Shop lighting?

What does everyone do for shop lighting? I have one 6 lamp four foot T5 high bay in my shop that I really like and unless some one persuades me otherwise I will probably just order 3 more of them. I have heard good things about LED high bays but have no personal experience with them so I am not even sure where to start with those. The T5 light fixture I bought was $100 and $70 for 25 lamps so I think its hard to beat for the money.

I am also curious what is the best way to hook up these high bays? The light I have will work on 120v or 240v. I understand its cheaper to run it out 240. but its also more expensive to wire it up that way. Wired 120v. it draws 3 amps, and 240v. it draws 1.5 amps. I am wondering what the looks like translated into actual running costs. I personally don't think I would see much difference in my power bill since I am only dealing with 4 lights. Also I looked at lots of fixtures before I found these and these were the only ones I seen that said they would run on 240v. I am curious how easy it will be to find a new 240v ballast if and when I ever need it.

Thanks for any suggestions

T5 high bays are fine, but that's about 6 years out of date by now. LED high bays are the way to roll. Nice pure white light, and good lamp efficacy (they don't dim and change color as they age like fluorescent lamps do). All commercial fixtures these days operate on about whatever voltage you want to feed it at, so don't worry about that.

mdshunk said:

T5 high bays are fine, but that's about 6 years out of date by now. LED high bays are the way to roll. Nice pure white light, and good lamp efficacy (they don't dim and change color as they age like fluorescent lamps do). All commercial fixtures these days operate on about whatever voltage you want to feed it at, so don't worry about that.

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Would you care to share link on the specific fixtures you would use? The LED high bays I have seen just don't seem like they are built for a shop. In my experience T5 high bays seem to work better the higher you can get them. Is that also true of LEDs?

thanks

An "LED high bay" is about as generic of a description as you could hope for. The manufacturer doesn't much matter. Buy what your local electrical supply house sells. How high are your ceilings? You know that "high bay" is an actual prescriptive requirement for how high they must be mounted? There are also "low bay" fixtures, intended to be mounted at lower heights. Low bay is about 16-24 feet, and high bay is 24-40 feet.

High Bay Lighting | Industrial LED Lighting | Big Ass Light

Not that cheap but really bright. Put some in a small room and didn't put individual switches. Have to wear sunglasses.

I have some LED high bay lights in my shop, as well as 6 bulb T5HO with mirrored reflectors. I like the LED, but they are pricey. Break even between the T5 and LED was about 3,000 hours of run time based on published specifications. With a light meter app on my phone, the T5 were about as published, the LED were a little brighter. Both fixtures were universal voltage.

Voltage doesn't make a cost difference for operation. You buy watts from the power company, not volts. I ran all mine 240V, as you get twice as many lights on a given wire size, as well as twice as many lights per switch.

I like the LED light a little better.

There are linear type led fixtures that look like fluorescents, but I have no experience with them.

I have pasted a link similar to the LED high bay I bought, but don't buy this one. Call them and find out when they will have more prismatic lenses in stock. They were the largest LED high bay lights I could find, and are about equivalent to a 4 bulb T5HO fixture.

I tried both the aluminum and the prismatic reflector, and the prismatic is the way to go. The prismatic gives backlight, and shields the emitter from view unless you are almost directly underneath the lamp. You can see the emitter directly with the aluminum reflector from clear across the shop, and the emitter is obnoxiously, even painfully bright. If you sign up, e-conolight will have a 10 to 15 % off sale shortly. A 16% off just expired Saturday.

https://www.e-conolight.com/indoor-...y-aluminum-reflector-20-736-lumens-4000k.html

I disagree that LED's are the way to go on 1/18/16. Maybe in a year maybe in 5 years. I looked at this a lot over the last 1-2 years. I wanted to put LED's up in the worst way but just can't see the justification now. The T5 lumens/watt are about the same as LED's so no real efficiency justification. The LED's are about 3+ times more cost per fixture. So as of now no payback so how to justify the extra cost other than to say you have the latest wizbang gadget hanging from your ceiling (unless you get some sort of utility/government funded incentive). I wired my building and installed switched 120v receptacles on the ceiling. Installed plug-in power cords on the fixtures, mounted them, and plugged them in. That guy that sells t5 fixtures on ebay is hard to beat.

4 Lamps T5 HO High Low Bay Light Fixture Shop Warehouse Lighting 4' UL Listed | eBay

Includes Bulbs 6 Lamp T5 High Output Fluorescent High Bay Light Fixture Shop | eBay

I have a Big Asss LED light fixture above a machine. It is very very nice and bright. If I had Leno money, I'd have them throughout my shop. But for under $100 each of craigslist new in the box, I have (8) HO T5 4' 8-bulb fixtures through out my 2000 sqft shop. It is brighter than daylight in here and is awesome!

I guess pot growers use these same 8-bulb fixtures and that is why there are always so many to choose from, new in box, on CL.

I wasn't sold on the LED high bay lights until I bought some and hung them up on a temporary set-up. High bay LED with a prismatic reflector on one end, LED with aluminum reflector in the middle, and 6 bulb T5 on the other end.

For mine, the emitters are about 23' above the floor. The building interior is white.

Jaxian said:

High Bay Lighting | Industrial LED Lighting | Big Ass Light

Not that cheap but really bright. Put some in a small room and didn't put individual switches. Have to wear sunglasses.

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I am using this brand and am very well pleased. I bought the motion sensing feature and like this too.

I did a little looking up on those big ass fixtures. Here is what I found for one particular model that was reviewed:

Big Ass LED fixture: 13,000 lumens, efficiency 108 lumens per watt, fixture cost $399

T5 low bay from ebay (4 tube): 20,000 lumens, efficiency 93 lumens per wat, fixture cost $75 shipped

There are other factors that are left out. CRI, lumen maintenance, etc but the cost difference is still too much. I still say it is best on 1/18/16 to buy the t5's then in 5 years the led fixtures will probably be more efficient and about the cost of the t5's today.

On the 120/240 Volt question, as others have said, the cost of operating the lamps themselves is the same. To phrase it more properly, the power company charges for KiloWatt-Hours. And Watts are the product of Volts and Amps. So if you double the Voltage and halve the amperage, you wind up with the exact same thing.

Where the difference comes into play is in the wiring from the breaker panel to those fixtures. Those wires can not and do not transmit that power without losses. Those losses are in the form of heat that is produced and is calculated by P = I^2 R (I squared R). So the energy lost is proportional to the square of the current in the wires. At 120 Volt operation the current is twice as much so the power lost in WIRES OF THE SAME GAUGE and LENGTH is four times as much as it would be with 240 Volt operation.

If you choose to use 120 Volt operation, your choices are to suffer greater power losses or move up to a higher gauge wire to keep the resistance lower. But, you must increase the cross sectional area of the wire by a factor of four (to decrease the resistance by that factor) to make up for the increase in current by that factor. And copper is expensive.

For a short wire run, the losses are very small and you do not need to worry about it. Just go with the 120 Volt version and sleep well at night.

A rough calculation of the cost difference using 12 gauge wiring at a distance of 100 feet:

Resistance of 12 AWG wire: 0.162 Ohms per 100 feet

Total resistance for 100 foot run (both ways): 0.324 Ohms

Current for your four lights:
At 120 Volts: 12 Amps
At 240 Volts: 6 Amps

Power loss at 240 Volts = 6*6*0.324 = 11.66 Watts

Power loss at 120 Volts = 12*12*0.324 = 46.66 Watts

One month/20 day lost energy cost, assuming $0.10 per KW hour and 10 hours per day of operation:

At 240 Volts: 0.01166 KW * 200 Hours * $0.10 = $0.233

At 120 Volts: 0.04666 KW * 200 Hours * $0.10 = $0.933

In short, you save about $0.70 per month of operation by stepping up to 240 Volt operation. Your savings decrease quickly if the wire run is shorter and they increase quickly if it is longer.

My .02
What is best .....
It depends!
It depends on your preferences of light. (Color and brightness)
It depends on your building (ceiling height, interior color)
It depends on your type of work. (Dusty/smokey or clean)
It depends on your budget

Why?
IME, LED's are great at super bright, focussed light. Flashlights, machine lights, etc. or, really high ceilings with reflector and a prismatic cover.
However, they can be pretty harsh on your eyes on lower ceilings.
I just hung a string of LED's on my 8' ceiling... 20,000 lumens over a 25' length. DON'T LOOK UP! If they were at 12-14' it would be great.
I have some T-5's in my shop at 10 and 12'
For me, at 14' I prefer T-5's (or lower height, T-8's...easier on the eyes)
For higher, it's a draw.
CRI is often better with T-5's over LED.
It also depends where you get your lights. There is a lot of junk in the LED market mixed in with the good.

If you have high ceilings, white interior, and unlimited budget, check out what BA did with the inverted mounts on the indoor tennis building. That would be my preference, BUT, how long till dust, dirt, weld smoke etc settled on them and they needed cleaned? 1 yr, 2yrs?
It depends...

IMHO you won't be dispaointed with either, i love my 4 win 5'T5 sealed units, all the more so with the daylight tubes i now run in them, its litrally like daylight in there and that really helps see things.

That said, one of my customers just put in led high bays in a new circa 3K foot unit, there bloody nice too, but there costly. If they live up life span wise it will be a wash, but its going to be a good few years before then!

About the only thing to say for certain going forwards its cost and efficiency war now between the 2, theoretically LED's should win, but for the foreseeable future there very much going to be a bit more costly at day one install. T5's on the other hand are cheaper, equally because you can change failed tubes + individual ballasts, there a lot more maintenance options, unlike LED's total unit replacement. Because whilst most of the leds will undoubtably still work in 20 years time all be it a nats dimmer, i still have my doubts about a lot of the LED drivers electronics still working!

Thanks for all the great replys. So it looks like for the time being I will order 3 more t5 high bays for $300 and be good and have well lit usable building. Maybe a few years down the road when the price on LEDs come down I will invest in those.

thanks again

any recommendations of lighting over welding tables? i've noticed at times if the light is behind you it interferes with the autodark

i have a few 6 tube T8 lights and they are great,i have them on plug in wireless remotes so they only are on when I need them so that by itself is a great savings. However I go LED where ever i can. I re-lamped the track lights in my GFs gallery with LED spots and besides saving electric costs the light is much crisper and brighter and the higher CRI makes everything sharper. There are 20 lamps which were originally 60 watts each, now 11 watts. saving 440 watts 8 hours a day.

BTW, the GE stick LED lamps that are 3 for 11 bucks at Home Depot are great,. I have replaced every bulb I could with these.

How long do the T5 bulbs last?

I'm looking for lighting options in my new 2000 sqf building with 16' height. I figured LED was the only way to go but after reading here I'm not sure.

One big factor to me is changing bulbs. I don't like heights so the LED lifespan is a huge consideration for me.

I have also considered dumpster diving for some old T8 fixtures and putting the LED tubes in them. Does anyone have experience with them?

T5HO is supposed to have a 45k hour life span. I have never had close to that out of them. The retrofit tubes are ok for low ceiling height. 16' I would be running LED low bays. We have some of the Cree low bays and I really like them.

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For you guys with LED lights in shops, do you have problems with them acting like a strobe light? The only ceiling lights I have right now are in the kitchen, and you can definitely see it in food mixers, the dog's tail, etc.

Anyone have issues with them in the shop?

Chip