Ideal New Shop Lighting

Hello,

Looking to outfit a new 40 x 40 shop with lighting. Currently has some dismal fluorescent that work about as well as you'd expect, especially with the cold.

Big fan of screw-in LED bulbs and spotlights, and can get them fairly reasonable (few dollars per bulb)

Just ran across some 4ft LED "shop lights" drawing 40w, putting out 4100 lumens - picked one up and they seem pretty reasonable. Cheap too, at $15 per 4-ft section, linkable as well.

There will be milling, turning, and welding operations in this shop. I'm looking to light the shop up as a whole, area lighting for individual machines may be tackled later.


Currently leaning towards the 4ft linkable lights, due to their light output and price point, but does anyone have any other thoughts or experience on the matter? Going to be starting with a clean slate, so I am open to any and all suggestions and stories from guys that "wish they would've done it this way"

Have a link to those?

steamandsteel said:

Hello,

Looking to outfit a new 40 x 40 shop with lighting. Currently has some dismal fluorescent that work about as well as you'd expect, especially with the cold.

Big fan of screw-in LED bulbs and spotlights, and can get them fairly reasonable (few dollars per bulb)

Just ran across some 4ft LED "shop lights" drawing 40w, putting out 4100 lumens - picked one up and they seem pretty reasonable. Cheap too, at $15 per 4-ft section, linkable as well.

There will be milling, turning, and welding operations in this shop. I'm looking to light the shop up as a whole, area lighting for individual machines may be tackled later.


Currently leaning towards the 4ft linkable lights, due to their light output and price point, but does anyone have any other thoughts or experience on the matter? Going to be starting with a clean slate, so I am open to any and all suggestions and stories from guys that "wish they would've done it this way"

Click to expand...

You need to provide a lot more information to give you good advice.
I have 16' - 20' fixture hight in a 42 x 84' building I have 24 8' LED fixtures for general lighting. This gives me very uniform lighting that is good for most uses. You have to watch out for bright and dim areas and shadowing. Butstill have machine lights on most machines for seeing very small parts.

For a general machine shop setting with good light,the formula is 1 watt of fluorescent lighting per square foot of floor area, and having Very light ( ie white ) walls and the fixtures are 10 feet off the floor.
"Spot" lighting may be needed at machines. To eliminate spot lighting , you will need 2 watts per foot.
You will need to determine the lumens of fluorescent fixtures versus the LED units.
I have found that while LEDS seem brighter, there are more shawdows so it may mean that LED light does not reflect as well...Not my pay grade to understand that

Rich

I have a much smaller shop 24x30x11. I bought a couple sets of these for a separate 16x24 area. I really like them.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01HBT3BVM/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00__o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I've got 1500w of f54t5ho florescents, linear, in 3 lines down 60' in 2400 sq ft. Ceiling is 12-16', it looks a little dim until you are in there for a while and then its pretty good. Corner grocer just upgraded from t-8's to linear LEDs and it looks great- quite a bit better. My bulbs are years past their replace by date so I was thinking I would go that route when the price is right, I need to ask what he's using and what it cost. Watch the color temperature, I've found over 5000k is too harsh. I experimented with a 100w LED chip and made a 10,000 lumen light that is amazing to work under, and 4 would probably do as well as what I have but would not be well enough distributed to cover the whole area. 6 would probably do the job but I did this a few years ago and the parts were over $200 for the one light. Probably quite a bit cheaper now.

under 20 to 25 ceiling T5.Personally I don't like led.

High roof Metal Halide,,,got to be a high roof

if you can put in skylights,,,really helps with the lights

OK, first it is not Watts that you need, it is Lumens or Candela. The Watt is a unit of power, in this case electric power. The Lumen is the unit that measures the total amount of light that is emitted by a source. The Candela is defined as Lumens per steradian which is a measure of a solid (2D) angle. That is the whole thing behind using more efficient CF and LED bulbs: they provide similar amounts of light while consuming far fewer Watts of electricity. Example: a 13 or 14 Watt LED bulb consumes only 13 or 14 Watts of electricity while providing as much light as a 60 Watt incandescent lamp: it is four times more efficient.

I have converted my 414 sq foot shop to LED tubes. It has 12 of them and the light is excellent, corner to corner. So a four foot LED tube that replaces a 40 Watt fluorescent tube is about the right size for about 35 sq feet. My ceiling is 8 feet but I doubt that there will be much difference between that and your 10 feet as the light should stay inside the room and what you miss from one bulb/tube you will get from it's neighbors. The tubes that I purchased are rated at 2000 Lumens each. So that is 2000 Lumens per 35 sq feet.

I installed them in the same, CHEAP shop light fixtures that I previously had fluorescent tubes in. Those fluorescent tubes gave me continuous problems and would dim as they aged. The LED tubes have been in use for about a year or more now and have given me ZERO problems. No failures, no intermittent light, no fading over time, nothing. ZERO problems. I love them. The LED tubes I used would work with or without a ballast, but I removed the ballasts from the fixtures because the efficiency was about 10% better that way: no power is wasted in the ballasts.



I had over 40 of these fluorescent tubes in my house, shop, and lawn building and I replaced all of them with the LEDs. In many areas, like my den, I was able to replace four bulbs with three or even two with no perceptible loss of light. No complaints from the family either. I am also slowly replacing all the older incandescent and fluorescent screw in bulbs with LED bulbs. Again, in places like the bathrooms where there were multiple bulb fixtures, I am able to use three where there were four incandescent ones. So 240 Watts (4 x 60W) becomes about 40 Watts with no loss of light. And 400 Watts becomes 50 Watts, again with no loss of light.

If you are purchasing new fixtures I would suggest getting the four foot fluorescent type with a diffusing (white plastic) lens/cover. That will make the light from the LED tubes less harsh. This will be better than screw in bulbs which will be more like point sources. I had to buy a couple that had ballasts and then throw those ballasts away. I would bet if you look around a bit, you can probably get them without ballasts and save a bit there. They may even be rewired for LED tubes.

Yes, the LED tubes, when used without ballasts will require that the fixtures be rewired. The ones that I purchased had one pin on each end that was active and the other was a dummy. I simply connected all the wires at one end of the fixture to neutral and all the wires at the other end to the hot wire. But there is another type of LED tube that uses two pins on the same end and the wiring will be different for those.

It would be possible to devise a wiring scheme where either type will work. You would alternate hot and neutral at each end of the fixture AND for each bulb the diagonally opposite pins would be opposite connections. Put another way, starting from one of the long sides of the fixture the connections on both ends would alternate: Hot, Neutral, Hot, Neutral, etc. depending on how many tubes are in the fixture. No matter how you install either type of LED tube, it will work.

Rich Carlstedt said:

For a general machine shop setting with good light,the formula is 1 watt of fluorescent lighting per square foot of floor area, and having Very light ( ie white ) walls and the fixtures are 10 feet off the floor.
"Spot" lighting may be needed at machines. To eliminate spot lighting , you will need 2 watts per foot.
You will need to determine the lumens of fluorescent fixtures versus the LED units.
I have found that while LEDS seem brighter, there are more shawdows so it may mean that LED light does not reflect as well...Not my pay grade to understand that

Rich

Click to expand...

This sounds about right minimum level. If you want to think in lumens aim for 100lm per sqft minimum.
I have 8x54w HO T5 tubes in 3x5m shed(about 150sqft) and there is not much need for extra lightning. Makes 440 watts and 80 000 lumens, about 3 watts per sqft or 260 lamp lumens per sqft.

MattiJ said:

This sounds about right minimum level. If you want to think in lumens aim for 100lm per sqft minimum.
I have 8x54w HO T5 tubes in 3x5m shed(about 150sqft) and there is not much need for extra lightning. Makes 440 watts and 80 000 lumens, about 3 watts per sqft or 260 lamp lumens per sqft.

Click to expand...

I would seriously buy on fixture of the LED and one T5 HO and test drive before you plunk all your money down.Saving a little energy vs "I can see" matters to me at least.Not a fanboy of LED,,not even.

Since we are talking about LED bulbs I thought I would mention that for those of you who use a "drop" light, LED bulbs work great in them. The service bulbs that are sold for drop lights have a heavy filament to withstand abuse and they don't put out enough light in my opinion. LED bulbs are truly drop proof and put out plenty of light.

Mebfab said:

Have a link to those?

Click to expand...

OP:

++ 1 ^^^ Yeah, link please for those cheap lights. Sounds like a great deal to add a few Lumens here and there in my garage shop.

steamandsteel said:

Hello,

Looking to outfit a new 40 x 40 shop with lighting. Currently has some dismal fluorescent that work about as well as you'd expect, especially with the cold.

Big fan of screw-in LED bulbs and spotlights, and can get them fairly reasonable (few dollars per bulb)

Just ran across some 4ft LED "shop lights" drawing 40w, putting out 4100 lumens - picked one up and they seem pretty reasonable. Cheap too, at $15 per 4-ft section, linkable as well.

There will be milling, turning, and welding operations in this shop. I'm looking to light the shop up as a whole, area lighting for individual machines may be tackled later.


Currently leaning towards the 4ft linkable lights, due to their light output and price point, but does anyone have any other thoughts or experience on the matter? Going to be starting with a clean slate, so I am open to any and all suggestions and stories from guys that "wish they would've done it this way"

Click to expand...

I bought some home depot 4 foot units that put out somewhat less but several are several years old now and plugging away, meaning at their price, they are a bargain. Fluorescents dim starting day one and LED do not. I bought 4 direct replacement bulbs[bit pricey] in one fixture in the main part of my shop and a year later they are so much brighter than all the others it is ridiculous

If you have an appropriate number of fixtures consider seeing if you can find a deal on the bulbs, they are more common every day

Mram10 said:

I have a much smaller shop 24x30x11. I bought a couple sets of these for a separate 16x24 area. I really like them.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01HBT3BVM/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00__o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Click to expand...

Lots of the led lights sold nowadays are "integrated" like the one above. When the light source fails you usually need to replace entire fixture and that can be a bit of problem in many cases. Depending on installation and "code" you might need electrician to re-do some of the wiring. Are similar linkable replacements available anymore after 5 years or is the new one 1" too long for the space between fixtures?

Fluorescent/led tubes are easier in this respect, standard size T8 led tubes are probably available even after 30 years and light source replacement is lot easier than with the "integrated" led fixtures.

Don't start with "enough" light.. start with "more than enough"

MattiJ said:

Lots of the led lights sold nowadays are "integrated" like the one above. When the light source fails you usually need to replace entire fixture and that can be a bit of problem in many cases. Depending on installation and "code" you might need electrician to re-do some of the wiring. Are similar linkable replacements available anymore after 5 years or is the new one 1" too long for the space between fixtures?

Fluorescent/led tubes are easier in this respect, standard size T8 led tubes are probably available even after 30 years and light source replacement is lot easier than with the "integrated" led fixtures.

Click to expand...

I solved this problem years ago by wiring outlets in the ceiling. Fixtures plug into the outlets.

DrHook said:

Don't start with "enough" light.. start with "more than enough"

Click to expand...

Agreed. Good shop lightning is IMO one of the best investments. But the amount of power needed can be pretty high.

Illuminance - Recommended Light Level

1000 lux for general workshop or 2000lux for very detailed mechanical work.
I have measured actual 600 lux in the above mentioned scenario, 150sqft shop and 440 watts of T5HO tubes.

OP's 40x40ft would need around-ish 2-8kW of good flourescent/led tubes for the recommend lux levels. Two hundred of those 40 watt units, ie. end-to-end string every 2 feets.

Rich Carlstedt said:

For a general machine shop setting with good light,the formula is 1 watt of fluorescent lighting per square foot of floor area, and having Very light ( ie white ) walls and the fixtures are 10 feet off the floor.
"Spot" lighting may be needed at machines. To eliminate spot lighting , you will need 2 watts per foot.
You will need to determine the lumens of fluorescent fixtures versus the LED units.
I have found that while LEDS seem brighter, there are more shawdows so it may mean that LED light does not reflect as well...Not my pay grade to understand that

Rich

Click to expand...

LED lighting is generally much more directional, that's all. They are a point light source vs. omnidirectional for fluorescent bulbs. The fluorescent light scatters every which way and bounces off the reflectors too, so it doesn't create the same harsh shadows.

steamandsteel said:

Looking to outfit a new 40 x 40 shop ................

Just ran across some 4ft LED "shop lights" drawing 40w, putting out 4100 lumens -......

.....and stories from guys that "wish they would've done it this way"

Click to expand...

No mistakes on my lighting, used a process called "doing research and planning".

My shop is a little smaller. I'm at 1.28 watts of T8 per sq ft or 112 lumen per foot so that is right along with the two "ballpark estimates" in other posts. The point made that "lumens is important not watts" is technically correct but the estimate is flourescent watts, not incandescent. If you look at the technical specs, LEDs are only slightly better than T8s in terms of lumens generated per watt.

Those LEDs you found have better specs than I've seen before. Most of the ones are 32w producing 2100 lumens which is LESS light than from a 4 foot T8's 2800. Like one poster I'm not a fan of LEDs, the ones in the big box stores produce less light per bulb and have a more yellowish light. Yes, folks, I put two in the same fixture with two "old" T8s and the LEDs looked dimmer. I may have to buy one of the ones you found and see if I like those better.

So looks like about 40 bulbs, evenly spread should do a nice job for your shop. I ran my fixtures in three rows, four 4-tube fixtures on the outer rows and three down the center. Separate switches on each row so I can choose to use fewer if necessary (save the planet and all that).

Steve

MattiJ said:

......................Two hundred of those 40 watt units, ie. end-to-end string every 2 feets.

Click to expand...

Recheck your math. 200 x 4100 lumens divided by 1600 sq ft is 512 lumens per sq foot. About 5 times what he needs.

Steve