On Sat, 3 Jan 2004 20:10:35 -0600, "Kudzu"
wrote:

I am getting close to wiring my new shop. It roughly 30 x 40 with 9 foot
ceilings. It a daylight basement but I have a minimum of windows. The shop
ended up more below grade that I expected. My plan once we get it dried in
to paint the walls white to lighten it up. Then install T8 fluorescent
lighting. I am going to look at 8' and 4' fixtures and compare prices to see
which is the better deal.

But my question is spacing and how many fixtures? I read somewhere to use
single bulb fixtures spaced at 4 feet. But so far that is all I have found.
Search the web a good bit tonight and found nothing. Anyone know of a good
reference on this?


I don't know about a reference, but I did 2 shop rooms, one that
turned out very well and one that isn't so great.

The room that turned out well is a
daylight basement room about 19' x 38', with a ceiling slightly lower
than yours (about 8' 9"), white walls, and the same lack of windows
(glass panes in garage doors at one end, plus 2 small
windows high in the side wall at the end away from the doors).

I used the dual bulb 8' high output fixtures that Lowes/HD carry, with
3 continuous rows running the long direction. The
rows are spaced about 6 feet apart (3' from the sides) and suspended
4" off the ceiling (you have to do this with these fixtures, because
the ballasts get hot). The rows have 3 8' fixtures each; I don't
light the end of the room where the garage doors are because the door
doesn't allow clearance and because we park cars there most of the
time anyway. I switch them in 3 banks running perpendicular to the
long rows, and the shop is organized such that I typically turn on
only 1 or 2 banks at a time unless I'm just wandering back and forth
over the length of the room.

These bulbs are 110 watts each, and it's nice and bright in there
but I really don't think it is too much. For your shop, this
scheme would translate to about 5 rows, with maybe 4
or 5 fixtures per row, depending on what you do at the ends of the
room.

The room that turned out poorly is another
room in the same basement where I used
4' T8's instead of the 8' HO fixtures, with roughly 4' between rows.
The T8's are not not nearly bright enough for my taste. There are
also 4' T12 versions of the HO fixtures available, but Lowes and HD
don't carry them anymore. I plan to replace the 4' T8's with the 4'
T12 HO's, one of these days. To be fair, this room is not painted
white, and I think that makes a huge difference.




Tim Carver