nkgosselin

I put 8 of these in my 32x20 barn. They are mounted 11ft above the ground.

It is like a surgery in there. But then still need LED task lights when under the hood/car.

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Lithonia-...10PS/203137160

PorscheDoc

I just converted the florescent to LED in the sections of my 50x100 shop and while yes, they do lower your cost of use, they are very directional in light pattern, ie, they throw off light in a 90 degree sweep, so it does take a little getting use to. Florescent throw off 360 degrees of light, meaning you will get light bouncing off the ceilings and walls which helps when working on things. Granted, I pulled out two T12 60watt bulbs out of each fixture, and only installed 1 24w LED in it's place, so my net wattage is very reduced. In my engine room where the walls, floors, and ceilings are painted, the LED lighting is very nice. In the non working parts of my shop where we mostly store cars, it is bright enough to work just fine, but if I were working in those spaces I would definitely want to paint the floors/walls/ceiling to help with the lighting and throw the 2nd bulb in place. I think for quality of light, a bunch of T8 florescent lights are hard to beat. The LED's are nice though as they should last longer, aren't affected by cold weather when turning on, and have no damn ballasts to fail which is what I was constantly battling with old fixtures. I think I have 30+ fixtures in the shop of T12 banks, with about 15 left to change out. In the main shop area I have giant can lights. My house garage has 12 T12 4 foot banks and I love the amount of light it has. Again though, painted walls, floors, ceilings.

Funny story, I have a customer who owns a bunch of big thrift stores. The power company here offered him a deal to change out all of his lights with LED's to save power. It was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to convert all the fixtures and they picked up most of the bill. Oddly enough, they found out that the power consumption didn't change hardly at all. Riddle me that.

snb13

I love LED's. I use them every chance I get. I've converted most of our home. However, something you don't hear about LED's is they generate a ton of RF interference. Individual home bulbs are typically fine, but be careful of the larger work fixtures. I have 1 particular fixture in my garage that pretty much renders listening to the radio impossible. They need sufficient shielding built in.

catamount

I don't have a garage; I have a carport. Of course it has that single fixture that is basically useless for shop lighting. I want to add separate fixtures that will give me ample lighting for working on the car or other shop activities. Has anyone found suitable damp location LED light fixtures that provide ample lighting for work that don't cost an arm, a leg and a first born child?

konakat

I got one of these at Christmas, and it is fantastic. I was pretty skeptical about how much light you could get out of 20 watts, but it is a great shop light. I just with it had a ring or hook so I could hang it on the hood latch when it is open.

dmjames

Amen to that. I've been considering trying something like this to add the option to hang it:

nihil

In regards to the aforementioned Costco sourced Snap-On LED work light, I've 3D printed clips for it that hang off my garage door and a couple different shaped hoods.

For lighting in general, I've got a dozen of the "4' LED shop light" fluorescent fixture replacements (Costco) and love them. Also have about half the house converted and not looking back one bit.

kcoyle

I'm guessing that it doesn't get super cold in Seattle but I have cheapie 4Ft florescents all over the garage and they barely turn on/warm up on 20 degree days.
I'd check the garagejournal.com for lighting recommendos as well.

Randy K

I have landscape lower voltage landscape lighting around the yard and I noticed that they interfered with the garage door owner functioning properly. As a result I don't even use the landscape lighting in the front yard anymore because I would rather be able to open the garage door at night.

Tiger03447

There are special florescents that you have to use in cold weather. They will fire up at up to 10 below. You'll save $$ with the LEDS, if you are going to go with the cold weather fixtures..They seem to be cold resistant...

dave w

Deleted - wrong thread.

Tremelune

Garage Journal has crazy detail on lighting setups.

If you don't want to deal with installing stuff, these are extremely bright for standard lightbulb fixtures (though they do have fan noise):


For under/above car, these work lights are fantastic:



For tight spots, I use this handheld LED lamp with rotating hook and magnet:


And of course, nothing beats a good headlamp.

V2Rocket

Currently I have 2 double-tube fluorescent fixtures hung from the ceiling joists.
I have 6 (!) more such fixtures available to install...in my 22x20 garage.

Will be able to do surgery in there, will be so bright, might need shades to work on the car

Jfrahm

I did the math on replacing the 40-or-so FL tubes in my shop to LED and it's not really cost effective unless the fixture needs to be replaced or maybe if they are on all day every day for many years. FL tubes are quite a bit more efficient than tungsten lamps and produce a LOT of light. The savings is more like swapping CFL bulbs for LED but with a potential for losing a lot of lumens or coverage.

As of now I have a box full of FL tubes and a couple spare ballasts and I have a low power circuit that lights a few small lights I use if I go to the shop to grab something. I also have skylights that are all I need a lot of the time. In general I think it's too soon to convert a working FL tube lamp to LED unless there is another reason such as very cold temperatures, running on the ragged edge of your current capacity, noise, etc.

I am not sure I'd even convert a dead FL tube lamp other than maybe for a workbench since I think the LED tube replacements are evolving fast in terms of quality and output, and costs are dropping.

-Joel.

Giclam

In my garage I have fluorescents 34W T12s https://10carbest.com/best-led-garage-lights I have a total of 5 fixtures - 2 on each side of the garage and one in middle near the light of the garage door opener. so, a total of 10 long tube bulbs without surround. They do a great job but have to be replaced about every 2 years or so. I also live in an area that doesn't get colder than about 26 degrees in the winter and therefore the OP needs to specify exactly how cold it gets where they/he/she is at. Also, I have tried motion sensor lighting, but some of the sensors used to replace switches (or other means) seem to be sensitive to cold and therefore might not work well below freezing - at least they didn't work for me. The problem with having to replace long tube fluorescent bulbs is not the expense - as they are relatively cheap in my opinion - the difficulty sometimes is with proper disposal. One should go to a place that accepts fluorescent bulbs in a recylcing program.
I like watching a video on YouTube on such topics, I'll leave you one of them here, I hope it will useful to someone