Sounds like good advice and the walls have (sometimes) wet soil on the other
side of them anyway.

You can get some moisture migration that will let the walls effervese
(sp?), you get some white powder on the surface of the wall. Various
carbonates from the soil and concrete, not harful, just messes up the
paint.

Thanks for the above. It looks like at least some of the primers are white
but can be lightly tinted. Should the primer be tinted to match the over
coat? It sounds like the overcoat needn't be formulated for concrete, if a
primer/sealer is used. Is that right?

If you use the CONCRETE grade sealer, it wil be white. As long as your
top coat is light colored, I would not bother trying to tint it.


The shop is about 400 sq. ft. but it's broken up into 3 separate areas and
about 100 sq. ft. are taken up with the furnace, water heater, a few
structural elements. I've got (3) dual 40 watt fixtures now but they are the
cheap ones so I'll look into upgrading those. Looks like the locations for

Depends on your age. At 20 you can use a trouble light and be happy.
Yours is fine for 40. By 60 you will want about double what you have.
Look at getting the 4 bulb ones or the 32 watt T8 HO bulbs. But all need
the full reflector that should be an inch or so LOWER than the bulb.

a couple of the fixtures might have enough room for quad fixtures and there
is room to add a couple more. Task lighting sprinkled throughout - a mix of
articulated incandescent, halogen, and fluoresent round fixtures. The
latter kinda suck but do add a bit of light and were used because there
wasn't room for much else. Do the type of bulbs make any difference? Some
seem to like a warm bulb for a basement shop.

Color is pretty much up to you, I use the cool white for lower original
cost. having a mix of bulbs is a good thing.

But INTENSITY as measured in LUMENS in the big thing. More lumens are
better. Example: cheap 40 watt shop grade floresent bulb is 2500 lumens.
top of the line T8 HO bulbs run 3100 lumens on 32 watts. Compare that to
a standard 60 watt soft white bulb at 850-870 lumens. I have 8 2x40
fixtures (640 watts) in 380 square feet but I have various machines
lining all the walls, they all need lots of light to run. One of those
is a task light under the work bench cabinets, another is over the metal
lathe, another is over the wood lathe, etc.

The center item in my smallish shop is a 10" table saw with large wings.
I lower the blade, use it for the assembly bench. 2x40 floresent
fixture directly above, access on 3 sides. Light will be upgraded to the
4x40 fixture siting in the corner when I get around to it.