YOur ideas on LED lighting in garage?

[WyrTwister]

Anyone with any info on LED lighting in a garage? I've got a 40x40x16 metal building I'm just now getting around to wiring and lighting. White insulation on walls and ceiling. A friend of mine a couple of hours away from here just replace their church gym lights with high bay LED lights and loves them. BIG reduction in energy cost too. Any suggestions? How do you go about calculating how many and how powerful. I completed my rites of passage with dim shop lights long ago. I want the light in there to be somewhere between a welding arc and the Burning Bush. I want to be able to see down in my cylinders with the spark plugs removed. With the hood still on and the motor still in the truck.

Although the prices are coming down , LED lighting is not cheap , up front . And GOOD lighting is certainly not cheap .

Set a budget for fixtures and work from there . If you think you are going to want more than that , pre-wire additional ceiling outlet boxes ( 4-O boxes w/blank covers ) .

Electrical savings depend greatly on the number of hours per month they are turned on .

If you are going to install A/C , they will help with that . If you are going to add heat , they will contribute less to that .

God bless
Wyr

 

[Chris]

I am currently installing 8' flourescents with tandem 4' bulbs in 5000k, had this set up in my last garage and loved how bright it was and this seems to be the cheapest way to get bright lighting in the shop.

 

[WyrTwister]

You are probably correct . If they are T8 lamps . T12 lamps are getting expensive and may soon go obsolete .

God bless
Wyr

 

[Chris]

Yes they are T8s. I installed four and will probably toss two more in.

 

[zannej]

I just got these 4' LED 4000lm 5000k(daylight) shop lights. Got it when the price was lower than it currently is though. Old lights in the workshop were fluorescent and rather dim. Have about 12 or so in there to light it up. After putting just 2 of the new LEDs up just a few feet apart, they lit up the entire workshop (and it's a fairly large workshop). We got 3 of them up throughout. 4th one will go up later once we fix some of the wiring issues (rather than linking them, we just plugged them in to the outlets the old lights were plugged in to).

So far I'm very pleased with them.

 

[mcgyverit]

Menards and Home Depot have 2'x4' - 4 bulb LED's for $115. I am currently replacing my florescent units in my garage. brightness is about 2 to 1. so I can replace 2 florescent units with one LED. it is amazing the difference they make. I have a 20x30 garage with 9 florescent units and should be able to get by with 4 in the work area and 2 over the benches just because I have wiring already there might as well put it to some use.

 

[elbo]

this is a copy of an old response to this same question. So far, since I installed the fixtures, I'm very satisfied, and the cost was negligable
My garage which serves as a garage and workshop had 6 two bulb fluorescent fixtures , each bulb gave the equivalent of a 40 watt incandescent bulb. Because of my age iI found it increasingly difficult to replace the florescent bulbs, so I got 6 cheap 2 bulb incandescent fixtures and 60 watt equivalent leds. The fixtures came with opaque light diffuses, which I replaced with clear plastic 8 inch diameter salad bowls that I bought at a dollar store. I just had to drill a hole for the threaded diffuser fitting
Works great with lots of light and I wont have to replace the bulbs in my lifetime. The bulbs were purchased at lowes for a very reasonable price

 

[Wuzzat?]

LED lifetime in the lab can be 50,000 hours but from the number of vehicle taillight failures I've seen, they are either putting too much current through them or cutting corners on the electronics that drive them.

We'll see how the home stuff holds up.

I don't recommend trying to troubleshoot a failed setup unless you have a bench full of test equipment.