reflectors on shop lights

[milanuk]

Hello all,

I'm getting geared up to roll into another 'big' furniture project (bed headboard/frame and matching nightstand) and want to upgrade my shop lighting a bit beforehand.

What I have: a roughly 23' x 28' basement shop, split roughly into four equal quadrants by virtue of a center beam w/ support posts going down the length of the shop and other stub walls. Two bays each have a four-lamp 8' fluorescent fixture, and the other two (where the majority of my 'precision' work takes place) each have a two-lamp 8' fixture, powered from switched receptacles in the ceiling. The ceiling is unfinished joists and the underside of the flooring above - i.e. very poor reflection qualities for lighting.

I'm looking at putting in an array of 4' two-lamp T8 fixtures w/ electronic ballasts... I've seen some as cheap as $18 @ Lowes, and recently read about even less expensive ones available from Wally-world. Both seem to have fairly small reflectors, extending barely an inch or so beyond the bulbs. I've seen other examples with reflectors that extend as much as 2-3x as wide as the bulbs, to really direct the light *down*. With the smaller fixtures I could pretty easily fit them up between the joists (my ceiling is 'only' 7' 10-11" or so), but I could probably come pretty close with the bigger models as well.

Does anybody here have fixtures with the bigger reflectors, and if so, how do you like them? Do they present any problems with heating, fitting in the overhead, do they direct too much light down and not enough side to side (i.e. require closer fixture spacing), etc.

TIA,

Monte

[Uncle Cracker]

It's more than just the size of the reflector, but also the orientation. Reflectors help a lot if they are "catching" light that would otherwise shine up into the ceiling, and perhaps not be reflected as thoroughly, such as if the ceiling was bare wood, or another color less reflective than white or chrome. But reflectors that are so large that the majority of them are not getting hit "head-on" by the bulbs will not help any further than a well-designed small reflector.

The joists are another issue. If the light fixture is recessed too far back into the joists, the light can be obstructed to the sides by the joists themselves. I would recommend that some blocking or chain be installed under fixtures done this way, so that light is unobstructed to the sides, but the fixture remains recessed enough that the joists will still offer some protection to the bulbs from whatever you might happen to whack them with.

[pecker]

I just want to mention that some of the cheap fixtures can be mechanically noisy. I have one just above my table saw. Obviously when a machine is on i can't hear the light buzzing. But when I'm near the saw preparing it for a cut, the buzzing is quite annoying. If you put up a half dozen or so of those, you may find yourself wishing you had spent a little more.

Unfortunately, you can't tell if they will hum until after you've bought them.

[lebomike]

If I understand you correctly, I would paint the underside of the floor and the joists white first. That will give you allot of reflection. I also agree with Uncle Cracker, that if the lights are in between the joists get them down, via chain etc. After this you can see how much more light you may or may not need. I also bought inexpensive lights once and they do hum. Look at the extra dollars as not being annoying.

[BigguyZ]

I bought some Lithonia fixtures for about $15-$20 each, and they don't hum at all.

BTW- I highly recomend the 6500K lamps. They're not that expensive ($6+ at HD for a pack of two), and there really is a HUGE difference in the color. I have mostly those, but I have two fixtures that use T5 bulbs w the older style, and everything looks ugly under them compared to the newer bulbs....

[twistsol]

And now for something completely different

In my last shop, I put up a dozen recessed can lights. They're about $8 each at home depot. IMHO they work better because you can mix and match CFL lamps for general lighting with incandescent spots or floods. If you need to direct light to a specific location, you can get an eyeball trim set instead of the standard ring and point the light anywhere (within reason).

[cgallery]

In my last shop, I put up a dozen recessed can lights. They're about $8 each at home depot. IMHO they work better because you can mix and match CFL lamps for general lighting with incandescent spots or floods. If you need to direct light to a specific location, you can get an eyeball trim set instead of the standard ring and point the light anywhere (within reason).

Now that is interesting to me because I plan on doing more of a conversion of my basement shop. Right now I am using what was once a poorly done rec. room with crappy panelling, a dropped ceiling, and two light fixtures that are hung from the joists but which shine through plastic diffusers in the dropped ceiling.

I had thought I'd pull down the ceiling and the panelled walls. I'll replace the panelled walls with something more like 5/8" plywood. I was going to leave the ceiling bare (I can use the extra 3-4" of height), but was wondering what to do for lighting. I had thought about using cans, but wasn't sure how it would work. Sounds like it works fine.

How do I compute the # of cans I would need?

[milanuk]

Painting the ceiling white is not an option - I'd have to 'paint' the existing wiring, piping, bare insulation, ducting and everything else in the process... and I don't need much of an imagination to see that would look like absolute crap.

The current fixtures run across the joists, not in them, but they also do not have *any* reflectors. I had been thinking about moving the new fixtures up between the joists at least partway to take up some of the height from the reflector. Sub 8' ceiling isn't much when you're 6'5"...

The canned light idea is interesting, especially for me as one 'bay' or quadrant of this shop is my loading/cleaning area for my gun stuff... and I take that stuff fairly seriously. Serious enough I have a pretty sensitive electronic milligram scale - registers a mouse fart from across the room, disturbances in the Force, or any electromagnetic interference... such as that from nearby fluorescent light fixtures, cell phones, etc. Canned incandescent lighting in that section might be a good thing.

The problem w/ canned lighting, or at least incandescent lighting, in this house is two-fold (both the main and upstairs floors are lit w/ canned lighting, so I have some experience with it) - one, our line voltage is just a smidge on the high side, so filament life tends to be on the short side, and two, hard vibrations (like from overhead foot traffic) tends to be hard on an already stressed filament, and bulb life drops to levels not worth noting. Most of the rest of the house has been re-lamped w/ CFLs in the cans, except where the startup delay is impractical. This area in the shop is right below the master bath and a study nook, so it's not like a hall or stairway where the teenagers and their friends go thundering by...

Monte

[eccentrictinkerer]

I checked out the lights at Walmart and found that the $9 fixture uses the same electronic ballast as the $16 fixture.

For $7 you get stainless and black plastic instead of all white.

The box said it was good to -20 degrees.

Also, FWIW, the daylight lamps put out 2800 lumens, whereas the regular lamp is 2700 lumens.

[billfrommich]

Can Lights

With regards to can lights, I've read (but not seen for myself) that they tend to cast sharper, more apparent, (and sometimes more bothersome) shadows, compared to strip lights. Does anyone have any experiences to report in this regard?

[Tom Slick]

in general the more focused the light the more shadows you are going to get. strip lights generally fill a large area and bounce light off of the ceiling, walls and floor for more ambient light.

[milanuk]

Well, I was in the vincinity of Wally-world today (its across the street from Home Depot) and swung in to look for these T8 fixtures I've been hearing about... they had four of the white for $8 + change, and four of the stainless, for $15 + change. I went with the white Swung over to HD for a case of bulbs, and went home to put them up in the quadrant of the shop where I have my table saw, router table, OSS, and one end of my bench.

As it turns out, mounting the lights up in between the rafters appears to be impractical - too much stuff in the way, such as piping, wiring, insulation, etc. and it would somewhat complicate the spacing as well. So I hung them by the chains as best I could around the stuff up there, and ended up w/ the bottom of the lamps 7'4" off the floor. I'm 6'5", plus an inch or so for the heels on my work boots... so I clear, but I'll have to be careful about swinging boards a round.

Eventually I'd like to finish the ceiling and sound-insulate it, which is going to take some major re-routing of wires/pipes/ducts to make everything work, plus eat another couple inches of ceiling height. At that point I might go back to reflector-less strips, given a satin or semi-gloss white finish on the ceiling. Definitely a good ways off, though.

It was rather surprising how much brighter the work surfaces were with the new lights. I suppose it shouldn't be, given the old ones were F96T12 60 watt cool white, rated at about 4500 lumens (x2), CRI of 62 with no reflector, and the new fixtures are F40T8 Daylight, rated at 2800 lumens (x8), CRI of 85 with solid reflectors. Over 2.5x the lumens plus highter CRI plus reflectors... its like a whole new work space.

If Wal-mart had any more of these, I'd have gone back for more. As it was, four was all they had, so I'll have to check back next week or so.

The shadows *above* the lamps are quite noticeably darker... doesn't really affect anything as I'm working down below them, just that it's fairly noticeable being so close to my eye level. Guess I'll get used to it over time.

[poolhound]

Are the Walmart ones 4' or 8'? I have seen some 4' fixtures at HD for around the $8 mark but all their 8' ones are nearly $30

I just noticed that most of the cheaper units labled as "shop lights" tend to come with a plug and switch. The hardwired ones all seem to be twice as much.

Do you have to plug these units in or can you just cut off the plug and hardwire them?

[LarryG]

The only Wal-Mart fluorescents I've seen, including those I bought for around that same $8 figure, are 4' long.

Cutting off the plug and hardwiring the fixture using the existing cord won't comply with code. You would need to remove the cord completely and run a sheathed cable to the fixture, enter through a clamp, and connect the conductors to those inside the fixture. I'm not even you can do this, because IIRC the appliance cord goes straight into the electronic ballast, on the outside. Easier to just provide a ceiling outlet and plug the thing in (what I did).

[poolhound]

Easier to just provide a ceiling outlet and plug the thing in (what I did).

Hmmm. As I am about to re-wire I was thinking of putting some outlets in the ceiling anyway for some of the tools that get used in the middle. I dont think the current draw from a few fl tubes will impair the 20A circuit or add anything significant if running with a tool I would guess 1 Amp at most.