Houston/Austin (TX) area newb

[mtbzack]

I'm Zack, I live in Houston now, need/want to get back to Austin, soon.
My girlfriend handed over the keys to her house and allowed me to take over the garage (24'4" wide x 19'7" deep) as my racecar (87 Toyota MR2) prep-shop. Actually, she bribed me too: bought me a custom trailer.

HOA rules mandate the trailer has to go in the garage, so this is what we got:
Trailer (w/ requisite car shot)
http://www.pbase.com/mtb_zack/image/125814549
Garage filled w/ trailer/car
http://www.pbase.com/mtb_zack/image/125814553
Late night last week with my 1 wall mounted bench light.
http://www.pbase.com/mtb_zack/image/127061282

After the 1st week in September (SCCA Solo National Championships) I'll be getting serious about re-organizing the place.

First - LIGHTS. I'll be lurking in that forum trying to learn what/how to run enough power in there to see. I don't know what to do after that... but I'll figure it out. And y'all will help...

TIA
-Zack

 

[70CopperZ28]

Welcome! I need lights from my cave as well but it's too damn hot to crawl in attic right now!

 

[mtbzack]

I've already been crawling in and falling through the attic: we had a roof rat problem, and the gray slime they leave behind is slick. I'm getting to learn the "art" of sheet rock/mud and texturing before I thought I'd need to. Not to mention, re-insulating the attic.


And yeah, it's hot. I usually go up from 5-10AM. BY 10, I can't take it anymore.

 

[Falcon67]

Welcome. Used to live in Houston, so I sense your heat and humidity issues. I need to put a security light on my daughters house - not sure how I'll wire that up, Sunday the underside of the sheathing in my shop was 156F and her shingles are darker than mine. For a garage/shop that I might move out of - I'd run conduit and use metal boxes for the light fixtures because I could pull all of that down and keep it when I left.

 

[mtbzack]

As I was working in the attic yesterday, briefly, I took a tire pyrometer up, the temps measured 143-146F at the very peak of the roof. at 4pm.

That said - you'd just run the conduit outside the walls, to boxes/fixtures on the ceiling? Would it need its own circuit? Given the build quality of the house I've discovered so far, I wonder how close to maxed the main box is...

 

[Falcon67]

You can probably pull your light circuit from the typical bulb stuck in the middle of the ceiling. If not, I'd try to come from the panel board with 2-3 circuits. You could terminate those close to where the enter the garage wall with a 4" box on each, then run conduit from there. Lights on one circuit, power plugs on the rest. If/when you move out, you drop all the conduit back to the 4" boxes and cap the feed wires. Bub-bye. The conduit is reasonably cheap, it's all the boxes and bitty fittings that run up the bill. So I'd scarf what I could and haul it with me. Er, did that when we moved. Had a 4 way conduit light run on the garage ceiling and some wall boxes. I left the screw holes in the sheet rock for the next owners.

 

[sammm]

Welcome! I think I've seen that car at an autocross before. Have you ever run it at a Texas Region SCCA event or maybe an SCCA Divisional event held in DFW?

 

[mtbzack]

Falcon- thanks. I think right now the light circuit also has the garage door opener on it, but I'll have to check. If it is only the center light, I'll probably drop the power from there and run my 6 2x4' T10s from there.

Samm - Yes, I've run a number of events in DFW/TXRegion. While I made the Tour this year, I missed last weekends DIV because we'd corded tires.

 

[Falcon67]

I need to put a security light on my daughters house. I look at the garage last night and there is a hot plug in the ceiling for the door opener and a switched light circuit. Didn't get as far as trying to see if they were on the same circuit. I would imagine since they are within a few feet of each other.