"James B. Millard" wrote in
news:tboac.141791$Cb.1500376@attbi_s51:

I'm having a small shop built and am getting close to having to decide
what I'm going to do for lighting. the shop is 14'x18' and will house
a workbench a small lathe and mill and whatever else I accumulate...

I was thinking about flourescent lighting but I don't really have any
idea how much or exactly what optimum placement is.

Anybody have any ideas?

Thanks!

Brad

In the garage we built, (28'x32'), we had used commercial 8'-2 bulb
fixtures we had on hand, we put a row centered every 3', parallel to the
short wall, 3 fixtures butted, (24', 2' space from each wall). These are
mounted (IMPORTANT POINT HERE) directly to the ceiling using 1" stand-
offs made from conduit, it is important for balast life and fire safety
to space flourescent fixtures from the ceiling. We also added a row of
hanging 4' flourescents over the workbench, which runs full-length along
one of the short walls. The ceilings and walls are white, with a light-
grey floor. These lights are switched using 4 switches:
1 switch for the bench light row.
1 switch for the ceiling row closest to the bench.
1 switch for every other row across the ceiling.
1 switch for the other rows.
The theory behind this is, you don't need the whole shop lit up if you
are only working at the bench. You don't need the whole shop lit up if
you are just retrieving something, or doing something that doesn't
require a lot of light. But when you DO need light, you have plenty.
Since we do some auto-body repair in this shop on occasion, we even have
brackets on each wall, where we hang extra fixtures horizontally about
18" off the floor, these plug in and are not hard-wired, makes it much
easier to see all the rock dings in those rocker panels, and the 10,000
door dings in a camaro door. (OT-, but WHY does every camaro accumulate
door dings at such a huge rate?)
We were very happy with the lighting arraingment. Place is sold now, so
some other guy is happy with it :/

In your case, with 4' fixtures this would be 3-4' fixtures, 1' from each
wall, x 6 rows = 18 fixtures. This would be 2 bulb fixtures. You can
space them out more if you use 4 bulb fixtures.



--
Anthony

You can't 'idiot proof' anything....every time you try, they just make
better idiots.

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