Best Lighting for 40x48

[71blackcheyenne]

40x48x16 shop, found a deal on some good used 400w highbays, $50 each, just wondering how good 6 of these would light up my life, or if i would be better off goin with good old double T8's, if so how many 8ft sections would i need. my plan is to keep the building just above freezing temps when im not around(gone for a week at a time), and probably full on heat when i am around. The other thing is it may not be heated at all 100% of the time for the first couple years until i get caught up again to do my floor heat/boiler.

 

[Charles (in GA)]

400 watt whats? Sodium? Metal Halide? Mercury?

Sodium is orange light, horrible. I've been working under Sodium lighting for over 20 years now at work, and finally, they are changing out the fixtures and installing one 8 bulb T5 fixture in the place of each pair of 400 watt Sodium fixtures, and its great!!!

Metal halide is good, but expensive to operate. I have a dozen 400 watt MH fixtures in my 60x60. They are mounted so the bottom of the fixture is ~15 to 16 ft off the floor. Technically they are high bay, but with polycarbonate translucent reflectors and adjusting the reflector up all the way to get wider dispersion, they work well.

High bays with metal reflectors will not be good in this height. The bottom of the reflector will be near 14 ft (the fixtures are about two ft high generally) and without any uplighting you will have a "cave effect" with a rather dark ceiling and not much indirect light reflecting off the ceiling and upper walls.

The attached pic below is a comparison of the sodium vs florescent lighting at work. The fixtures are mounted over a hundred feet off the floor. Sorry, the camera would not focus on the fixtures themselves. Just trying to give you an idea of the difference.

Charles

 

[71blackcheyenne]

They are metal halide, with metal reflectors, without the lens. I would really like to buy some new lowbays, but at $350 a pop, there kind of expensive.