Too much light?

N

nudave

New member
I'm looking to install some excellent lighting in the my garage. I have a two car garage, with not a lot room to the sides but a little room in the back. I think it measures 20x25? Or something around that. Anyway, I was going to install 4 flourescent bars (2 lights a piece, for a total of 8) with cold start up. Also, two 150w (one from each side) halogens shining from the sides to the middle of the garage. The reason I'm asking is so I don't want to spend more than I have to and dont want to not use something.



Thanks for your reply.



Dave
 
My garage is about that size, maybe a tad smaller (more like 20x20) and I have 6 dual 4' flourescent light fixtures and two 100w incandecents on the ceiling. I also have two 4' single flourescents on the wall. It's not too much light by a longshot. I really ought to have two more wall-mounted lights at least.



What size bars are you talking about?
 
You'll never have enough light, let alone too much :D



The part of the shop I use as a wash/detail bay is about the size you're talking about, or at least in between yours and Aurora40's.



I have three 8' twin-tube fluorescent fixtures on the near wall (total of six 8' tubes). It's OK but not as much as I'd like- not enough to spot the kind of light marring that really bugs me on my good cars.



I have a bunch of 8' tubes over the wash bay (twelve or 18 depending how you count the ones in the middle of the shop), but I have a high ceiling so maybe it doesn't really relate to your shop.



I too recommend incandescent lights, especially for swirl-spotting; they work *MUCH* better for me than fluorescents. Get high-wattage ones, I have three 300W fixtures over the wash bay and another three in the middle of the shop. Sometimes the ones that aren't right over the car are the lights that show the marring.



I have to *still* use halogens (two two-head units, 1000/1250W each) and a high-wattage (300w) incandescent trouble light to see marring clearly.



Those 150W halogens won't contribute much light. 1000w worth of halogens would be better, but not as impressive as you'd think.



Get more lights. You don't want unpleasant surprises when you see your "perfect" car under the lights in a parking lot at night ;)
 
Thanks a bunch guys....



This being a new house I will have to run a new line from the CB box (20 amp) to the garage to power these new lights. As the lights I have now are two incandescent and the garage door opening light. NOT GOOD!



To answer Aurora's question, I was thinking the 4'. And I will go with more powerful halogens..I can replace the two incandescent with 300w (I think they are 150's now). I can see the power meter spinning like mad when I'm all lit up. 20 amps will be ok to do this?



Dave
 
ha ha, your too funny :) It's sad but true. I moved here in '97 to attend RIT. My people back home (downstate NYC) can't believe it when I tell them about our weather.



The Autobody/painting season is even shorter. Your doing the right thing with a garage as it's a must up here. I want to buy a house but can't find one with a garage big enough for me to do restoration and painting.



My dinky one car garage now is "barely" enough to detail in. But I got plenty of heat in there. That's a must up here too.
 
daveb- I dunno about the power requirements, but I'd check with somebody before buying anything. If you also want to power any equipment you may well need a second line from the CB box. It's not that tough to overload a 20A circuit.



Also make sure you can safely replace your 150w bulbs with the 300w ones. The ceiling of your garage is not someplace where you want to overheat the electrical system ;)



I greatly prefer the 8' tubes myself. Guess it's personal preference but I can't see using 4' ones instead.
 
he can do a simple power budget. From what's been posted so far, it seems he's only running "resistive" loads. Of which the Halogens or Incandesdent lights will draw more the most.



If he throws in any "reactive" loads the might run into problems. They should always be run on their own leg (or a leg that's not in use by anything else at the time) anyway.
 
I picked up the Black and Decker Home Wiring guide at Borders over the weekend. Read some interesting things....one thing I'm thinking about is doing a subpanel circuit breaker box in the garage. They suggest running a dual pole breaker from the main panel to the sub panel and branch off from there. This sounds like a good idea...then I can run some different receptacles and lighting in the basement as well.



Some more information about the garage - One side is drywalled and insulated (wall closest to the house). The garage measures 22x20. See here for a pic - http://www.starshadow.com/~dave/house/4-16-05/target38.html and http://www.starshadow.com/~dave/house/5-27-05/target10.html (thats me standing there)



This was with the lights above (can see one of them) on. Still pretty dark :( (Not happy as you can see in the picture about the lighting...haha)



Dave
 
Well, now's the time to get things all figured out, while you're still at the just-framed point.



I'd get the box. I'm a big fan of dedicated systems for the garage.
 
I'd still reccommend that you decide how much power you will be needing out there (present and future) and base your sub panel off that. Hopefully that book covers "floating neutral's" and the local codes for wiring sub-panels.



While you may still elect to do the work yourself, having a licensed electrian look at it may help.



There's alot of power/amps coming into your home, and the risk to life and property is great. More than one homeowner has found out what those books don't tell you.



That being if you do manage to burn your house down and it's determinded to be due to faulty, or improperly installed electical work they did their insurance company will not be cutting a check.
 
Just wanted to leave an update on what happened over the weekend:



The install of the first circuits went great, I now have 2 20 amp circuits with 15 receptacles located in the basement, and will be installing a 4' flourescent above the work bench.



For the garage (YIPPEE!) we haven't done the wiring yet, it was too cold and we ran out of time. What we have planned are 4 4' Flourescents and 2 500W halogens. We figured that the 8' flourescents would be overkill (it would be equal to 30 100w light bulbs...).



The garage work will be done this week on Thursday and Friday. The weather is supposed to get up to the 50's so it will be comfortable. I purchased a 30,000BTU propane heater to take the chill off and plan on using it to heat the garage for the winter details.



I will post pics when the job is finished!
 
Ok, the job is finished. Go to the webpage in my sig for a complete writeup of what was done. I will post pics on Monday.
 
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