Adding to and upgrading shop lighting
 

Well have a new project in the shop and I am spending allot more time in the shop (66 mustang build) Torn down to the shell lots of welding etc...

I have Ok lighting in the shop. I have 5 8' t8 fixtures and 3 4't8 fixtures. I have more 4' fixtures to hook up still.

Right now My lighting circuit is pulling 5.4 amps which is lower than the calculated 7.3 ish assuming all were 32 watt bulbs. All lights have electronic ballasts. The 8' fixtures are about 10 years old maybe more and even though they are electronic ballasts they take forever to warm up to full brightness in anything under 80*.

My plan is to replace the 8' bulbs with direct wire bulbs if I can find a fair price on them. Usually the LED replacements for them cost as much as new fixtures or more. The 4' fixtures will get direct wire LED tubes as those are dirt cheap now.


I will be using 5k color bulbs if I can find ones that are actually 5K as most are usually closer to 4K. I am also adding around 4 fixtures that I already have and probably adding more fixtures later on. Will recoup the cost of switching everything over to LED... Not really but It's more of an upgrade of better color lighting and much more lighting and trying not to increase amp draw too much.


I will update whenever I make some progress. What I really need is an efficient air compressor as that's the big amp draw followed by the 2 ton window AC unit..

Sounds like fun (the mustang and the light upgrade)! I've wanted to go with LED lights for years, but just haven't gotten to it myself. I look forward to updates.

"66 mustang build"
Very cool, we want pictures!

I bought a few of the self contained stick lights over the winter for the garage. I was considering going with retrofit tubes, as everyone and their brother has the old fixtures up for grabs on Craigslist and Facebook marketplace for next to ( or absolutely) nothing. The local rural King store had the single and double fixtures in closeout for a lot cheaper than the retrofit tubes, so I bought a few. They work well, and you can string them end to end like Christmas lights. About the same time, my wife bought me a little cob floodlight that was a halogen shop light equivalent. Everything works great! Grand total: about $25.

Well I had great plans but everything got in the way.... This summer was extremely hot as in we had our last 101* day on the 6th of october. Yes 2 days ago... Went from 101* in the afternoon then the front finally pushed the high pressure away and it dropped to 58* by morning. We haven't seen temps under 78* in months.

So being that hot then other stuff then catching the bug along with horrible allergies then we were on vacation in Greece and now finally getting back to normal....


Here is a link to all the pictures of the car. I will be getting back to assembling the new front frame rails etc very soon. I need to finish building my body cart so I can get it high enough off the ground to work under it IE weld and sand blast underneath.. https://ibb.co/album/kAffFa


Here it is being pulled out of my friends building.(christmas eve last year)

[IMG]https://i.ibb.co/J7JFPH6/20181224-082747-HDR.jpg[/IMG]



And basically where it is today. Old accident damage up front so it all gets replaced.
[IMG]https://i.ibb.co/dfVDw5h/20190731-185219-HDR.jpg[/IMG]



As for lighting I put a bunch of these in my friends new shop and they are working quite well for the price. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Thnkyou for sharing!

Well the lights got put off for a long time... I finally swapped out 10 of my 4' T8s for Halco LED 4100K bulbs.

I tested a fixture before and after. With the electronic ballast one fixture was pulling .5 amps. After removing the ballast and installing direct wire LEDs the amp draw was cut in half to .25 amps.

The biggest power hogs are the 8' T8s which I haven't decided what to do there. 8' LEDs cost nearly as much as just buying 2 new 4' fixtures. And converting it to 4' bulbs and buying 4' LEDs is in that same area as well.
It's way on the back burner right now but I was able to cut my amp draw a little already. Now if someone built an efficient air compressor...https://i.ibb.co/spSKcg5/20200131-174037-HDR.jpg

I like your light but not a fan of your jack stand setup.
Look at these
https://m.northerntool.com/shop/tool...6193_200756193
Way over kill for capacity but the go to 18 5/16 high. Great for getting the height you are looking for.

I guess you aren't into construction and familiar with cribbing. I have a set of taller jack stands but they are too wobbly at the height I need. Its more stable to add cribbing and keep the jack stand at a lower height. It is extremely stable especially since I need it to stay at certain heights for alignment purposes. I can get in the car if I want to and there is very little movement. It's more to get it up high and on the same plane to get the frame rails aligned and welded in place.

All those sticks were run through the planer so they are all flat and parallel as well. Also remember there is nothing in the car. I can go to either end and pick the car up off the jack stands. The rear is a little heavier since the glass is still in but the body is very light. It's only 500-600 pounds without the glass and front sheet metal.

That's an older pic when I was dry fitting the frame rails up. I had different supports for the nose when I was welding it.

Once I get the front end finish welded on the car I will build a jig to roll it on its side so I can prep the bottom for epoxy.

The jack stands I put the link to are strong a max height. They are supper heavy.
But cribbing is not my Forte. There is more than one way to do something. Just be safe.

Here in Australia, we get rebates for LED replacements. Rebates on home LED lighting replacements are more.

That would be nice. We don't get rebates for anything here. But that has to do with your electricity provider. Some do some don't. If your usage is high enough that can get you into a lower rate which is closer to the super cheap rate that businesses pay.
Also if you live in an area that has an electric Coop you can have solar panels but they will not pay you for excess power you pump into the grid. Coops are weird and their prices rely on them purchasing a known amount of power from suppliers and solar panels screw that up and make maintaining the what we bought to what our customers use balance to avoid excess costs from providers when they have to buy more or less electricity.

I have converted more of my 4' fixtures to LED and added a few fixtures. I decided to be lazy on the 5 8' fixtures and just convert them to 4'. I have the bulbs but I still need to pick up the conversion kits for the fixtures. I keep forgetting to get them when I am at the supply house.

I will say that I am really disappointed with the lumen output of most of the 4' LED bulbs on the market. There are some high output ones but they are stupid expensive for just a little more light. Because of that I will be adding a couple more fixtures for fill in light. Allot of that is due to how my shop is laid out the dark colored stuff in it that doesn't reflect light etc.