Replies

1. 
   MBL | Jul 03, 2004 08:57pm | #1

   Dear Joe,

   Although the ceilings be 16' high, the lamps can be much lower, for more efficient area lighting.

   If that's not the case, you might want to start there. Then the type of luminarie would follow.

   Probably white light tubes. There are commercial and residential types. You need to check with the place where you'd buy them for literature on options. They are a good start too.

   -mbl-

2. 
   PhillipB | Jul 03, 2004 09:45pm | #2

   Joe,

   I don't know what you mean when you say 'best' but if you have 16' ceilings I'm assuming you want the brightest tubes you can get.

   I just completely re-wired my basement and added six 8' dual-tube fluorescent fixtures. The tubes I used were of the 'HO' designation meaning 'High Output'. The tubes that I am using I purchased at Home-Depot, are 95 Watts and made by Philips. These are very bright and have worked fine. If you want 'bright' these tubes will do it.

   In regards ballasts, you want to be sure that yours will provide the proper voltage that these HO tubes require. Hopefully your ballasts are of the commercial variety because the residential variety produce less light, draw more current which translates into shorter tube life and a waste of $$. The residential variety could also be noiser. Ballast 'humm' can drive you nuts, but at 16' you may not be bothered by this so much. Ballasts have noise ratings 'A' being the best. Ballast's are also affected by cold temps. My basement ceiling and fixture height is only 6' 10" and ballast noise is a very real concern for me even with my post Viet Nam hearing loss.

   You should also be aware of just how much of a load you can place on the circuit that your fixtures are wired into. Hopefully you can figure this out beforehand and not end up with an overloaded circuit which will cause you much distress. 95 watts per tube is not much but does count towards the max load of your circuit(s). Everything is relative.

   A very good article you may want to peruse is in FWW #154 entitled 'Lighting for the Workshop' which was written by a gentleman who was an engineer for a electric power company. This is a very good article and may provide invaluable information for you.

   Final thought is this. If possible you may want to lower your fixtures because this will definitely improve the brightness factor for you.

   Good luck.

   Regards,

   Phillip

   
   

   ---

   Edited 7/3/2004 2:49 pm ET by PhillipB

3. 
   WayneL5 | Jul 03, 2004 10:50pm | #3

   It depends on what you mean by "best".  If you want the brightest, select the lamps based on light output.  You won't be able to use HO (High Output) lamps on standard ballasts, but some standard lamps are brighter than others.

   If you mean best color, don't use shop lights, cool whites, warm whites, HO, etc.  You have to pick a high CRI (color rendering index) lamp.  If you use any of the cheapos you will get unnatural color which will make selecting wood, staining, color matching, etc. distorted and difficult.  You know how if you look at your skin in hotel room bathroom mirror how sickly you look?  It's from the cheap fluorescent lamps.

   I used GE SPX35 lamps in my shop and like them a lot.  Other manufacturers have comparable products.

   The "35" refers to the color temperature, in this case 3500 Kelvins.  It's a nice compromise between really warm, incandescent-like tones, which are around 3000 Kelvins, and the bright, bluish tones of cool whites which are around 4100 Kelvins.

   CRI and color temperature are not connected.  In any given color temperature you can find lamps with high or low color rendering indexes.

1. 
   nikkiwood | Jul 04, 2004 01:00am | #4

   You should definitely stay with electronic ballasts -- otherwise the buzz will drive you crazy.

   As for the bulbs, Waynel5 and I came to the very same conclusion about bulbs rated 3500 Kelvin.

   Years ago, I did a home office for a graphics designer where color rendition was of paramount importance. We got a lighting consultant involved in the job, and that was the recommendation he came to.

   About the same time, I was redoing my shop, and installed a gazillion fixtures with these bulbs (GE SPX35) -- the improvement over typical "warm white' bulbs for me, at least, was dramatic.

   However, the bulbs are not available from home centers; generally you have to get them from an eletrical supply house. They are more expensive, and I buy them in case lots sto minimize the cost.

2. 
   chatobob | Jul 04, 2004 05:10pm | #8

   For the less luminated of us, what are GE SPX35's?  I go to the GE web site and search among their products and get nothing. 

   -Bob

1. 
   WayneL5 | Jul 04, 2004 05:29pm | #9

   The lamps are a line of General Electric fluorescents.  The "SPX" is their code for a particular line of high Color Rendering Index lamps, and the "35" refers to the color temperature of 3500 Kelvins.  For a complete part number the designation is prefixed by the lamp wattage and size.  For example, a 1" diameter, 48" long, 32 watt tube would be called F32T8 SPX35.  They are easy to find in GE's paper catalog, but hard to find on the web site.  Try this link, then open the catalog and look at page 7 of the PDF file.  http://www.gelighting.com/na/litlib/linefluo.html

   Like most web sites, it's hard to find one's way around.

2. 
   UncleDunc | Jul 04, 2004 05:32pm | #10

   Try again with a space or a slash between the XPS and the 35. I Googled for

   GE SPX 35

   and got 6300 hits, including these two GE sites.

   http://www.gelighting.com/na/institute/quality.html

   http://www.gelighting.com/na/business/restaurant_needs.html

   The GE sites wouldn't display on my broweser, but you may have better luck if your browser is more up to date.

1. 
   JoeWood | Jul 05, 2004 02:43am | #11

   Did I say 16' ceiling ? More like 12'.  Can't even blame that misteak on not having my morning coffee yet cause i posted that initial question around lunch time !

   Anyway, that's some darn good advice there guys, including the one about painting the ceilings a nice white. Right now they're a sort of navajo white with a thin layer of dust .. I'm sure some fresh paint will help alot.

   Say, I noticed in those links that the tubes I'll be wanting have a double prong at each end. My existing tubes have a single prong. Do I need to get different fittings now, or can I get those tubes with the single prong at the end ?

1. 
   nikkiwood | Jul 05, 2004 05:00am | #12

   I am fairly certain that 4' bulbs have the 2 prong set-up and the 8' bulbs use a single prong.

   12' CEILINGS???? You must feel as though you have entered "shop heaven." What I would give for a 12' ceiling ...............

4. 
   robkelly | Jul 04, 2004 05:04am | #5

   Regardless of bulb type, a clean, gloss white ceiling is like adding a few fixtures.

1. 
   nikkiwood | Jul 04, 2004 05:54am | #6

   Yep -- I should have added that, because it is indeed very important for a bright, pleasant shop. I painted the ceilings a flat off white, and the walls are a semi-gloss off white.

   However, I would be interested to know what you intend to do with your 16' ceilings. How about a storage platform? If you left 9-10' for the shop, that would still give you tons of space for storage.

1. 
   WayneL5 | Jul 04, 2004 06:41am | #7

   I'd love to have a shop with at least moderately high ceilings again.  The shop I built for my dream home 5 years ago had a cathedral ceiling which peaked just over 12 feet.  It was really nice to be able to flip over an 8 foot board without whacking a light fixture, and to be able to stand up some 12 foot boards and lean them against the wall.

   Due to a geographical job change my new shop has to go in a basement with ceilings only 6'-4" high.  I'll miss the old shop.

5. 
   alanplanesaw | Jul 07, 2004 03:50am | #13

   I am not an expert but learned from one.  I use the standard 4 ft shop fixtures, but use what one manufacturer calls Sunsticks.  They are generically known as "full spectrum tubes" or "full spectrum lights."  My colleagues up in Alaska say they are the only thing to use in the winter to avoid depression.

   However, more practically for woodworkers and finishers, they are a truer light.  If you judge your finishes with cool white, it will look different under warm white, etc.

   They do cost a bit more, but worth every penny in my judgement.

   Alan - planesaw

1. 
   nikkiwood | Jul 07, 2004 08:15am | #14

   RE: full spectrum bulbs

   You should really try a couple of these before you make a larger commitment.

   Alan is right that they are often used in light boxes for people with SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder), but I thought they were really horrible when I tried them out in a few shop lights. The color was harshly white and bluish, and they were awful for color rendition.

   This is like tools -- one person thinks XYZ saw is the cat's meow, and another thinks it is a piece of garbage.

   So -- they may work great for Alan, but I can tell you they did not for me.

6. 
   WayneL5 | Jul 07, 2004 10:25pm | #15

   There are lots of different lamps available including some special purpose lamps.  Going by the Color Rendering Index and the Color Temperature are the most objective methods of comparing lamps.  After making a tentative selection, seeing them in real life is the next step if desired.

   Daylight lamps have a very high color temperature and the light is quite bluish, more so than even with cool whites.  Wood finished under daylight lamps will look quite different when moved into a home where the color temperature is very much lower and the light warmer in color.