[Sirrotica]

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.

Agree about the conversion tubes with ballast intact suck. I tried them and they didn't last 6 months. I then started replacing my fluorescent fixtures a couple at a time getting the Feit brand from Costco as I previously posted and have all but one replaced at this time.


I saw the Rural King units, but I've stayed with the Costco/Feit ones so far.

[Firedup6975]

A lot of choices and good ideas here to think about.

Thanks guys!

[72pontiac]

Here you go

[Lemans64]

Dam You guys and Gal get off lucky down in the States, costco feit lights 40 bock for a 2 pack. WTH.
I bought 1 up here in Canada Today, not feit but comparable as costco does not carry them up here. 50 bucks for 1.

https://www.costco.com/Feit-4'-Linka...100462723.html
USA above
canada below.

https://www.costco.ca/Innova-LED-Gro...100415413.html Not the same as in store but similar and same brand. Not linkable either.
Ones in store are shop lights not Grow lights, but same manufacturer and look the same. Not growing plants or other stuff.

[TAKerry]

2018-10-15_04-44-05 by Kerry Grubb, on Flickr
Not the best pic I have, but you can see a couple of the 4' lights in this pic. I have 8 total in a 24 x 40 area, 4 down each side spaced about 4' apart and divided up the width of the building in thirds. I plan on putting a white ceiling in which will help a bit. I only have 2 small windows, but with these lights its like daytime.

[TAKerry]

Originally Posted by Lemans64

Dam You guys and Gal get off lucky down in the States, costco feit lights 40 bock for a 2 pack. WTH.
I bought 1 up here in Canada Today, not feit but comparable as costco does not carry them up here. 50 bucks for 1.

https://www.costco.com/Feit-4'-Linka...100462723.html
USA above
canada below.

https://www.costco.ca/Innova-LED-Gro...100415413.html Not the same as in store but similar and same brand. Not linkable either.
Ones in store are shop lights not Grow lights, but same manufacturer and look the same. Not growing plants or other stuff.

Not to hijack, but my brother from the Great White North was visiting for the holiday, I was shocked at the prices of items he was telling me about!

[ry57pont]

i bought these and really like them

https://www.amazon.com/Hyperikon-Dua...be+light&psc=1

[Firedup6975]

Originally Posted by ry57pont

i bought these and really like them

https://www.amazon.com/Hyperikon-Dua...be+light&psc=1

I think we saw these on display at Home Depot, but they didn’t have them lit and the employees were of no help in lighting them for us to see them lit. So Mike got POd, and we left. That store is really going down hill these days.

['ol Pinion head]

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.

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.

['ol Pinion head]

Originally Posted by Sirrotica

Agree about the conversion tubes with ballast intact suck. I tried them and they didn't last 6 months. I then started replacing my fluorescent fixtures a couple at a time getting the Feit brand from Costco as I previously posted and have all but one replaced at this time....

Since late November the local Lowes & Home Depot have only had in big packs, the 4 ft conversion bulbs that work with a ballast. Took driving into the city to buy 2 dozen of the correct style from an electrical supplier.

Am in and out of Sam's every couple weeks. The last time I went down the isle where Sams offered something for an LED shop light, the cheap POS used a LED rope light setup inside, not replaceable 4 ft bulbs. The entire deal is throw away, just like the $8 LED rope lights at Harbor Freight.

[unruhjonny]

Originally Posted by Will

...
Fluorescents, even the new T5s, lose light output much more rapidly over their lifespan than LEDs. Plus LEDs typically work much better in cold temps. I can see no reason why anyone would willingly install fluorescent lights any more.

The discussion up to this point was great, and timely, I have been meaning to upgrade my crappy garage lighting for about a year now - so I appreciate all this info;
I was up to reading all this going to look for a screaming deal on a couple to four more used four bulb fluorescent fixtures to wire up with the two I got from my old work...
I currently have two large fluorescent fixtures, and then two other incandescent fixtures;
On cool days, like around this time of year, it is not unusual to turn on the lights, and have the fluorescent lights only starting to turn on by the time I'm readly to leave the garage... it's a little bit of a pain, and had me thinking of having two switches - one for fluorescent, and another for incandescent...

Originally Posted by Jack Gifford

The power supplies of all LEDs create significant RFI. For the 60W-equivalent LED bulbs in the house I've tried a half-dozen different brands (all name brands, UL approved)- all of them created too much RFI for TV viewing (we use an antenna). I had to go back to incandescent and CFLs at many places in the house.

I have never heard of this - we use OTA for TV in the house, and I have a radio I am using almost every time I am in the garage for more than ten minutes - so this is potentially a very big deal for me - thanks for sharing this.

[dataway]

Believe me, you will have no problem with LED lighting and interference. I am in the exact same boat as you and at 95% LED in the house and shop ... no interference of any kind.

[Gator67]

We went with LED throughout our new home as well as the garage (interior and exterior). No RFI interference as far as I can tell, and every fixture still works as it should after almost two years. Our electricity bill is about the same as in our previous home even though we have over twice the heated and cooled square footage.

[dataway]

I knocked about 20% of my bill in total from the transition to incandescent - CFL - LED.

I don't have a big bill anyway, about $105 a month ... but I'll take the $20 a month off thank you.

[RocktimusPryme]

Related, has anyone ever had any experience with this LED tape lighting?

https://www.superbrightleds.com/more...300-lmft/4751/

I googled "affordable garage lighting" and found a guy doing his garage with something like this. Seems super easy to install and you can put long strips up so you dont have pools of light like you do with traditional fixtures? Pretty affordable too.

Just curious.

[dataway]

If you work out the lumens ... the strip has 300/ft ... would take about 12' to equal a typical LED hanging shop light, at about the same price (for a nice LED shop light). The shop light you can just plug right in, the strip is going to require a 24v power supply for each max strip length.

I used a similar product for the lighting inside the mini paint booth I built for small parts. Works nice, it was a plug in strip. I can see it for the "bottom of a shelf" lighting where clearance is limited. But you can get similar products in a finished item that you just plug in.

I very seriously doubt that hotel lobby picture in the ad is using those LED strips.

[Will]

Originally Posted by RocktimusPryme

Related, has anyone ever had any experience with this LED tape lighting?

https://www.superbrightleds.com/more...300-lmft/4751/

I googled "affordable garage lighting" and found a guy doing his garage with something like this. Seems super easy to install and you can put long strips up so you dont have pools of light like you do with traditional fixtures? Pretty affordable too.

Just curious.

I installed a bunch of that in the skyscraper lobby. It was used as accent lighting, installed in coves as in that picture of the hotel lobby. The type I installed was color changing with programmable wall controllers.

I think that hotel lobby picture exaggerates the brightness. All you have to do to make a picture look brighter is to over expose it a little.

[RocktimusPryme]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ypQK3vUodjE

There’s a small garage with it. But that guy sells the stuff in his eBay store so he has a reason to make it look better than it is.

Like I said I was just curious. There is also a huge price discrepancy with the stuff to maybe there is a big quality discrepancy too.

[Will]

Well, there are probably different kinds of strips and some may be brighter than others...???

[Firedup6975]

Originally Posted by dataway

Even though I am almost done converting the entire shop to LED, I still run a couple of incandescent lights for the "mix". Makes for a well lit shop, but also a more comfortable feel, makes the shop feel less harsh to me .. and sometimes I need it to feel homey.

Well, if I wanna feel “homey” i’ll stay in the house and make cookies. when I need car stuff done and done right, It’s out in the shop where the lighting will be bright enough to see a grain of salt. The better you can see what you’re doing, the more you’ll get done, because you’ll be able to see better, which discourages throwing down a wrench and taking several breaks away from the project. There will also be propane heat in this shop, so perfect working conditions make for better attitude and staying on it, instead of running in the “homey” man cave to make cookies in between wrenching.