Was poking around reading threads - and there was one regarding their shop being built. It seems that 1/2 of the first several pages were people talking about lighting, and thought it'd be interesting to post up people's lighting/suggestions and what has worked for them.
My last house had a small 2 car garage (just over 400 sq/ft) and short ceilings (standard garage door with the rafters less than a couple feet above the garage door). I rewired that to have one side primarily for working on vehicles, with 4' fluorescent tubes (one side had 2 four footers, the other had 4, I believe). Although I learned long ago that the plug in style housing have bad/cheap ballasts, the inexpensive hard wired type aren't much better. I always hated the lighting in that garage.
When I moved to this house I was given a new dilemma. As purchased the 2 car garage had 2 light fixtures for standard light bulbs, of which only 1 worked. A bigger dilemma for me was that my 16' extension ladder didn't reach the rafters. The garage is in the upper 500's for sq/ft (but does have a staircase in it).
(As a side note, I also have about 400 sq/ft of mostly finished space under the house for storage, that's a about 5'10" of "ceiling" height in there.... we don't need to talk about why a PO might have done something like that under the house... although my "shop" is still small for a "shop" it cleared up a whole lot of storage solution issues I had at the last house)
I went looking at hardware stores for at least 2 or 3 months trying to decide on a cost effective means of lighting that space with really high ceilings - and the cost of 4' and 8' tube housings (and tubes) seemed to have climbed a lot. I was looking in the realm of $200-400 depending on the route I went.
Until I remembered some bulbs I had for photography lying around.
I ended up adding 6 more standard 4" round light outlets, and standard bulb holders. Wired with 14/2 Romex cable. The total cost for this was around $35.
I then ordered these bulbs (2 sets of 4, I have a total of 8)
Amazon.com : Cowboystudio Full Spectrum Light Bulb- Four 45W Photography Photo CFL 5500K - Daylight balanced pure white light, (Pack Of 4) : Compact Fluorescent Bulbs : Camera & Photo
(They've gone up in price a little since purchased). Full lighting for the garage, and rewiring, ended up being less than $100 total.
Each bulb draws 45W so not nearly as efficient as LED's. Output is up there, though at 2,650 lumens each.
That puts the draw at 360W and the output at over 21,000 Lumens. Unfortunately I do have 1 that burned out upon initial use, so I'm actually at 315/18,550 lumens.
I have very little light that comes in when the garage door is closed. This solution has been far better than what I had at the last house/garage.
Edited to add photo, can't tell you how many projects are visible there...
What are others doing? Happy? Would you change it?
My last house had a small 2 car garage (just over 400 sq/ft) and short ceilings (standard garage door with the rafters less than a couple feet above the garage door). I rewired that to have one side primarily for working on vehicles, with 4' fluorescent tubes (one side had 2 four footers, the other had 4, I believe). Although I learned long ago that the plug in style housing have bad/cheap ballasts, the inexpensive hard wired type aren't much better. I always hated the lighting in that garage.
When I moved to this house I was given a new dilemma. As purchased the 2 car garage had 2 light fixtures for standard light bulbs, of which only 1 worked. A bigger dilemma for me was that my 16' extension ladder didn't reach the rafters. The garage is in the upper 500's for sq/ft (but does have a staircase in it).
(As a side note, I also have about 400 sq/ft of mostly finished space under the house for storage, that's a about 5'10" of "ceiling" height in there.... we don't need to talk about why a PO might have done something like that under the house... although my "shop" is still small for a "shop" it cleared up a whole lot of storage solution issues I had at the last house)
I went looking at hardware stores for at least 2 or 3 months trying to decide on a cost effective means of lighting that space with really high ceilings - and the cost of 4' and 8' tube housings (and tubes) seemed to have climbed a lot. I was looking in the realm of $200-400 depending on the route I went.
Until I remembered some bulbs I had for photography lying around.
I ended up adding 6 more standard 4" round light outlets, and standard bulb holders. Wired with 14/2 Romex cable. The total cost for this was around $35.
I then ordered these bulbs (2 sets of 4, I have a total of 8)
Amazon.com : Cowboystudio Full Spectrum Light Bulb- Four 45W Photography Photo CFL 5500K - Daylight balanced pure white light, (Pack Of 4) : Compact Fluorescent Bulbs : Camera & Photo
(They've gone up in price a little since purchased). Full lighting for the garage, and rewiring, ended up being less than $100 total.
Each bulb draws 45W so not nearly as efficient as LED's. Output is up there, though at 2,650 lumens each.
That puts the draw at 360W and the output at over 21,000 Lumens. Unfortunately I do have 1 that burned out upon initial use, so I'm actually at 315/18,550 lumens.
I have very little light that comes in when the garage door is closed. This solution has been far better than what I had at the last house/garage.
Edited to add photo, can't tell you how many projects are visible there...
What are others doing? Happy? Would you change it?
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