rfn026

Here's my most recent column from Vintage Motorsport magazine. It deals with garage lighting.

It's time to start making the switch to LED lights. The best part is that you can tell your wife you're going to be saving money by cutting back on the electric bill.

Let us know how that goes for you.

Richard Newton

Bluestripe67

Interesting reading. I'm not in any position to change out my fluorescent lights, but do need to upgrade my hand held work lights. Thanks for the inspiration. Dennis

Ken Sungela

I'm upgrading my garage before I start my next build and was about to add some 4' T8 fixtures to increase brightness. I went to lowes and was about to buy them, when I saw these on the shelf http://www.lowes.com/ProductDisplay?...llow&cId=PDIO1

I bought two and installed in my oversized two car garage. I was impressed with the brightness. Being solid state, they're almost unbreakable and intend to put a few more in the corners of the garage at car level. I would recommend.

phil2302

We went all LED recessed lighting in the garage about 6 months ago. Good ammount of switching options were installed to control the number of lamps on at any time according to need. When they are all on it is just unreal how well lit the space is. Money well spent.

Mr D.

My garage is 600 Sq Ft and has 9 overhead 60W blubs that on any given day 1/2 of those are burned out.

Yes, I'm light poor.

FasterIsBetter

Just a suggestion, pick up a few 100W equivalent LED bulbs and replace the old 60Wers. A 100W LED bulb uses 15W. Less electricity, more and better light. You'd be amazed at the difference. Plus, since they last 25,000 hours (yeah, really), you won't have to replace one for a LONG time.

John McGraw

I love LED lights and use a lot of them in my house, especially in my recessed can lights and other incandescent retrofit areas.

That being said, LED is not a cost effective retrofit for fluorescent lamps in a workshop. The lumen per watt is almost identical for fluorescent and LED lighting, so it does no make sense to pull out fluorescent fixtures to retrofit with LED. Even in a new installation, the pure cost of the LED fixture is a pretty tough pill to swallow, since there is no real energy savings.

Part of my job is doing lighting retrofits on our company's commercial office buildings, and I have looked at several lighting retrofits where they were proposing to replace fluorescent fixtures in parking garages with LED, and the payback just was not there. We will retrofit HID lighting to LED at the drop of a hat, but fluorescent is a different matter. The only thing that you really save is the lamp replacement costs, and it takes a lot of lamp replacements to justify the cost of LED fixtures. The price is coming down, and I have no doubt that sometime in the future, it will make better sense, but it just ain't there now.


Regards, John McGraw

FasterIsBetter

That said, as the cost of LED lighting comes down, the payback may start to make more sense, especially because of the extremely long life of LEDs.

phil2302

Appreciate the above notes on LED cost etc but lets not forget the pureness of the light, flouro just cant compare or compete in that category and dont forget the annoying flicker and hum, the size of the fixtures, the PIA bulb changes and space used to store spares.
Its not always about what makes the most financial sense. If that were the case who would ever buy a Sting Ray?

MiguelsC2

This setup works for me. I like my much cheaper fluorescents.

John McGraw

Actually, that is not entirely true. The color of the light is pretty much up to the person installing the light, and this is true whether you are selecting LED or fluorescent lamps. This is listed in the bulb specs as degrees Kelvin. Most incandescent lamps are somewhere in the 3000K color range. LED lamps are available in a wide range of lamp colors from 3000K to match the look of incandescent lamps, to over 5000K.

Fluorescent lamps are available in colors from about 2700K to 8000K, but anything over 5000K is real specialty stuff. The 3 standard colors are 3000K 3500K and 4100K. As the numbers go up, the light becomes less yellow and more blue-white. 4100K is roughly equivalent to what used to be known as cool white, and 3000K is about what used to be called warm white. I use 5000K color in my shop as that is the whitest lamp available in most lamp suppliers. At the big box stores, you will not find anything over 4100K.

All of my LED lamps in the house are 3000K because I am trying to emulate the look of the original halogen bulbs that were originally in the fixtures. LED lamps also have a wide range of lamp styles, and the PAR20 style lamps that I use in my can lights have the same 38 degree reflector pattern that my original halogen lamps had, so the light distribution is the same. You can get more intense light under a LED by tightening the reflector pattern, but there is no free lunch. any increase in intensity gained by a tighter reflector pattern, is lost in overall light pattern. Lumens is lumens. You can spread them over a larger area at a more uniform level, or you can have very high intensity in a fairly small area.

I chose 5000K in my workshop because it gives the highest apparent light level of all the colors. You can buy 8000K lamps, but these are generally used in operating rooms and are not widely available.


Regards, John McGraw

Faslane

I installed some pole lights at a trucking company, I set 4 30ft poles, 3 lights per pole (175 watt). i put my meater on it and it was pulling 4 amps!!!!!! That is 277 volt but still, 4 amps. the photocell is probably 1 amp. I was amazed.