Time for real lights in my 20x32x11' garage

[wdlfbio]

The garage is attached and insulated, but not heated. There are currently 6 basic porcelain incandescent ceiling fixtures with 100W light bulbs and I have nowhere near enough light.


4 of them are out in the open and two are directly above my 4'x8' ceiling storage racks that are full of stuff, as you can see...



I'm getting a little back surgery for a herniated disc tomorrow, and I'll have about 2 weeks recovery time to plan a few things for when I'm healed up. This is one of them. So I'm thinking I'll just replace the 4 in the open as the other two don't really help much anyway. Can I just remove the basic screw-in fixture that is present and mount some 4-8' Flourescent fixtures? I'm assuming there are the blue plastic boxes under the existing fixtures. Or is there a fitting that actually lets me just screw right into the porcelain fixture? All 6 lights are on the same circuit.

What I do not want are noisy or flickering lights.

[gdmclnh]

There are porcelain screw in plugs that you can put in place of the bulbs that allow you to plug the flourescent lights directly into them. That's the easiest way.

[eljefino]

They make NEMA 5-15 (standard) outlets with round covers. Those would look snazzy and the ground would be good for flourescent lights-- they really like having them.

Get T8 bulbs and electronic ballasts and you shouldn't have any hum or obnoxiousness. The big box stores may still have T12 fixtures with magnetic ballasts on closeout, tempting but trashy.

I'd throw some low watt CFL bulbs in the edison bases over your stuff. Don't need much light and the heat from the incandescents probably isn't good for the stuff.

[Norcal]

Originally Posted by gdmclnh

There are porcelain screw in plugs that you can put in place of the bulbs that allow you to plug the flourescent lights directly into them. That's the easiest way.

The fixtures are required to be grounded, your method will prevent that.

[regguy1]

I had 3 bulbs in my garage, you can see what I did in the video link below

[wdlfbio]

Originally Posted by regguy1

I had 3 bulbs in my garage, you can see what I did in the video link below

Wowser. That's a lot of lights

I can handle the wiring part of removing the porcelain fixtures and adding the 4 or 8' ballasts. But if it's not necessary, I don't need to add extra work. The grounding concern makes sense. I hadn't thought of that. I like the idea of 4'ers for the ease of mounting, and I suspect they'd be less expensive initially and per bulb? Anything should be much better and brighter.

Thanks for the input.