Shop lighting score

[Ike Carlson]

I scored some led lights for my shop this week. 20 4ft sticks and 8 2ftx4ft luminaires that have been converted to no-ballast led with 4 4ft sticks each. The total of all, plus my 3 existing led fixtures adds up to 185,000 lumens. The shop is 40x80.

I am planning to use 4 sticks on every other rafter and then 2 luminaires on each of the remaining rafters. Sticks and luminairs on 2 different switches so I can control the brightness and work on one circuit while the other is giving light.

Is this going to be bright enough? Too bright? I like to see what I am doing.


The sticks are two different colors in my layout only because they are different kinds. My plan is to run wire down the center and tee off for each row. Is there a better way? Maybe run a horseshoe? Maybe two runs and tee?

 

[Shiftless]

Did you get all of those fixtures free? Score!
There are lots of variables besides the number of lumens and the total square feet. But with that said, I’d guess that you are going to have a good amount of light for working in your shop. You might want to add some task lighting over your work bench and stationary machines like lathe, mill, grinder, etc.

 

[cybrdyke]

No one can tell you if it's going to be bright enough for a bunch of reasons, the first one being the definition of "bright". Normally, in a new installation, you would determine the amount of foot-candles that you need and then design the lighting system to achieve that goal. Since you were able to score some free stuff , you're kinda doing this in reverse order. That's OK, but without knowing the ceiling heights, reflectances, and the photometrics of the light fixtures, there's no way to actually know how "bright" it will be. Incidentally, total lumens is not useful figure. I know that there are Youtubers who make all kinds of crazy claims about total lumens, but they're all full of BS. The good news is that if you put the fixtures with no-ballasts up and they're not bright enough, you will likely be able to find an LED tube that's brighter and you can just swap them in.
As for the wiring, I'm wondering why all the connections and tees? I'd just run a circuit from one fixture to the next, to the next and so on. You can do the strips on one circuit with no connections and the 2x4's on another.
Good luck,
CD