Finally got lights wired up!

[Jonny006]

In my quest to make my man mecca more to my liking I finally got my lights wired up. Since it has been like 10 degrees every day for months it took a lot longer than I wanted but it's done.
My garage is 22x22. The left side is really the shop side and the right side is spillover. I have 10' ceilings.
I picked up 2 free 8' T8 fixtures, used 2 4' T8 that I had, and spaced them accordingly running parallel along the ceiling on the left bay. Their is a 4' space from the end of the 8'ers then the 4'ers run after that. Make sense? So kinda like= = with the second set being 4'.
I turned them on expecting an operating room and was like, meh..
I have a single LED 4' on the right bay and it looks like the sun compared to these. I had put brand new bulbs in all the fixtures. The bulbs were given to me along with the fixtures. They are Sylvania Octron 4100K. I figured maybe it was because they were cold and let them warm up for 15 mins or so. And they still were ****. I put the original bulbs that were in my 4' back in and the difference was significant. They were much brighter and whiter. I think that they are 5000K?
Suffice to say I will be replacing the bulbs. In hindsight I should have just spent the money on a bunch of the Costco LED shop lights of which I have 2. They are super bright! I am thinking of picking up a case from HD tomorrow of the 6500K T8's. I'm hoping that this will solve the problem. I would think that 12 bulbs would be plenty bright. What do you all think?

 

[Jonny006]

So....136 views but no one has said a thing about whether or not the bulb swap will brighten things up?

 

[Grizzly Guy]

Wish I could help,but I'm having lighting problems of my own.My problem is that I get plenty of light,but they interfear with radio reception.I believe that they are T8s.

 

[Jonny006]

Grizzly I think your's is a ballast issue. It's common from what I have read. Wish I could help!

 

[RunninOnEmpty]

Higher color temperatures give me a headache when I'm working late at night, personally. I buy "warm" LED bulbs for everything now. Done with CFL because of mercury and potential RFI as mentioned but I also have seen poor quality LEDs that for some reason took a while to warm up (probably similar to OP). Not sure why but most LEDs I have used don't have that problem.

 

[soob]

Could be bulbs, could be ballast. If you buy commercial ballasts, WATCH OUT for the ballast factor. They are different brightnesses (get close to 1.0 or higher). I bought some that said "high efficiency," which sounds great, but it turns out that just meant dim. Like losing 500 lumens per bulb dim. Oh, but it saves 10 watts per fixture. SOB!

 

[Jonny006]

Hmmmm..Oddly enough since posting this they seem to have gained some brightness. No idea why. I also think that the new 8' lights have large deflectors which the others do not. This may be adding to the illusion of being dimmer. I will try removing them and see if they all balance out.