Finally adding lighting to my 2-car garage. I've got questions.

Howdy folks,
I've been waiting a long time to add lighting to my 2-car garage/shop. I've got some questions regarding where to find fixtures and make sure my calculations for light levels are correct.

First off, the garage has white painted drywall walls and ceilings, bare concrete floors, and it has a room built into one corner (for heating pipes and for additional storage/separation of wood from metal).

The garage is 23' wide by 27' deep. The work room (as we call it) is in the back left corner (looking from the garage doors), and is sized 11' 6" wide by 13' deep.

I'm left with the work room (150 square feet) and an L-shaped garage (460 square feet).

Current lighting is, as I call it, Ray Charles lighting. There are four ceiling boxes with ceramic single-bulb fixtures in them. The first pair are spaced 10' in from the garage doors, centered on the door openings. The other pair are spaced 32" off the back wall. That means that there are 3 bulbs in the L-shaped garage, and one in the work room. Hardly what we want to have.

I've got 2 8-foot, 4-bulb, T8 strip lights from Lowes (Metalux), which need to have the ballasts replaced with something that doesn't cause RFI. New ballasts are ~$20. I also have 2 4-foot, 4-bulb T8 fixtures that are in great shape, and are currently installed in the work room. I'll be replacing the bulbs in those with 5000K daylight 28w bulbs.

My plan is to install a total of 7 8-foot, 4-bulb strip lights in the garage, two in the small part of the L, and five on the long side. I'm planning on running them side to side, with three of them covering the existing ceiling boxes and running on that switch. The other four will be on a separate switch.

The workroom will have a 8-foot, 2-bulb strip over the work bench, and the two 4-foot 4-bulb fixtures run front-to-back, on their own switch.

So... the work room (150 square feet) will have 2x T8 32w bulbs (http://tinyurl.com/T832w) outputting 3000 lumens each, and 8x T8 28w bulbs (http://tinyurl.com/T828w) outputting 2650 lumens each.
6000 lumens always-on, plus 21,200 lumens on a separate switch, for a total of 27,200 lumens.
That's 181 lumens/square foot, a little on the high side, but not excessive, right?

The garage will have 20x T8 32w bulbs outputting 3000 lumens each. That's 60K lumens for 460 square feet, for a total of 130 lumens per square foot, which is a little low, but the light will be concentrated slightly away from the garage doors, so it should be higher near the work areas. Would it make sense to swap two of them for 8-foot 6-bulb?

As for fixtures, I'm looking at:
5x http://tinyurl.com/4bulb8ftT8 (4-bulb, 8-foot T8 fixtures) from Contractor Lighting
25x http://tinyurl.com/4ft28wT8 (4ft 28w Bulbs)
50x http://tinyurl.com/4ft32wT8 (4ft 32w Bulbs)
However, I can't seem to find an 8-foot, 2-bulb T8 fixture on Contractor Lighting, and the ones from HomeDepot are $60.
I found http://tinyurl.com/4ft1BulbT8, which is a 4-foot, 1-bulb T8 fixture. I can connect two of them together to make an 8' fixture.

Anything that I'm missing, any other thoughts?

All the new wiring/switches are going to be run in conduit, as everything is already finished. I'm going to get my electrician to check his pricing on the fixtures and bulbs.

Diagram:

I have a 24 X 36 garage with slightly off-white textured drywall walls. I am using twelve 100 watt CFL bulbs equally spaced in the ceiling. I have four wall light switches by the door when you enter the garage, and each switch operates one bank of three lights. So far I have not had any problems with lighting, although I do have an over-sized floor lamp of sorts with a flood lamp which I bought at an auction for $2 and I can use it if I should be doing something that requires more light. So far that hasn't happened, but I have it in case I should need it.

The CFL lights only draw 35 watts per lamp, so the cost to operate them is pretty small. I have the option of turning on only the banks of lights that I need, which is nice, but I tend to turn them all on even when I don't need them all. I am not real sure why I turn on lights I don't need, when I built the garage I wasn't planning on doing it, but now that the garage is up and I am working out there practically every day, turning on all the lights just seems to be the right way to do it.

Here's mine with a total of 24 bulbs in 6 8' lights. The brightness in the second pic is closer to what the eye see, that is slightly brighter than the first pic. Almost daylight bright and plenty bright for any task. You should be good!

sed6 said:

Here's mine with a total of 24 bulbs in 6 8' lights.

Click to expand...

What size is your garage?

Oh, forgot to mention, 9' ceilings.

3 car, 31x23 = 713 sq ft. 8' ceilings.

Any other thoughts?

I think your layout is good, and the amount of light is fine.
181 isn't too high for a work area. The spacing in your "L" area will provide better lighting in the back work section, and less near the back of the vehicles, which doesn't seem like a bad thing.

I got my shipment from Dealer's Electric. 50 Bulbs, 5 8' fixtures, and 2 4' fixtures.
Nothing broken, and the daylight bulbs are awesome in my existing fixtures.

My electrician will be over soon to run the conduit and do the wiring. He's a good friend, and will work for 1/2 rate if I assist and pay cash. I'm one happy man.

Finally got it all installed. We fished the wiring under the strapping for the drywall, and avoided a lot of conduit, which was a major plus.


It looks insanely bright, and it gets close with everything on. It is by far the best-lit workshop I've ever had, and that includes multi-million dollar assembly facilities. I love it!

Oh yeah, and I don't even have the higher wattage bulbs installed (yet). Right now, they are mostly 28w bulbs, not 32w. I'm probably going to swap a few of the 32's in this weekend.

Hats off to Dealer's Electric, their lights were half the price of anyone else, their bulbs arrived unbroken, and that's all I could ask.