A different Flourescent Light question

Keith Tanner wrote: Bill says he thinks we have T5s in the shop. I took a look from ground level, and they have a very good reflector behind them.

Those have become pretty common in warehouse applications to replace old style HID Metal Halide hi-bays. 4 or 6 lamp T5HO (54 watts each) lamps in an open fixture with very reflective optics. A T5HO lamp puts out about 4700 lumens, so 4 will generally equal a 250w pulse-start MH and 6 a 400 MH, especially when the actual light output of the fixture is taken into account.

Bear in mind these numbers mean less to us who may only have a hand full of fixtures in a shop, but in a warehouse where there may be literally hundreds of fixtures and they're running 12-16 hrs a day, the power savings can be substantial.

With regards to occupancy sensors, the current theory is to rather than shut them off entirely, they are often dimmed down to around 10%. This provides most of the power savings while reducign the bulb stress and extneding the lamp life.

In reply to Ian F:

Sounds like you've been looking into this in greater depth than a lot of us... Have any resources to point to in order to help estimate how much lighting for a given area? My searches for garage or shop lighting have been pretty fruitless, or keep leading me back to previous threads here

I'm worried that I'll either wind up with too little light or spend way too much money creating a shop that requires sunglasses...

Also still pondering the relationship between fill lighting with fluorescent tubes and flooding particular workstations with something more pleasant, like halogen or incandescent...

ransom wrote: Also still pondering the relationship between fill lighting with fluorescent tubes and flooding particular workstations with something more HARSH, like halogen or incandescent...

Fixed that for you.

DILYSI Dave wrote: The T-number refers to how many eighths of an inch in diameter they are. T12 = 1.5" T8 = 1" T5 = 5/8"

I did not know this. Thanks.

ransom wrote: In reply to Ian F: Sounds like you've been looking into this in greater depth than a lot of us... Have any resources to point to in order to help estimate how much lighting for a given area? My searches for garage or shop lighting have been pretty fruitless, or keep leading me back to previous threads here

I've had a hell of a time with lighting calculation programs recently.

I used to use a program called Luxicon from Cooper lighting, but it's an old program that won't work on a Win7 machine. It would give foot candle levels at working levels (or at whatever level specified). Fixtures from the Cooper catalog came pre-loaded, but you could use any fixture you wanted if you can get an EIS file for it. For the msot part, any fixture we'd use in a garage is fairly generic, so there won't be much difference between brands.

For the past couple of years, I've tried using lighting sales reps, but sales reps are about as reliable as weather people... When I've got the HVAC dept breathing down my neck for a lighting layout so they can lay out their diffusers, I can't wait until the last bloody day for the rep to get off his azz and send something to me.

I just downloaded a new version of Luxicon, but haven't had time to play with it much yet. I need to soon as I have a whole building to design with LED fixtures and the rep was not helpful.

All that said, after 15 years of doing this, I'm pretty good at literally eye-balling a design in my head and having it work surprisingly well. I did one for a pharma blender room that had a 30+ foot ceiling and a giant V blender in the middle that a) would block much of the light from a ceiling mounted fixture and b) made servicing a ceiling fixture near-on impossible. So I mounted clean-room corner fixtures on the walls as both up and down lights. I used a similar technique in a small server room that had racks in the middle of the room and wire tray on the walls. So I wall-mounted lensed fixtures under the racks. It worked better than I could have imagined. You could stand anywhere in front of the server racks and see everything with no shadows.

Fortunately, the lighting part of my projects is often only a small portion of the overall project budget, so when I'm faced with an interesting problem I'm often given a long leesh to come up with a solution.

Alright Ian here is my Lighting "plan" please tell me how Insane it is. All flourescents are T8

In to top area the Round lights are 14" single bulb barn type pendants with the brightest CFL or LED's I can find (So probably 150W equivalent) these would be ~10' off the ground The Flourescents in this area are beneath 24" deep cabinets and would be 8' off the ground

In the Wider area Most of the lights are 10.5' off the ground. The only that aren't are on the Right side of the image lights 1,2 and 7. These would be chain hung to be aproximatly 6-7' off the ground. Light 7 is over an eventual lathe and light 1-2 are above a corner workstation.

The upper left light #4 along the long wall will be suspended as well and provide task lighting for my welding area.

I'm thinking I can probably remove about half of the T8's and keep it ok but am unsure. The floor will be Light gray epoxy and the walls will be painted white or some fairly light color.

The ceiling most likely will be galvanized metal or possibly lightly stained pine car siding.

What say you. Anyone else may weigh in as well.

I'll see if I can run calcs, but for the most part it looks ok. I'm generally of the opinion you can never have too much light, especially if you control them so as you can reduce the amount of lights that are on when you don't need them.

For the lights in the "lift area" consider installing some on the walls so they'll provide some light under the car when it's in the air.

While you're running wiring for receptacles, consider a couple of high ones to feed battery wall pack lights. That way you'll have at least a bit of light back there should the power go out while you're working. Especially if you happen to be using air tools which will keep working fine whether you can see what you're doing or not.

I didn't read every post in detail here, but it looks like you've settled on T8 which is good. My only advice is to spend a little more than the cheapest you can find. The cheapest never works out to costing the least. My dad installed the $8 Lowe's specials in his garage and we've ended up replacing every single ballast and those have cost more than $8 just for parts, never mind the frustration and time.

You can get Lithonia fixtures at Home Depot and Lowes that aren't a whole lot more but should last for years. I highly recommend it.

I've got some old T12 fixtures and a ton of new T8 fixtures in my current garage, and the T8s are so much better, be it cold or with the heat running or hot in the summer. The T8's are always better light, cooler running, and less noisy than the T12s. But again I don't have the bargain basement fixtures, my T8 fixtures all have GE or Lithonia ballasts.

Is there any kind of rule of thumb in terms of lumens/incandescent-equivalent-watts/candlepower/Lite-Brite-Pegs per sq ft/meter/cubit?

Also, anybody have any input regarding free-hanging tube fixtures vs recessed (er, flush-mount, really, but even with the ceiling)? I'd love to keep every inch of headroom, but I'm not sure of other considerations...

My garage ceiling is open with trusses crossing across it. I mounted my fixtures so the body of the fixture is above the bottom of the truss but the bulb is below so the light can scatter. Seems to work well and made a good compromise between maintaining headroom versus maximum light output.

Suggestion for wiring on a lift - put a 220v welder receptacle on the lift post. You've already got 220v there for the motor.

For what it is worth, I am working on converting my entire shop at work to T5 6-bulb fixtures. Going to use 5100K frequency bulbs.

Going from 19 luxes to 692 luxes.

Come on by the shop before we fix it, according to the guide we have the correct lighting for a lounge.

Flight Service wrote: Come on by the shop before we fix it, according to the guide we have the correct lighting for a lounge.

What is this "guide" you speak of?

iPhone app called Whitegoods Lightmeter. Went around taking averages etc.

It has suggestions for an area based on the lux/klux read.

We got lounge or bar.

Not good for a shop. But great for Fridays after work!

In reply to Flight Service:

Haha! Awesome, thanks! I'll have to see whether there's an Android version...

Hmm... I just browsed through the available Droid apps. These are meant more for photography and not so much for measuring foot candle levels. I have a light meter at work so I'll download a couple of the free ones and see how they compare.

Zombie thread! Liiiiiiive!

After much poking, prodding, trying to make sense of Simkar's lighting calculator, and head-scratching, I'm casting out one last call for guesses.

I've bought six, four-foot, two-bulb, T8 fixtures for my ~22x22 shop, with a plan to add another 6-8 floodlights along the workbench walls for fill and flicker mitigation. I'm pondering whether I need another two T8 fixtures.

The whole place will be drywalled and painted some sort of light color.

Anybody want to take a stab? I know if it's wrong I'll have only myself to blame, but here's an opportunity to get thanks when it turns out awesome

Too bad about T12 going away. Our kitchen has a 2 x 48" T12 fixture, so we went with those for the basement. But seeing as the first set of bulbs lasted over 10 years, by the time the second set dies it should be time to just install a new fixture.