After suffering too long with a single 60 watt bulb, I put up 3 double 4' fixtures last night - 32 watt T-8 bulbs - incredible difference - easy unskilled job worth doing -
Makes a huge difference huh? I know a guy who put them in his shop. The lighting seemed fine before hand. But afterward the need for a drop light was pretty much history.
Back in the winter of 13 I decided to do the same thing by getting rid of the single incandescent fixtures in the shop and replace with dual bulb flourescent fixtures. You are correct in it makes a world of difference in lighting in the shop... No more repair by braille..
You can every june bug and moth within 50 miles will find your house in the summer time! When your project is on hold you can get in some batting practice with a two liter soda bottle. It's great calisthenics!
Not much you can do a cheap as improving lighting. And it's probably going to make your work so much easier too! I'm in the permit process of beginning a new work shop, and it will have the most light I can fit into the space! I also plan on making my lighting array switchable by rows, so I can save some energy costs by only using light where I'm working. Contemplated going to LED instead of T5 or T8 fixtures also, but LED is very expensive still.
Funny isn't it?!
I just went from essentially the same thing "single 60w" to 3 8' 4 bulb fixtures. I still have 2 more to put up also.
Literally like night & day. Not having to have the halogen work light on @ all times to see anything is awesome.
Plus after the complete garage re-wire I now have my new heater keeping things toastie!! Another thing I was relying on the halogens for....warmth.
The woman is gonna miss me!!
The only downside to all the great light is I now see how much CRAP I have. ain:
Oh well! I've also seen things that I hadn't seen in years!! Worth it? Definitely! :thumbup:
Congratulations on your lighting!! I know how it feels.
Did the same thing to my garage last fall except put in 10 fixtures +T8's in my smallish 16'X20', I was blown away.
Until the temps dropped below -10C and half the ballasts went on the cheap fixtures.
Pulled them all out and put in 10 - 100W floodlights which was almost as good. Wish the cheap ballasts which say cold weather rated lived up the advertising, they don't.
Worked for about one month and then at -20C half wouldn't even start and even took out some bulbs too.
They work fine inside so they went into the basement reno.
I put 4 T-5HO fixtures in my shop. They do way better than the T-8s I had 6 T-8s and the 4 T-5HOs give way more light. They're so bright you can't look at them.
the new Led shop fixtures are expensive ! ! My son is an electrical contractor and for my christmas one year He installed new commercial cold rated 4 ft flourescent in the working end of the 120 X 40 ft shop , and after a dozen years all the 300 W bulbs are burned out in the storage end and I don't have a long enough ladder to get up 15 ft to replace them. I still keep aux lamps, goose neck or desk lights at the lathe , mill and saws etc.
I used to have about a dozen of those cheap plug in 4' florescent lights, and I still couldn't see anything.
So i replaced them with four of the cold weather 8' HO florescent
What a difference.
I still have two of those cheap 4' mounted on the wall, that I plug in when I need a little extra light.
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