Shop Lighting

[Rob Will]

Just wondering, does anybody besides me think the Daylight bulbs have a blue tint to them?
Found that a bit hard to take after years of basic shop/utility grade lights, so I mixed them and seems better.

Have to try the full spectrum though, thanks.

Al

Al,

I did a side-by-side test in my shop and came to the same conclusion (the daylights were too blue). Designer warm whites were too pink. Sooooo.......I just stayed with regular Cool White because for me, they seemed brighter. Having said that, I have not experimented with Full Spectrum bulbs but that might be of interest.

In my house, I use Designer Warm White because the color temperature blends well with the light from incadesent bulbs.

Rob

[Al Willits]

Thanks, until the wife came out and said they looked blue also, I was afraid the 60's had come back to haunt me...
Have to check HD/Lowes/Menards, one of them must have a 2 pack of full spectrum to try.
For some reason the blue tint doesn't seem as bright as the Daylight bulbs, might just be me though..
Curently I'm using a combination of the blue tint, daylight and three flood lights I used for spray painting, when I really need light, god knows what anything I finish will look like outside though...
Al

[Ralph Snodgrass]

When I wanted to improve the lighting in my shop ( 6 200 watt incondecent lights), I debated on the purchase of new flor. fixtures, but decided it would be quite expensive. I found '1000 Lights' on the internet and found they had 80 watt screw-in Flour. bulb. I ordered 3 6000 K ' daylight" bulbs. Works great with half the power requirement.

[Chris Padilla]

I have 8 8' T8 electronic ballast fluourescent lights (takes 4 4' bulbs). I bought a mixture of 3 differerent color temps and mixed them all in. I figured I've got everything covered and it works for me. Everything was purchased at the borg.

[Sam Chambers]

I found '1000 Lights' on the internet and found they had 80 watt screw-in Flour. bulb. I ordered 3 6000 K ' daylight" bulbs. Works great with half the power requirement.

Ralph, did you mean "1,000 bulbs"? I found that one OK, and they have quite a selection of screw-in compact flourescent bulbs. I hadn't thought of going that route in the shop. I recently put a 200 watt equivalent in my garage, and it's like a small sun!

[Chris Friesen]

Your Home Depot sells full-spectrum, high CRI, bulbs?
I simply couldn't find anything decent locally. All HD here sells are standard (ie. 'cool' and other) bulbs, and one type of 'daylight' bulb which was more expensive than those Excellas I bought.

Around here HD sells T12 Phillips "Natural Sunshine" bulbs with a CR around 92. They're fairly expensive though.

[Pete Brown]

Around here HD sells T12 Phillips "Natural Sunshine" bulbs with a CR around 92. They're fairly expensive though.

Just keep in mind that most daylight bulbs aren't the same as full spectrum. I'm not familiar with the Phillips, but I haven't found any true full spectrum lamps at any of the local box stores.

Pete

[Boyd Gathwright]

....Ben, this thread might be of some help:

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthre...869#post451869

Cheers

Hello all,

I need to replace most of the 4 foot fluorescent bulbs in my shop. It has been a long time since I saw this topic come up. Presently I have a combination of bulbs, Cool Whites and Daylights. The Daylights in my opinion are much brighter than the cool whites. The Cool Whites seem to give off a pink cast. I remember this being brought up somewhere before about which bulb is better for a shop. It has to do with how much a light bulb simulates daylight. Calvin or Kalven (sp) sorry for the spelling. In my case I would like to get it as bright as possible. I have to replace about 30 of the 48 that are in there.

[Rick Cabot]

Hi Ben
We found the following article very helpful when we built our new shop. We were initially going to install the 8' sections but found that the 4' sections were more easily managed and had greater supply potential for the lighting bulb inserts. 8' foot bulbs were just too hard to manage! We found that the daylight bulbs were far superior to anything else that we tried.

http://www.taunton.com/finewoodworki...F.aspx?id=2771

Regards
Rick Cabot

[Mike Deschler]

Ever since we moved to our new house, I have had a real problem with shop lighting in general since there is no ambient light present. I tried various combinations of 4ft and 8ft fixtures both with 2 and 4 light combinations and figured that I would need upwards of 20 fixtures to get the amount of light I would be comfortable with. My shop is very dark so it was that or nothing.

I ran across an article several years ago about essentially driving each tube with its own electronic ballast and achieving greater light output from each tube and thought I would experiment further with this concept. I bought a few 2 tube t8 fixtures at H.D. for approximately $6 each and removed the ballast from the donor fixture and assembled it into the other fixture along with a pull chain switch. Additionally, you have to do some more modifications such as paralleling the outputs from each electronic ballast but being an electronics engineer by training, this was not a problem. This btw, can only be accomplished with electronic ballasts, do not try this with magnetic ballasts.

Two years later, I am running a very bright shop (24x32 with 10 T8 32W 2 tube fixtures with daylite bulbs) and enjoying it every time I turn the light switch on. Average cost per fixture for all modifications is approximately $16-17 less bulbs and without a power switch. I am not experiencing any excessive rf noise and can play my am radio anywhere in the shop and have not had any tubes burn out from being overdriven. So far, I have only replaced one ballast but the cost was only $7 (inflation) by buying a new fixture and removing its ballast and using it in the faulty fixture. I haven't analyzed the failure mode but suspect it was one of the drive transistors failing. The bulbs do indeed run hotter but the ballasts remain cool to the touch and as a result, I do not feel there is a safety/fire problem with my approach that I know of.

Needless to say, I am pleased with the results.

[Ben Abate]

Hi Fellows,

I have to thank all of you for your replies, Boyd that was a pretty interesting chart. I will have to agree with whom ever said that these specialty bulbs are not available at the local H-D or any place else that is for general purpose use.

It seems that we have two groups of thought on this subject. One group likes the Full Spectrum and the other group likes the Daylights. Boyd; do you feel that the Cinema bulbs fall into the Full Spectrum range or the Daylight range.

As I mentioned in my first post that I have a mxture of Daylights and Cool Whites and possibly a few of what ever. I would have to say that I have more Daylights than anything else but I don't believe of the 54 bulbs 50% or them are Daylights. I have not notice the blue that a few fellows mentioned. But then again I might be used to it or I don't know what to look for. In my opinion from what all of you have contributed a Full Spectrum 5500, CRI of 90 -95 would be a great bulb. You fellows have me thinking that if I would go with 54 Daylights that it maybe too white and put strain on my eyes.

I can remember when I put this shop together 8-10 years ago how I thought that I could get a sun burn in there it was so bright. Now years later I am noticing the lack of light. The yellow I guess you would call it. It is like someone put a dimmer on my wall switches. I guess you just don't realize over time how they loose their ability to give proper lighting.

Its funny since I started this thread a week ago and reading all of your posts how I have been taking notice of all the lights in my office and our board rooms and just about every place else that has fluorescents lighting. I was sitting in a meeting on Wednesday and noticed how the lights were botheing me sort of. There was not enough light in the room, I live in the Pittsburgh area and at 5 pm the sun is down but there is still some daylight but the lighting was terrible.

Again, thank you for all of your comments. It is nice to have all of you participate in the topic. I am always amazed at the effort that you fellows will go to, to help out others.

Thanks Ben

[Boyd Gathwright]

Hello again Ben,
.... Let me answer your question this way. I will be replacing all my original bulbs with the Cinema bulbs as my old one's burn out. Excuse the expression but it is the difference between NIGHT and DAY. I feel these give me the best light to work with. As one becomes more aware or more sensitive to the subject you begin to see what you did NOT reconize before.

Good luck on your choice.

Boyd

Hi Fellows,

I have to thank all of you for your replies, Boyd that was a pretty interesting chart. I will have to agree with whom ever said that these specialty bulbs are not available at the local H-D or any place else that is for general purpose use.

It seems that we have two groups of thought on this subject. One group likes the Full Spectrum and the other group likes the Daylights. Boyd; do you feel that the Cinema bulbs fall into the Full Spectrum range or the Daylight range.

As I mentioned in my first post that I have a mxture of Daylights and Cool Whites and possibly a few of what ever. I would have to say that I have more Daylights than anything else but I don't believe of the 54 bulbs 50% or them are Daylights. I have not notice the blue that a few fellows mentioned. But then again I might be used to it or I don't know what to look for. In my opinion from what all of you have contributed a Full Spectrum 5500, CRI of 90 -95 would be a great bulb. You fellows have me thinking that if I would go with 54 Daylights that it maybe too white and put strain on my eyes.

I can remember when I put this shop together 8-10 years ago how I thought that I could get a sun burn in there it was so bright. Now years later I am noticing the lack of light. The yellow I guess you would call it. It is like someone put a dimmer on my wall switches. I guess you just don't realize over time how they loose their ability to give proper lighting.

Its funny since I started this thread a week ago and reading all of your posts how I have been taking notice of all the lights in my office and our board rooms and just about every place else that has fluorescents lighting. I was sitting in a meeting on Wednesday and noticed how the lights were botheing me sort of. There was not enough light in the room, I live in the Pittsburgh area and at 5 pm the sun is down but there is still some daylight but the lighting was terrible.

Again, thank you for all of your comments. It is nice to have all of you participate in the topic. I am always amazed at the effort that you fellows will go to, to help out others.

Thanks Ben

[Chris Padilla]

One thing I see not mentioned here is the color of your shop walls. Reflection of light can go a long ways as well as the quality or color of your bulbs.

I painted everything I could in my shop a nice semi-gloss white. It was god awful boring painting white everywhere but my shop lights up very nicely. The semi-gloss also makes wall wipe downs a little easier

For my shop cabinets, I chose a nice clean, white maple cabinet. White, white, white!

[Bill Brady]

You will want to use the T8 lamps in any installation. Both 4' and 8' fixtures are available.

With T12 lamps there is a loss of light output of 30 to 40 percent in about 2 years. This is as little as 10 percent over the life of the lamp with T8.

With the T8 lamps and electronic ballasts when you loose one lamp in the fixture the others will stay lit.

The federal government has also limited how long T12 lamps and fixtures will be available with the 2005 Energy Policy Act.