help with lighting recomendations

[borderboy1971]

As some of you may know I'm in the process of building my shop, and I'm now not far away from installing lights. The shop is 60' wide by 64' deep with a 16' ceiling. I have already roughed in ectric on the walls at 8' high with 8' spacing between electrical boxes. I have also strung the wire into the attic section with intent of 4 rows of light spaced evenly over the 60' span.
I am kind of looking at the cheap Chinese led lights on ebay, but am unsure if these will emit enough light (16' ceilings).
The other thought is to use t8 florescent lights and replace the tube with led as the price comes down eventually.
I'd love to hear all ideas. It will potentially be a business for me so I will need good lighting with low operating cost.

 

[sands35]

With a garage that big, part of it will be storage and part of it will be for working?

For the storage part, nothing beats Edison based sockets and a bunch of CFLs (though LEDs are now in the ~$1.50 range each for 60 Watt ones). About $3 for the box and screw bulb base and then the bulb and wire. If you are smart about the layout, it would be easy to add tube fixtures later or add more light locations.

For the working part, it depends on what you are doing. Wood shop needs different light than a car shop than a machine shop.

That said, you only need light where you work.

 

[Platonic Solid]

T8 Fluorescent is not a realistic option at 16ft. Not high enough lumen output. You'd have to drop them down to at least 12ft (lower is better) before that starts to make sense.
LED T8 retrofit is not an option for the same reason.
F54T5HO works. Just as an example: To get 70fc at 30" workplane in an empty space (I prefer 90fc) you'll need ~400,000 total lumens from 36 fixtures.
Lighting budget needs to be at least $3,000.

 

[borderboy1971]

The plan is this is all workshop area, and is getting a storage area added to it. It will be a car repair shop. I do like the idea of simple sockets with bulbs as the cost layout is not much for that, and can easily changed to tube designs down the road if desired. I worked in a pretty big shop previously that had flourescents near 14 to 16' height and didn't find it too bad, althought there were definitely dark areas. Thanks for all the help.

 

[Autorotica]

Borderboy... I have a 60 x 64 building with the cheap Costco lights. They are hung down approximately 3'. I did 5 rows of 6 lights and spent less than $1K.

(1) 3700 lumen Costco LED fixture per 125 sq/ft... Running cost for all the lights being on is $0.16 per hour.






Chris

 

[Platonic Solid]

Autorotica - Could you be more specific on the fixture brand and/or link to a current source? 30 fixtures at 3700 lm is only 111,000 lumens, which if hung at 13ft would yield less than 25fc at 30" workplane. The picture looks good, but photographs are a poor measure of actual light intensity.

The Howard fixture in this thread (linked) is a very good deal and gives you 230 lumens per $1 (out of the fixture). 4 rows of 5 mounted at 16ft yields 65fc at workplane. Total cost = $1540 out the door and lamps are included.
5 rows of 5 = 80fc ($1925)
5 rows of 6 = 96fc ($2310)

 

[Autorotica]

Autorotica - Could you be more specific on the fixture brand and/or link to a current source? 30 fixtures at 3700 lm is only 111,000 lumens, which if hung at 13ft would yield less than 25fc at 30" workplane. The picture looks good, but photographs are a poor measure of actual light intensity.

The Howard fixture in this thread (linked) is a very good deal and gives you 230 lumens per $1 (out of the fixture). 4 rows of 5 mounted at 16ft yields 65fc at workplane. Total cost = $1540 out the door and lamps are included.
5 rows of 5 = 80fc ($1925)
5 rows of 6 = 96fc ($2310)

The lights I posted are the Costco distributed FEIT LED's. You math is very good, 20some FC is about what I measured with the Light App on my smart phone.

The majority of my "shed" is going to be used for storage. I have another dozen lights that I am going to hang when I figure out where exactly most of the work is taking place.

Running cost is extremely important to me. 20 of the Howard fixtures would consume almost 4x the KW of my LED's...

When I am doing delicate work I will use higher density task specific lighting.

Chris

 

[Platonic Solid]

This might interest you if efficiency is your thing:

• Linear Fluorescent F54T5HO and F32T8 fixtures run anywhere from 80 to 100 L/W (Lumens per Watt).
  Still a very cost effective option.
• The 3700 Lm Feit Shop Light draws 38W = 97 L/W
  Not bad if you can get the fixture on sale, but not ideal for ceilings ≥ 9 ft.
• The 7278 Lm Lithonia ZL1N (linked) is ideal for for 11 to 14 ft ceilings = 117 L/W.
  Higher cost, simple compact design.
• The 2250 Lm James LED, 19.5W retrofit/18W bypass = 125 L/W in direct AC wired bypass mode.
  Not ideal for ceilings ≥ 11 ft. and lower cost per lumen than the Feit Shop Light.
• The next efficiency level is 130-150 L/W, but lumens per $1 is very high, thus prohibitive for most.

 

[My Old Tools]

This might interest you if efficiency is your thing:

• Linear Fluorescent F54T5HO and F32T8 fixtures run anywhere from 80 to 100 L/W (Lumens per Watt).
  Still a very cost effective option.
• The 3700 Lm Feit Shop Light draws 38W = 97 L/W
  Not bad if you can get the fixture on sale, but not ideal for ceilings ≥ 9 ft.
• The 7278 Lm Lithonia ZL1N (linked) is ideal for for 11 to 14 ft ceilings = 117 L/W.
  Higher cost, simple compact design.
• The 2250 Lm James LED, 19.5W retrofit/18W bypass = 125 L/W in direct AC wired bypass mode.
  Not ideal for ceilings ≥ 11 ft. and lower cost per lumen than the Feit Shop Light.
• The next efficiency level is 130-150 L/W, but lumens per $1 is very high, thus prohibitive for most.

LED fixtures put more light on the floor and less up and sideways. Your lumens/W is not an apples to apples comparison. The Costco Feit LED fixtures work great on high ceilings. Mine range from 14 to 20 feet up. I find the LED fixtures put about twice the light on the floor per watt as a equivalent wattage fluorescent.

 

[Platonic Solid]

You are correct, "My Old Tools", it's pretty much impossible to do an apples to a apples comparison of any 2 light fixtures of any technology, but we have to use something. Here's a quote from "The Best Light Fixture .." thread that illustrates your point:

LED vs Fluorescent Strip Light Comparison:
2 James LED 18W 2160 lumen bypass lamps in a typical 4ft strip light housing compared to 2-Lamp F32T8 2900 lumen (per lamp) fluorescent strip light fixture.

These LED lamps have a 120° aperture, compared to the 360° output of fluorescent tube lamps.

Here’s how this plays out in the real (virtual) world with one 2-lamp strip light mounted in a 10ft cube.
Almost identical lighting at 30” workplane.
Fluorescent puts more light on walls and ceiling making the overall room lighting more even.

Here’s the full 2 lamp James LED Report (link)

Here’s the full 2 lamp Fluorescent Report (link)

Images linked to larger views

If Feit offered IES files on their site or upon request then I could do a more balanced comparison, but they don't. I've emailed them several times with no response ever. The idea that you can achieve a reasonable 60, 50 or even 40 lumens at workplane using claimed 3700 lumen Feit fixtures mounted at 14 to 20 ft is inaccurate at best.