Putting in Fluorescents

[skelrad]

My 3 1/2 car garage (2 wide, but 1 L shaped bay at the back) currently has a whopping 3 incandescent lights in it - 1 in the middle of the 2 car portion, 1 in the back single bay, and 1 around the corner in the 1/2 bay storage area. I'm not going to be in the house a whole lot longer, so don't want to do a full fledged rewiring of the place, but I want more light to make working out there a little easier. So two questions:

1) Found a great deal on 4' 4 bulb fluorescent fixtures on craigslist from a guy doing a garage remodel ($5/fixture). I don't have any point of reference to compare, but am I right in assuming that if I just do a straight swap and replace each incandescent light with a 4 bulb fluorescent fixture that the garage will be noticeably brighter? I'm not sure how bright the fluorescents are compared with a weeny 60w incandescent. I know it depends on the bulbs I put in the fluorescents, but let's assume a typical ho hum cheap bulb.

2) I do not want to do any rewiring in the ceiling to have more fixture locations (long story, just not gonna do it in this house). Is there any code or safety reason that I can't use the existing wiring that services each individual light right now and wire 2 fluorescent fixtures to each one - essentially doubling the fixtures without having to wire up new boxes in the ceiling?

Basically, I'm looking to make my shop more comfortable without doing much work to it. I just won't be here long enough to justify spending more time on it than this.

 

[ForceFed70]

1) Yes, a 4 lamp fixture will put out much more light than an incandescent. If the fixtures you are looking at are T12 then don't bother. There is a reason everyone is getting rid of them. They should be free if T12 - and even then I personally wouldn't use them. My time is worth more than that to install junk - but perhaps money is tight for you and T12 would certainly be an upgrade over incandescent.

2) No you shouldn't need to re-wire. Get a flush mountable fixture and mount over the existing box, then feed the wires through. Make sure to use proper strain-reliefs, connectors, etc.

 

[skelrad]

Good point. I'll double check on what kind of fixture it is. I'm not so tight on money that I need to put in anything junky.

So it's okay to attach more than one bank of fluorescents to each existing box then? These fixtures I'm looking at are not flush mounts, but hang about a foot below the ceiling.

 

[ForceFed70]

Likely your lighting circuit is wired with 14-2 romex that will support a number of flourescent fixtures. So I wouldn't be too worried about that. You can't go crazy or anything but your wiring should support at least 6 fixtures.

If the fixture is to hang, then you can make it work. Your old light box becomes a junction box. You can get a cover for it that will allow a piece of wire to hang down to your fixture. Just make sure you use what I believe you americans call MC (metal sheeth) wire for the length of wire that hangs down to the fixture.