wrace wrote:

Ah yes, lighting, one of my favorite subjects. Lighting is easily my number
one biggest regret when building my shop. I have a 28 x 36 shop with twenty,
twin tube, 8' fluorescent, w/ mag ballast and t12 bulbs. I curse these
things every day I use the shop. They hum so loudly and at such a frequency
that it makes it almost impossible to work in there for more then about 5
hours at a time. Forget about listening to AM radio as well. In fact, you
can always tell when the lights are on in the shop just by pulling in the
driveway, because the radio in your car will be completely blown away.

Having said that, up until a couple days ago I was very happy with the
amount of light in the shop. It was VERY bright in there. I got a loaner t8,
8' fixture to try for a while and what a difference it made. Quite, starts
instantly, and much to my surprise, the quality of the light was
outstanding. This fixture had some sort of "natural light" bulb in it. I
never realized how harsh and yellow my old fluorescents were until I got
this t8 set up.

So, I'm replacing all the existing t12/mag ballasts with a t8 retrofit kit,
to the tune of $1100 for material. I should have used t8 in the first place.
Don't scrimp on lighting. Oh btw, they tell me the t8's use half as much
energy.

Did you call your power company to see if they
have some sort of freebee/discount energy saving
plan to help you out with the conversion?