Garage/shop lighting

[Lawman]

I have a 3 car garage that is lit with seven 42" flourescent double shop lights. They are crappy..They hardly work at all in winter. The bulbs burn out often. They were the cheap shop lights I got at Wal Mart or Home Depot. I want to replace them with one or two good lights. I want to be able to see a flea crawl across the far wall. I went to Home Depot and discovered there are halogen, metal halide, flourescent, mercury vapor, sodium and who knows what else available..I want bright clean light that requires little to no warm up..I want them reliable, dependable and preferably without an electronic eye that I would need to cover..I want these switch operated..I want to order them on line..The garage only has a ten foot ceiling so it needs to hang down as little as posssible.. Suggestions??

 

[Joe Frickin' Friday]

My two-car garage has a single light socket in the ceiling, but the garage door opener has two sockets built into it. These all had 60-watt incandescent bulbs in them when we moved in a few years ago, but I fitted all three with 150W-equilalent CFL's. They take a minute to warm up when it's cold out, but they light up the place pretty good, enough so that I haven't bothered to install any new lighting fixtures in the garage since then.

 

for good lighting in a 3-car, you probably want more than just a couple of sources. Also, point sources can give harsh shadows, unless you've got several. Fluorescent fixtures/lamps that start well in cold weather can be had.

 

For my basement shop, I bought recessed 4' dual-tube fluorescent fixures that tuck up between the rafters. These support themselves on drywall, so if your garage has no drywall on the ceiling you'd have to install some cross bracing between the rafters to support these fixtures.

 

I would suggest at least eight such fixtures for your 3-car garage.

[John Ranalletta]

From your big box home store, buy T-8 flourescent fixtures and tubes. They come in 4' and 8' strips. The tubes are 4' and the 8' fixtures hold four tubes. They're quick to warm in winter and throw plenty of light.

 

I wired mine to the existing overhead fixture and hung them in a "u" pattern to surround the m/c lift.

 

 

Here's a pix of the light yield. I believe this was taken during the day.

 

[russell_bynum]

From your big box home store, buy T-8 flourescent fixtures and tubes. They come in 4' and 8' strips. The tubes are 4' and the 8' fixtures hold four tubes. They're quick to warm in winter and throw plenty of light.

 

I wired mine to the existing overhead fixture and hung them in a "u" pattern to surround the m/c lift.

 

 

Here's a pix of the light yield. I believe this was taken during the day.

 

 

Yep.

 

I went with the ones with the diffuser just to soften and spread the light a bit. I ran six of the 4' (2 tubes per unit) lights across the garage. With the white walls the ceiling, and the light gray epoxy floor, everything reflects pretty well. I do still use task lighting for fiddly little things at the workbench and for working under the cars, but otherwise, I don't need extra light.

 

I wired all of mine to the single built-in fixture using conduit to dress it up a bit. It even looks halfway decent.

[CarrotNC]

+1 on the T8

 

Got the 4' fixtures in my garage, two per bay, 11' ceiling and they throw a lot of light -- Home Depot item.

 

My garage has a center drop beam so I used the hanging chains that came with the lights to ensure the light from one bay is still at workbench height when it reaches the other bay. They work great in cold weather (we had some 20 F days this year) and in past 3 years haven't had to replace any bulbs.

[Lawman]

Thanks guys..Just ordered two of these:

 

http://www.warehouse-lighting.com/item/107428/120-Volt-Specular-Reflectors-6-T8s-Light-6-Lamp-T8-Lighting-Fixture.aspx

 

Not sure why these use 32 watt watt bulbs and some us 40 watt bulbs but hopefully these will be sufficient when wired in additon to what I already have..