supply takes about three seconds to start after hitting the switch, but I have some fluorescent lights on the same switch. These lights are super bright and only $9 each.

Here is a link to the TMart item page: http://www.tmart.com/18W-72-LED-1800LM-6000K-White-Light-U-Shape-Light-Bar-12V_p158504.html
 
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