Home shop lights

I have five 8' two-bulb single pin 8' florescent fixtures. They are fairly good fixtures I bought new from Grainger. I had them in the garage at the old house and I'm just getting around to hanging them now. The old garage was great, there wasn't a shadow anywhere! I painted a few cars there.

The question I have is what bulbs to use? The garage will be used for woodworking, casting and odds & ends fun projects. Maybe 10 hours a week tops year round. (I have electric heat out there; it's very comfortable but pricey in deep winter.) Each fixture has a pull-switch and they seldom will all be on at the same time. I know some specialty bulbs can get pricey and the cheapest are just that.

Reply to
Tom Gardner
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Those single-pin F96T12 Slimline lamps are on the Electrical Endangered Species List - You might have to take what you can get on the lamps, plain old Cool White. They have the usual spectrum choices in the catalogs, but between the price and the shipping costs...

That said... If you can get them at a decent price, you want to go with "Daylight" 5000K ($12 each) or "Sunshine" 6500K ($20 each) if you ware trying to do color critical things like painting things. Look at the Color Rendering Index (CRI) and that tells you how accurate the spectrum is - you want the CRI above 80.

Want to spend $26 each, they have 5000K F96T12 with a 92 CRI...

I have 5000K F40T12/C50 lamps in my Office and Kitchen, but I use the plain old Cool Whites out in the garage.

When the ballasts on those die, or you have the old 8' strips nailed to the concrete ceiling that you can't just swap out easily... They have retrofit kits that turn them into 4-lamp 4' T-5 or T-8 "Tandem" strips. If your old strips have a one-piece 8' ballast chamber cover, you'll need new 4' ones too.

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Reply to
Bruce L. Bergman (munged human readable)

Standard t8, T10 or T12 bulbs

Electronic or magnetic ballasts?

Take a look at the existing tube; if the bulb is 1" wide, you need a T8; if your existing tube is 1 ½ or 1 ¼ " wide you need a T12. (note:

1 ½ " tube is a T10 - a T12 will work anywhere you're using a T10). You can also look at the model number of your bulb; if it says F32T8, you need a T8; if it says F40T12 or F34T10 you need a T12. The newest type of tube is a T5, which is 5/8" wide and most commonly used in industrial settings; if the tube says F54T5 you need a T5. If you are unable to locate any writing on the bulb, then you are usually safe to order based on the length and diameter of your bulb as long as your measurement is precise. Please note: 96" tubes have either a single pin or RDC (Recessed Double Contact).

The "T" number on any fluorescent tube refers to the diameter of the tube only. This measurement is expressed in eighths of an inch. A T8 tube is 8/8 or 1 inch in diameter. Likewise a T12 is 12/8 or 1-1/2 inches and the T5 is 5/8 inches in diameter. All T8 and T12 bulbs have medium bi-pins on the end of the tube; the T5 has mini bi-pins. Please note: 96" tubes have either a single pin or RDC (Recessed Double Contact). T8 tubes are run on electronic ballasts; the T12 are run on magnetic ballasts or combination ballasts. Rated lamp wattage for F40 T12 is 34 watts and the actual energy use is 37 watts. Rated lamp wattage for F32 T8 is 37 watts and the actual energy use is 29 watts.

One bleeding-heart type asked me in a recent interview if I did not agree that "violence begets violence." I told him that it is my earnest endeavor to see that it does. I would like very much to ensure

- and in some cases I have - that any man who offers violence to his fellow citizen begets a whole lot more in return than he can enjoy.

- Jeff Cooper

Reply to
Gunner

I've never ordered any 96" bulbs so you will have to check out the shipping costs, but my favorite bulb vendors to order smaller bulbs and ballasts from at work are

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and
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All stock a good selection of the F96T12's and electronic ballasts to update your fixtures with if they have magnetic ballasts, just shop price. A case of F96T12's is 15 bulbs and you need 10 if you populate all 5 fixtures so you should be able to save money over buying retail locally. 1000bulbs probably has the widest bulb selection, goodmart can be very cheap on certain random items if you get lucky, and bulbtronics does well with scientific and oddball stuff and handles special order stuff. I just "discovered"
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they have great pricing on some bulbs we use at work but I haven't ordered anything yet. YMMV, of course.

I have five 8' two-bulb single pin 8' florescent fixtures. They are fairly good fixtures I bought new from Grainger. I had them in the garage at the old house and I'm just getting around to hanging them now. The old garage was great, there wasn't a shadow anywhere! I painted a few cars there.

The question I have is what bulbs to use? The garage will be used for woodworking, casting and odds & ends fun projects. Maybe 10 hours a week tops year round. (I have electric heat out there; it's very comfortable but pricey in deep winter.) Each fixture has a pull-switch and they seldom will all be on at the same time. I know some specialty bulbs can get pricey and the cheapest are just that.

Reply to
Carl Ijames

Tom lives in a fairly large city, so there should be a half dozen or so electrical distributors within a reasonable distance. He owns a business, so he should be able to buy them wholesale.

Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

What did you use at the old house, and what reasons would you have to change???

Reply to
clare

Silly question: Why are they on the endangered species list? Do they kill Polar Bears?

Reply to
Tom Gardner

They are single pin. I pitched all the bulbs when we moved, they were long in the tooth and a few didn't light. The ballasts say T-12 and list 55-74 watt. These fixtures are are about 20 years old.

Reply to
Tom Gardner

When I moved I pitched the bulbs. Some didn't light, they are @ 20 years old. The ballasts are marked T-12 and list bulbs ranging from 55 to 72 watts. Should I just get the cheapies at Home Despot or are other bulbs worth a step in price?

Reply to
Tom Gardner

I just run the HD cheap ones, cool white, the only issue I notice is they take ~10 mins to reach full brightness only if it is really cold in the garage but do come up fine once warm. They have a 2-pack for like $9.99 most times.

MikeB

Reply to
BQ340

I was once told they were invented for use on transit buses. Unlike the dual pin ones, they won't shake out of the sockets.

Reply to
David Lesher

Seems like the best option for the use the will get. I'm sure someone will say afterwards that for a few dollars more I COULD have had...

Reply to
Tom Gardner

Any relamping services in your area? They used to sell cases of used tubes for $1 when i lived in Ohio. They came out of supermarkets & retail stores where they replace every lamp on a set schedule. They still had about 20% of the rated life left, on average. No electrical wholesalers?

Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

No, they just aren't that energy efficient, and even when they use the Alto reduced mercury system they still take more mercury to work the larger the envelope is.

T8 and T5 lamps are a lot smaller physically and can give better life and light output per watt, and cut the Mercury down a bit more.

Not to mention the fun of transporting the buggers around without breaking them. They have to be in a factory carton or wrapped up real good, and you still end up with broken ones if you aren't careful.

I do NOT carry Slimline lamps on the truck unless I know I'll need them - and I prefer to buy them by the carton and sell you the whole box so A) you have spares when you need them and B) I don't get stuck making a Supply House stop to bring 2 more out every visit, play around with padding them and strapping them down...

Now you want some real fun, old plastic signs use hand-made T-12 Slimline or H.O. (the shrouded bi-pin) lamps that can be anywhere from

2' to 16' long in 6" increments. The ones over 8' look the part - you can see where a Glassblower hand-spliced two sections of lamp tubing together in the middle, and there's a gap in the phosphor coating...

And the special Sign Ballasts to run them are a bloody fortune too - you determine it's bad and /then/ go get one, you don't carry one 'just in case' unless you work on signs all day. And a pain to wire up

- they hand you a big book with all the possible variations...

Small wonder they're pushing the LED conversions.

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Reply to
Bruce L. Bergman (munged human readable)

They are making Electronic replacement ballasts for these so you can get them when the Magnetics run out - and 20 to 25 years is about when they start failing. But if you get a 12-pack case of lamps you can get a few years out of the old strips.

I wouldn't bother replacing the ballasts when they fail if these are free-hanging in your garage, when they die just toss and replace them. You can put up T5 or T8 strips for the same price as rebuilding these

- and you get proper Shop Light reflectors to send the light down on the work, and 4' lamps that are a lot easier to work with.

I only rebuild them when the fixture can is built into/onto the building and it would take hours to swap them. Powder Actuated concrete nails shot through the strip can and into 40-year-old cured concrete that now tests well above 50 KPSI - you can NOT shoot new nails into that, DAMHIKT. And it eats one carbide drill bit per 2 or

3 anchor holes.

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Reply to
Bruce L. Bergman (munged human readable)

I have 49 of those 8' T-12 fixtures in my shop, and more of them in my garage. I picked up two cases of cool white tubes (15 each) from Home Depot for under $30 each.

Works for me.

Harold

Reply to
Harold & Susan Vordos

Hayseuss freakin' Crisco, 'Arry. Wouldn't a cataract operation have been cheaper? Yours must be as dense as shoe leather. Besides, 392 l/f of tubes is enough fluor to cook you with UV. (Wow! You must have a nice tan from 'em. ;)

I'm happy with roughly 8' per 100 s/f of 9'-ceilinged shop. Five 4' dual-T-12 fluor fixtures in a 480 s/f garage. Task lighting is available, too, but it's pretty bright in there with the fluor.

-- The human brain is unique in that it is the only container of which it can be said that the more you put into it, the more it will hold. -- Glenn Doman

Reply to
Larry Jaques

All but one of them have a switch on the fixture, and there's several circuits, so all are not operating at the same time. I use those that are needed for a given area, but I like it well lighted. Even more important as I've aged, as my vision isn't what it used to be. Some are ceiling mounted, of necessity (12' ceiling), while others are suspended @ 9'.

H
Reply to
Harold & Susan Vordos

I have my main shop's lights wired with a switch per 10'*10' area. The smaller shop is in three zones, the work area, and two long narrow storage areas.

Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

Yep! You can't have too much light, and there's no reason to run them all at the same time. Good plan.

Harold

Reply to
Harold & Susan Vordos

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