Steve Mellott
09-17-2007, 9:37 AM
Ive nearly completed the construction of a new basement shop and wanted to share my lighting experience. The shop is approximately 20 x 30 with 83 ceilings. The floor is painted light beige, the walls are eggshell white and the ceiling is white suspended tiles.
Within this area, I installed 8 separate 4 bulb fluorescent fixtures. I used the electronic ballast fixtures that you buy at Home Depot they are satisfactory, but seem to be somewhat flimsy when opening and closing the door to change bulbs. They buzz a little bit, but the buzzing is masked by the music that I play in the shop.
I allowed 4 between the sides of the fixtures, 4' between the ends of the fixtures, and 4' between the fixtures and the walls. This spacing covers the entire shop.
I used T8 daylight bulbs. I accidentally installed regular (as opposed to daylight) bulbs in one of the fixtures and actually thought the ballast or wiring was bad the light from the regular bulbs was very yellow and dingy compared to the daylight bulbs.
I also wired an emergency light to the hot side of the light switch. (I actually have two light switches one for the front half of the room and one for the back half of the room.) When the power to the lights goes out, the emergency light comes on.
The lighting in this shop is excellent I dont think I would change a thing. Since I based much of my planning on information I learned from this site, I thought Id offer this as input to others who build shops. Im sure there are other ways to do this but this just happened to work for me.
Within this area, I installed 8 separate 4 bulb fluorescent fixtures. I used the electronic ballast fixtures that you buy at Home Depot they are satisfactory, but seem to be somewhat flimsy when opening and closing the door to change bulbs. They buzz a little bit, but the buzzing is masked by the music that I play in the shop.
I allowed 4 between the sides of the fixtures, 4' between the ends of the fixtures, and 4' between the fixtures and the walls. This spacing covers the entire shop.
I used T8 daylight bulbs. I accidentally installed regular (as opposed to daylight) bulbs in one of the fixtures and actually thought the ballast or wiring was bad the light from the regular bulbs was very yellow and dingy compared to the daylight bulbs.
I also wired an emergency light to the hot side of the light switch. (I actually have two light switches one for the front half of the room and one for the back half of the room.) When the power to the lights goes out, the emergency light comes on.
The lighting in this shop is excellent I dont think I would change a thing. Since I based much of my planning on information I learned from this site, I thought Id offer this as input to others who build shops. Im sure there are other ways to do this but this just happened to work for me.