I had nineteen 8', twin tube, T12 mag ballast fluorescent fixtures in my
shop. These provided plenty of light but drove me out of the shop with the
constant buzzing (much worse in cold). It was so bad that I would have a
roaring headache only 3 hours into my shop time. I tried all kinds of Mickey
mouse fixes, only to get totally frustrated and replaced them all with
retrofit 8' long fixture, four 4' tubes, electronic ballast T8's.
The difference was incredible. Totally quite operation, and the quality of
light was significantly better with the T8's. The color spectrum was much
more like daylight than the harsh T12's.
This is truly one of those things that I should have done long ago, as it
makes shop life so much nicer. The whole retrofit deal cost me about $1200
in material and scissor lift rental (I did the install myself), but had I
known what difference quality lighting makes I would have gladly spent that
much the day T8/electronic ballasts came on the market.
As far as how many fixtures, in my opinion it would be hard to have too
many. I have 20 four tube fixtures in a 944sq ft shop. After years of
working in a garage with poor lighting I vowed to fix that problem in my
current shop. When I was looking at the retrofit I had the county power guy
come out and provide an evaluation to see if I might qualify for a partial
grant for the cost of the new lights. He brought his light meter with him
and took readings at various points in the shop. His comments, "you have a
ridiculous amount of lighting in this building", "this building is better
lit than our lighting demo office is at the county building".
As important as the lights themselves are, the positioning and other factors
influence light dispersion as well. Some things I've found helpful with
regards to placement and such.
- Having white walls helps tremendously as far as how bright the space is.
- Having a light painted floor helps as well.
- If you are going to be doing work on vehicles very much, consider placing
the overhead lights such that they are too the sides of the vehicles and not
on top of the vehicle.
- May want to consider placing some lighting on the wall, particularly if
you are going to be doing much body work.
- If you have some higher bay lighting, consider getting the fixtures
outfitted with reflector shields as this helps to direct the light downward
a bit.
-----Original Message-----
From: shop-talk-owner@Autox.Team.Net [mailto:shop-talk-owner@Autox.Team.Net]
On Behalf Of Lee Daniels
Sent: Monday, January 08, 2007 11:37 AM
To: shop-talk@Autox.Team.Net
Subject: Shop lighting ... (again)
I know this has been addressed in the past - but the available hardware
keeps
changing and I just want to make sense of it all:
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