Garage Lighting
 

Here's my most recent column from Vintage Motorsport magazine. It deals with garage lighting.

It's time to start making the switch to LED lights. The best part is that you can tell your wife you're going to be saving money by cutting back on the electric bill.

Let us know how that goes for you.

Richard Newton

I don't think my compact florescent fixtures are stupid. I lit my 26x28 garage for $300 with T8 fixtures. Comparable LED fixtures would be $1600.

I recently bought drop in LED lights from Costco. No conversion needed, plug and play. $36 for 2 four foot tubes. Much brighter than what I had, cheaper to operate, and immediate brightness.

I did keep the receipt handy as I have noticed many 20 year LEDs (bulb type) lasting sometimes only 4 months.

I picked up a couple at costco to replace some very finicky fluorescent tubes. I put in two 4 footers and improvement was incredible. Probably pick up another pair and ditch the remaining tubes.

According to my research LED T-8 replacements use 15 watts, produce 1600 lumens and cost $25 each.

Florescent T-8s use 32 watts, produce 2700 lumens and cost $4 each.

I don't see that LEDs are cost effective at this time for my garage.

You also have to factor in life span.

Richard Newton

If this is the case, I'd rather replace my conventional bulbs at $4/per.

But if you keep using T8's, you can't say: "Look! I replaced all my fluorescents with LED's!"

I had 6 two tube 4 foot fluorescent in my garage. I started doing a power audit on my house and installed and ammeter in the lighting circuit for the garage. Those things were pulling 50 watts each for a total of 300 watts. I thought they were efficient!!!

I installed 6 15 watt LED floods @ $10.00 each and they pull 15 watts or a total of 80 watts for the same if not brighter light. That is less than 1 replacement fluorescent tube!!

AND they will last up to 45,000 hours.

http://www.amazon.com/LEDwholesalers-Outdoor-Security-100-240VAC-3717WH/dp/B004DDQK0O/ref=sr_1_10?s=hi&ie=UTF8&qid=1440009058&sr=1-10&keywords=led+spotlight+15+watt

I am way ahead!!!

Thanks for the link to the article (and others) - very interesting material on your site!

ty

Richard Newton

I have a complete garage remodel in my near future - hopefully in about 6-8 months. I will be converting to LED lighting in the garage as I have done in the whole house. I hate paying the utility bills.

Unless color fidelity is important to you, I don't think color temperature plays much of a role in visibility per watt as your article suggests. Bluer light isn't brighter light.

I wish I had the link, but there was a very informed thread on Garage Journal about the introductory and ongoing costs of LEDs vs modern T5s. The T5s blew the LEDs away for everything but years of all-day use.

This was a year ago, and obviously I didn't absorb the details, but I would run real numbers before committing to LED. They're neat, but some of them are of dubious quality, and (unlike simple incandescents and florescents), the difference in high quality and low quality fixtures is dramatic. I'd be pissed if unreplaceable LEDs started burning out in my ceiling.

I went with standard 50w LED bulbs, but only because I didn't want to deal with installing T5 fixtures in place of the four standard fixtures that are already installed. I wouldn't recommend this route unless you're avoiding this work, but it's nice to get 300w brightness at 50w power draw with standard fixtures:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00F9G97JA?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_search_ detailpage

I didn't know they sold LED replacement tubes. That's neat. Maybe I can finally get the storage room in my building to stop flickering like a scene from Resident Evil...

6 x 15 = 90 watts :p

When you put LED bulbs in old T8-T12 fixtures, you are still running the ballast, which is about 10W, so you have to add that on to get real numbers for total wattage. They do sell bulbs that you can put into the old fixtures that require you to remove the ballast, but they are pretty expensive.
Costco sells a whole 4 ft. fixture with two tubes that only draws 38W, compared to a T12 fixture that draws about 90W. I am pretty sure they put out just as much or more light than the T12, and two of them use less watts than one T12 fixture. They were recently on sale for $30 each, and are $36 regularly. I posted some pics of the spec sheet and side by side comparison on the Registry:
Garage Lighting

Under $10 a bulb on line for the t-8 4 footer style that you remove/bypass the ballast for.
Haven't tried them "yet". Probably get a pair to try soon.

4 Foot 18 Watt LED Linear Tube - (CE) – GreenTek Energy Systems

With lumen output per watt of a T8 fluorescent light at about the same as a LED light, both at approximately about 100 lumens per watt, there isn't much of an energy savings difference between the two, but the LED fixture is much more expensive. I'd have to say if you currently have a good working fluorescent fixture, there's not much incentive to change. Though if you have T12 fixtures, change out the magnetic ballast for an updated electronic ballast for about $12, and replace the T12 bulbs with T8s. The old magnetic ballasts are energy inefficient, and produce a 60hz bulb flicker, vs the electronic is high frequency, so there is no flicker for a more comfortable light. And they last a long time. In the subterranean garage of one of my buildings, the lights are on an average of 11 hours a day, 7 days a week, and I have not needed to replace a bulb in 15 years.

A 32 watt 4' T8 bulb produces about 3000 lumens, so a 2 lamp fixture produces 6000 lumens. Compare that to the Costco 4' LED shop light which is rated at 38 watts and produces only 3700 lumens. Or compare to the current LED T8 replacements, they're only about 17 watts, producing about 1700-2000 lumens. So at most you're going to get 3300-4000 lumens out of your fixture.

I went with LED lamps & was very pleased with the results.

http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e1...s/DSC03484.jpg

I see no mention of 8ft lights, did I miss something??