Just yesterday we got stuff cleaned out of the shop and my wires run on the ceiling so we can think about ceiling lights. So far we've been running lights we wired along the walls, due to the fact we had the shop filled with machines before we ever got it finished up properly. Now we're trying to decide on lights to put in, my ceiling is 20 feet tall in the bulk of the shop and 12 feet tall over the loft area. We've looked at high bay fluorescent lights four and six bulb fixtures, and now there is led high bay lights as well available but they are expensive and I'd never seen them before let alone know of anyone who uses then to ask about them. A buddy of mine is an electrician and he told me to avoid metal halide lights completely, due the fact they are being phased out and expensive to get repaired. What does everyone else use and how do you like them? I bought some led shop work lights that are the square box design and boy I was shocked, they work great give off tremendous light and are pretty tough and take the banging around we give them, are sealed in design and we can wipe the grease and oil off the glass and are far better than any fluorescent light I'd ever had before, those 500 watt units we used to use, I threw them all away, got so tired of replacing the bulbs all the time. We are still thinking about mounting some of the square led lights on the walls just until we figure out what it is we're going to do with the ceiling lights. Any input is appreciated?
Randy I put T-5 high bay lights in my shop and plenty of them, granted the ceiling is only 14' high. We hardly ever even need a droplite now. They are excellent and if a bulb burns out the remaining bulbs keep putting out lite.
Jbgash, I agree with you we just upgraded to T5's about 6 months ago and what a difference it made. We are the same, don't have to hardly ever have to use drop light. T5 fixtures are the way to go. When we bought all of our lamps I was kind of nervous because I didn't know how much of a difference it was going to make but couldn't have been more pleased after getting them installed. We had 12 of the 4 bulb t8 lamps and upgraded to 12 of the 8 bulb t5 and it was worth every cent.
+2 on the T-5 lights. We did our lights replaced a couple years back and got monies back from the goverment. They work great in the cold weather, fire right up when turned on and not that expensive. I did some homework on lighting several years ago and what I found was to try and get about 55 candle power. I purchased a light meter from Grainger and walked around the shop with it to ensure that we had no dark spots. We do a lot of fabricating/welding and too much light will cause light splatter for the welders. Also too much light will causing excessive shadows in work area's, so there is a thing of too much lighting. We also hung four T-5 in between the overhead door openings (the light standing on end) so that when we have a coupled semi in the shop, there is good lighting in between the coupled semi's. Also, google and you will see that the productivy actually increases with the proper lighting.
i really like the high bays. I have them in my shop. I will say this I was in a shop a few weeks ago that had installed the LEDs they got a rebate from the electric co, got a tax rebate, say they reduced the electric bill, & with all that paid for the lights & installation in the first 3 months made me think bout changing mine!!
And lots of em Randy..... here's my layout http://i864.photobucket.com/albums/ab208/parkrapids/0622110709a.jpg
Heck gramps...I thought you still used coal oil lamps.
Grandpa, what type of light's are those, they look round like metal halide lights or is that just the illusion of the bright lights making them look like that? All the T5 lights you guys use, are they all the four foot bulbs, and how many watt's are they, there are several different watts available to buy. What makes a high bay light different than a low bay light, they both take the same bulbs, so what's the difference? Briscoetab, if I read your post right, you literally put twice as many bulbs in your shop as before, is that the right? Did your monthly bill for electricity stay the same, go up or get lower? I've heard mixed results with the electrical usage from T5's, some claim they take more than the T8's to run, just opposite of what the data says, and am wondering how you turned out.
We are using the 4' t-5's. They are 240vac with a 54 wattage. Compare that to some of the metal halide of 400 watts. Big differeance. The electrical company said I'll get 10,000 + hours on my bulbs with the T-5's. The high bay lighting is for 25+ ceiling height and the low bay is <15 ceiling height. They do this to get the proper lighting. Too much light will causing shadows, glaring and waste energy. As for the T-5's versus the T-8's (the T-12's are phased out now). It all depends who you talk to on going with the T-5 versus the T-8's. The T-5's were smaller bulbs (bulbs cost a little more, but we like the 10,000+ burn time on them) and are easier to transport and dispose of (still need to dipose of these properly, cant just throw the bulbs in the trash).
I have eight 175 W Metal Halide fixtures in my 30X40 shop (14' lid), I also have 24 two tube T8s for instantaneous light. I like the Metal Halides best of all. Any combination will do, one other thing to do, and grandpa shows this in his photo. everything inside the shop is white; lots of reflection. The most important thing to do, is every six months wipe down the lenses or tubes of all you lights. To see the difference, do half one afternoon and come back the nest day and turn the lights on. You will be amazed at the extra lumens from the now cleaned fixtures. I have to admit that all my lights and electrical in the shop were free, all were left over from a job I did prior to building the shop. Being an electrician by trade has it’s perks… Being retired on a decent pension is even better…:my2c
my dad has a 50x70ft shop with 18 ft sidewalls and he has the 4 ft lites with the little bulbs whatever them are called! He has 8 fixtures and it lights it up real well!
I've been doing a lot of reading on the internet and also asking questions locally, the T5 bulbs I'm told are higher wattage per bulb vs the T8's and from I can read and am told its six of one half dozen of the other, if you go watt for watt you end up with more fixtures and more bulbs of the T8's vs the T5's and the cost is still less per watt of light, around here they are telling me to stick with T8's and go with how ever many I want or like for light in my shop. Now for the high bay vs the low bay debate, my ceiling height falls in between the specs for both, half are telling me low bay the other half high bay and everyone is telling me to clean them twice a year no matter what. I'm not sure about anyone else, but I'm also thinking that might not get done very religiously as the years progress I can guess it'll be done less if at all. A friend of mine told me this, buy whatever is cheaper to install and put a lot more of them in, forget the shielding of the high bay lights, they'll get dirty anyhow and cut down on the amount of light they throw off over time and with the energy savings of either T5 or T8's your price to light the shop is still cheap in the end........ can't say I can argue with him on that idea. He was also the one who told me he cleans his lights every time he changes bulbs, he's very strict on that policy, his shop has been up for six years and he hasn't changed a single bulb yet, some are dead but like he says, the rest still work and it'll wait till he has time or an electrician comes out for something and his shop is empty,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, to which he added when do those two things happen at the same time. This weekend we're putting some lights on the walls, we did decide to put strip lights about 8 feet up on the walls, along the length of the shop, a local business had 6 lights 8 feet long with four bulbs in them left over from when they put new fixtures up in their business and they wanted the extras gone, so they cut me a deal to get rid of them, they're new, and they'll guarantee them to work so we'll see what a difference that makes. I believe they are T8's but for the price of all of them I really didn't look that close either, next to free I wasn't picky for new lights never used still in the box. I know a white shop will help out quite a bit for inside lighting, but my tin liner inside was used steel we took off three older buildings we tore down and just flipped the steel upside down, so it looks new and its galvanized, as they say, when its free we don't get picky on the color, I was just glad it all matched..........pretty well. I can see right now this is going to be another work in progress thing, we'll put some up this weekend and then some more when we have time and help available, whenever that will be, so keep the idea's and input coming. I've been known to have quite a few different things as deals come along, not everything always matches, so we just might have T5's and T8's both in the shop before we're done. So in reality how often does everyone else clean their shop lights?
If possible, paint as much of your walls, and ceiling, and floors white. That alone really helps whatever light you choose work better. Even just a white primer is fine on the walls and ceiling anyways.
Don't know if is the right thing to do or not, but we didn't go with strip lighting at all, we had the boxes and wires run and the guy with the cheap t8's talked me into not putting them up, so we went with compact fluorescent lights instead, the cheapest of any option I could find, for the most light output I could get even on a per fixture basis. I'm not sure of the lumen output, but we compared them side by side and then consulted with my electrician friend and he told me do it, so we did. The largest complaint I heard on the strip lights were the discussion of the ballasts and bulbs debate, which needs to be replaced. The store that was going to sell me the strips for next to nothing were left over fixtures when he put his up, we chatted some and he hates them with a passion, they are cheap to run but the cost to keep them going was what he hated, he has high ceilings and in order to fix the lights, he has to do it after hours and run scaffolding, a scissors lift won't allow him to reach most of his lights with the shelving in place, so he has to use scaffolding which is time consuming and a hassle, then he keeps ballasts and bulbs on hand and has to try to figure out which is bad, he added up all the hours he's spent on doing that and wants to go cfl's and put them where he can use a scissors lift on all of them, if the light goes out, its a simple fix, just toss out the bulb, ballast and all and that he could do when the store's open, so he cut me a deal and I'm doing his demo for him, he's been to my shop and loves the light output and how I arranged the them and says he's going to do a retrofit to his business next year and try that too, everyone he's talked to told him he's nuts, but after running the numbers he thinks it'll pay him in the end to do it, and keep his help happy to boot. We ran two levels of lights on the shop walls, cfl's and one row down the middle on the ceiling, put 100's on the walls and 200's on the ceiling and love it so far, its really bright and I can see what I need to see or far better than anything we've had before. Went daylight bulbs on everything and for less than 300 bucks, bulbs and sockets, we did the lights for the shop, not counting the conduit or wire, that was already up anyhow. I got the price quote of nearly 2 grand for t5's fixtures and bulbs and about that for t8's, I'm sure it would have been brighter in the shop, but this is plenty good for me now, we can always add more if I want to later on. Time will tell if I did the right thing or not, I was hoping led's would come down in price the next few years and if so, we might go that route with more or newer lights, my electrician buddy told me, he'd never actually seen it done like that before or given it a thought, but was really impressed with how it lit the shop up and as he said, should work fine and save headaches down the road with ballasts and bulbs and he was also thinking that led's would come down in price and be the way to go, he also said most people hate the strip lighting after they've had it for a while and things start to go wrong and wear out, but its the best things offered till he listened to my idea, as he said, can't be any worse than anything else on the market. I asked a lot of questions about ballasts burning out and catching on fire and he said the early cfl's did but not the last few years, he also said that the ballasts in the strip lights do the same thing when they burn out, he's had issues with those too, so it was six of one half dozen of another. Just wanted to update you on what we ended up doing, we didn't paint the walls or ceiling either, we were doing the office this weekend painting the ceiling on that and my family told me if I wanted the shop painted I could do it myself................guess that's not going to happen anytime soon..........if ever, I think I can put a few more lights up to compensate the galvanized tin vs the white metal reflection long before we'll ever get the whole shop painted.