"Brian Elfert" wrote in message
...
Lew Hodgett writes:

The 8' ceiling is the controlling factor in the above application.

Use 1 watt per square foot for 100 FC maintained.

What about the OSHA rules that are often quoted of 3 watts per sq foot for
flourescents?

My proposed shop is 24x24 so I would need over 1,500 watts based on that.
That seems like a lot. A space heater is usually 1,500 watts.

My thinking for my new shop is 4 rows of 8' T8 double bulb fixtures two
per row. That is 944 watts which seems like a lot! Is that too much? I
don't really want to burn a kilowatt an hour just for lighting.

My present basement shop only has about half as much light as I am
planning for my new shop if I go full bore as described.

Brian Elfert

Brian:

I've gotten completely lost following the lumens, watts, 5's, 8's, rows,
and... man, my head is starting to hurt. But... I just changed the lighting
in my garage/body shop/woodshop from incandescent to florescent. I
originally had 3 100W bulbs in each of the three bays. The garage is 3 bays
(36x26) but only two bays are real car bays. The third is where I keep all
of my tools since it always seems to be too cluttered to actually use any of
them in that bay.

I bought the basic 0 degree 4 foot, double tube fixtures from Lowes - $20
each. I used standard 40W, soft white tubes in the fixtures . I put 6
fixtures in the two car bays. They run in two rows, from the garage doors
to the back wall, just inside of where the door tracks run. That puts them
roughly 8 feet (or a bit more) apart. End to end, each fixture is 32" from
its neighbor. I had to start about 52" from the front wall of the garage
due to clearance of the door as it opens/closes. I didn't care exactly what
distance the last light ended up being from the back wall. My ceiling is 9'
2" high.

What I can tell you is that each bay is lit up like glory itself. It took a
little getting used to - the light is so different in color from the yellow
of incandescent. But in a short time it became quite natural seeming. The
best part - no shadows. I mean - no shadows. I don't care what you do, you
can't produce a shadow that obstructs your view. It was shocking to really
see everything that was cluttered on top of my table saw - and I'm not
kidding.

I priced 8 foot fixtures and bulbs but all I could find locally - without a
lot of shopping around, was HO fixtures and the bulbs will take you to the
poor house. Not worth it in my opinion.

I wondered about color correction since I paint a lot of cars, but to be
honest, I'm not going to sweat it anymore. The light and the color are so
much better than what I was used to that I'll just stick with what I have.

My neighbors have made laughing comments about the light coming from my
garage now. I mean - it's a lot of light. My eyes are going the wrong way
fast and I just can't see like I used to in low light conditions anymore.
Not a problem anymore.

So - I don't know what the lumens are, don't care. Don't care what the
watts are. Don't care about 5's, 8's or 12's. I got light now and it was
quite reasonable the way I did it (price wise).

Hope this sheds some light on the discussion.

--

-Mike-