I have been lurking on this forum for quite a while now and have been impressed with all the builds and great source of info from everyone. I am in the electrical rough in stage for a 744sq ft addition taking my 2 car to a 5 car garage. Two of my stalls go 43' deep where the back 19' of these bays have a high ceiling, approx. 16' high.
Is it safe to presume that a lift is in the cards (or at least on the wish list) for either or both of those high-ceiling sections? If so, will either (or both) of them be "storage only" lifts, vs. real "working" lifts?
Garage will be sheet rocked and painted when done.
Good. You will be surprised how much difference that will make.
My electrician quoted qty 6 six light TBAY T-8 fixtures with lamps at $187 each, which seemed really high to me, so I told him I would purchase the fixtures myself for him to install.
Not familiar with that brand, so I can't really comment on the "reasonableness" of that price. That said, I seriously doubt I would use that type of fixture, regardless of cost.
Some questions:
#1 - I live in Massachusetts and although I will insulate the garage, it will not be heated to maintain a certain temp.
I
STRONGLY urge you to re-think that decision. At the very least, insulate the utter living cr*p out of the slab (at minimum, 4-6 inches of rigid polyisocyanurate foam; and where you are, still more probably wouldn't hurt). And during the slab pour, install the PEX tubing for a future in-floor hydronic heat system. You can just run all the loops to the (future) manifold location, let them run a bit long, tape up the ends to keep the insides clean, and leave it at that for now. Yes, this will cost some money; but it is DIRT CHEAP by comparison to what it would cost to retrofit later. And there is just no getting around the fact that for heating a garage/workshop, in-floor hydronic is
THE way to go.
Further, keeping a garage safely above freezing at all times pays off BIG benefits in terms of whatever "stuff" you store in there, including (but by no means limited to) the cars themselves. Think paints, solvents, cleaning supplies, adhesives, lubricants,
batteries (including the high-dollar ones in your cordless power tools), etc. -- they ALL are at least somewhat prone to degradation if EVER allowed to freeze.
OK, end of
that lecture.
I want to make sure I get a fixture that doesn't need 10 mins to warm up. Do I need something with a high output spec or something?
NO fluorescent bulb/tube produces 100% output the instant it is turned on, no matter what sort of ballast it is driven from. This effect is exaggerated at very low ambient temperatures, but it is always present (it just tends to be small enough to go unnoticed at higher temps). Some tubes/bulbs are better than others in this respect (high-output CFLs tend to be the worst). But the main focus (from a product-design standpoint) is the minimum temperature at which the tube/bulb will "start" at all. The "ramp-up" to full brightness is taken as a given; but that said, ten minutes is excessive. 2-5 minutes would be more typical, at least until you got well below freezing.
#2 - After speaking with the electrician, I think we concluded that having 6 of these six bulb monsters in a 19x24 space might be overkill
It's not so much the tube count that is the problem; it's the fact that all of the light is concentrated into relatively few sources. Now granted, the 16-foot ceiling helps somewhat here; but from your later mention of "the angle part of the ceiling", I gather that not all of this "bay" has such a high ceiling. So the point remains: You will surely be better off with a greater number of less powerful fixtures, as opposed to "putting all your eggs in one basket", so to speak.
and that instead having 4 six light units (two on each side of the angle part of the ceiling) and 2 four light fixtures on the flat part of the ceiling (highest point) to ensure there are no dark spots.
This gets back to my questions above re: lifts. If you DO plan to put lifts in, any "overhead" lighting will be near-completely blocked (and thus a useless waste) whenever a car is on the lift. In such cases, what you REALLY want is to ring the perimeter of the space with twin-tube fixtures, and mount them as LOW as feasible given the available surfaces, etc.
#4 - I also need to pick up 2 two light T-8 fixtures for the front section of the new bay I added. Ceiling height is 12'. Any recommendations?
http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showpost.php?p=3568001&postcount=8.
I ran an analysis of a 19 X 24 room with 16ft ceiling.
Using 6 units of 6 bulb T8's you are looking at 101 foot candles which is definitely too bright.
On the contrary, that is just about exactly the recommended minimum level of illumination at working height for "serious" work. Several GJ members have posted pics of shops illuminated to WELL beyond that figure (some as high as 200-300 lumens/ft.^2), which are clearly NOT "over-lit".
Bottom Line: It is next to impossible to have "too much" light. It's much easier to have light which is too highly concentrated into too few sources, and thus comes off has harsh and subjectively "too bright".
I am planning on putting up 30 of these 6 32w bulb, Metalux HBL 632 RT2 fixtures in my 2932sf garage. Each fixture has two ballasts one for 4 bulbs the other for 2.
I will have separate switches for the separate ballasts.
The multi-ballast approach can be useful
IF you still use enough fixtures to maintain even illumination, even if that means "excessive" brightness when everything is switched on. Usually, it will only work well if you have a very high ceiling.
Ideally I would have the garage separated in half or thirds of the garage. But it looks like I need four 15amp circuits, with no good way to split it up. any suggestions?
Two things:
First, don't confuse (breaker) "circuits" with switch banks. You can have as many of the latter on one of the former as your heart desires.
Second, your math seems to be a bit "off". The exact power consumption will depend on the ballast (specifically, the "Ballast Factor"); but for planning purposes, you can figure that each pair of tubes will draw approximately 0.5A. So 180 tubes = about 45A. Per the NEC, this is considered a "continuous load"; so you are limited to 80% loading on any one circuit. Hence, you will need a minimum of four 15A circuits, or three 20A circuits; and odds are you'll want to split it up even a bit more than this, so as to have more flexibility about which (and how many) switch banks to put on which circuit.
