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Originally Posted by geeteeohguy
Yet another vote for LED's. I converted a friend's faulty fluorescent lamp to a ballast-eliminating LED 'Daylight' lamp (4 foot tubes) and it's like the sun shining in the room. Uses 30% less energy than ballast-type fluorescent tubes, and is more than twice as bright. No heat generated, either. Be sure to get the ballast-eliminating (bypass) tubes. The ones that advertise 'plug and play' with the original ballast suck....and have all the problems that ballast systems have. LED tubes have gotten downright cheap, too.
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Been going through this in my shop. So far on fixtures I have up, the light pattern is awesome. To preface, when it came to shop lighting, I looked & looked, checked out what friends had experienced with LED lighting in their own buildings. A cousin had just finished converting a bunch of T8 troffers in several of his 8-12K sq ft commercial warehouses. A fellow I've leased space off of in the past, gave me fifteen 2x4 ft T8 fluro troffers as he pulled them out of one of his office complexes. Nearly all were in great shape, he'd even replaced many of the clear plastic lens over the last few years. Doubt I use all of these fixtures, maybe 10-12 of them. Such fixtures are out there used in nice shape, last Sun, I was offered half a dozen @ a local outdoor flee market for $10 a piece.
As a standard sized 4 bulb troffer, each stamped steel fixture is 4" thick & the opaque plastic lense/cover swings down. Removing the ballast & rewiring each fixture took me about 10 minutes. Where ive been spending some extra time on these fixtures concerns the ones that are going up the highest in the shop. When the weather is nice, I like to open up the big doors. My shop is surrounded by oak trees, & while I've had small birds fly through the shop, I realize the day is coming, that will be faced with birds trying to build a nest up in the red iron. In prev warehouse space, i found a good aim with an airsoft gun works fairly well to scare off such birds. To combat the same thing happening on top of a flat light structure, where there isn't a straight shot, have built several curved top caps which have riveted to to the tops of a few troffers. The design should solve the problem, while I'd like to purchase a used scissorlift, & eventually will need one, am doing my best not to create more needs to be up in the air 14ft cleaning.