Updating lighting in my garage.

Czar · Jul 19, 2015

Ok gents, I've been on here for quite a while and am finally in a place where I can start updating the garage in my first home. I've a 26' wide by 24' deep garage with 15' ceilings and one staircase leading up into the house. Right now there are four halogen flood lights in there for lighting, which needless to say garbage. I intend to one day put a lift on the left side and haven't even begun to figure out tool chest, cabinets, or outlet locations yet. The walls are drywall and will likely stay that way even after updating. I think I like the idea of more T8's rather than the T5 and would like to surface mount my lights for a cleaner look. Any recommendations from the experts on here?

rburke65 · Jul 19, 2015

For starters I would do 9 eight foot 4 lamp T8 florescent. You can do 3 rows of three fixtures with the rows spaced evenly. Center row down the middle and the other 2 rows 4' off the side wall. Good luck.

Czar · Jul 20, 2015

That's what I was thinking. Any recommendations on what fixture to use? I was thinking of going with the Lithonia from HD and a wide dispersion pattern, but they say they are not recommended for surface mounting.

Platonic Solid · Jul 20, 2015

The inability to surface mount is a problem with all of the Lithonia "IB" series fixtures (and similar styles from other manufacturers). That's what lead me to use F54T5HO strip lights in the latest 15' ceiling layout. If you want F32T8, you'll want to drop them down to about 13' anyway.

Czar · Jul 20, 2015

Hmm, ok. My T8 selection was based more on my reading of the posts here and the fear of glare. But if you think the T5's are a better option at 15', then who am I to argue with Grand Master of lighting layouts. Which fixture would you recommend I use to surface mount the T5?

Platonic Solid · Jul 20, 2015

Fixtures & Layout TTA89 26x51x15 Post #73
Photometric result TTA89 26x51x15 Post #74

With careful ballast and lamp selection you can use F32T8 strip lights at 15ft. You'll need a high ballast factor ballast (around 1.18) and 2900+ lumen lamps. Thus 2 lamp fixture output (not accounting for fixture efficiency losses) jumps from 5800 lumens to 6800+ lumens. If you look at the spread sheet in "The Best Light Fixture Ever" (see signature link in above post), you'll see that you can get up to 7400 lumens with the right ballast and lamp configuration.

Czar · Jul 21, 2015

Is the any appreciable difference in the SNF series from the SSF series? I know you mentioned both in your references posts, but was wondering if there would be a noticable difference in the light distribution?

Platonic Solid · Jul 21, 2015

Czar, that dependents on the lamp diameter: T8 matters, T5 not so much.
This 23 x 25 x 15 (interior dims) should answer most of your questions:

Average Illuminance:

Qty.25 SNF232 = 84fc | Qty.25 SSF232 = 99fc

Qty.15 SNF254 = 77fc | Qty.15 SSF254 = 80fc

Comparing SNF232 to SSF232 there's a 15% loss (or 18% gain depending which way you want to look at it) which is significant.

Comparing SNF254 to SSF254 there's a 4% loss (or 4% gain) which is not significant. If you study the two bottom 54T5 plots, you'll quickly realize that they're basically identical. The program just chose to plot different value isolines.

Updating lighting in my garage.

Czar

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