Can Lights & Celing fans in a New Workshop/Barn?

[goodoleboy]

Can you guys give any advice on what type of lighting would be good for a new workshop..

The building is 30x50x10 I was thinking of adding can lights becuase they are farily cheap $7 each and provide very attractive lighting vs. a flourescent style light which really give me headache when I am under one for a while.

The ceiling height is 10 feet tall..I was thinking of mounting the lights in 4 rows with 10 lights in each row..Total of 40 can lights.Do you think this will provide suffiecent lighting?

Also do you think multiple celing fans 5-6 would be better than one large fan? I dont have any heat or a/c in the building so this will be my only source of keeping cool in the summer.

 

[Gary Allan]

I'd go cross flow for the ventilation. The lights ..I'm tainted by costs. Florescent lights are cheap to run.

 

[XS650]

Get florescent lights with a high frequency electronic ballast and they won't give you headaches.

Get high quality bulbs with good color fidelity and the light even looks good.

 

[oilyriser]

I've met a couple of people who just can't do fluorescent, even the t-8 ones with electronic ballast, or CF types. One of them is ok with fluorescent as long as it's not in a spot for doing detail work. Each work area could have a spotlight you turn on only for working in that spot, maybe even a motion sensor activated one.

 

[eljefino]

Might be worth sticking in a couple flourescents next to the can lights if you lose a tool in a dark corner or want to really scrub the floor clean.

How about those yet bigger sodium vapor (?) lights like they have in the biggest big box stores?

 

[1sttruck]

"Get florescent lights with a high frequency electronic ballast and they won't give you headaches. Get high quality bulbs with good color fidelity and the light even looks good.
"

I agree, with flourescents it's all about the ballasts but people buy them for cheap fixture costs and put crummy bulbs in. What's ironic is that cheap ballasts don't put out as much light, and they flicker and hum, which makes the green light on the crummy bulbs even worse. I know because I sent thru that, and when checking the light output with my photography light meter I knew something was wrong as it was pretty dim. I ended up buying good ballasts for three fixtures in the garage, two double 40 watt bulbs with pull chains and one single that turns on and off with the light switch. I tried out some different bulbs and ended up running GE Kithcen and Bath bulbs as the light output is good and the color matches incandescent bulbs pretty well, and with the good ballasts bulbs last years. I wanted to avoid turning all of the lights off and on all the time which is why I only have one single bulb being used with the light swicth.

You can run a full spectrum bulb, I use an 18in in a slide sorter that I made, but the light output is a lot less.

 

[Cory]

In these days of energy efficiency, I'd go with the electronic ballasts and fluorescent T8 bulbs. Since you've got so much area to light, you'll also want many circuits of grouped lighting. (ie - sectioned into areas or alternating every other light per switch)

 

[oily boyd]

If you do a lot of work by day, some Solatubes might be helpful.

 

[JHZR2]

Yes, T8 ballasts of high quality (some are made in USA, go with those), with GE Chroma 50 bulbs (called sunshine or something like that in orange packaging at lowes), FTW.

 

[tom slick]

I agree with the above statements about using T8 fluorescents. Can lighting focuses the light too much and doesn't provide very good area lighting. it would improve slightly if you painted everything white, including the floor.

A little math of the effeciency:

40 100w bulbs would consume 4000w, that's 4 kw/h. at $0.10/kwh it would cost you $0.40 per hour. 20 hours would cost $8
That would also be nearly the same as running a 4000w heater during the summer making it hotter in the barn.

2 T8 fluorescent bulbs will put out as many lumens as about 3-4 incandescent bulbs.

14 32w T8 bulbs would consume 450w, that's .45 kw/h. at $0.10/kwh it would cost you $0.045 per hour. 20 hours would cost $0.90.