Another video and blog update.
Black Friday - We put up the walls!
Blog Link:
Ben’s Garage: Wall Day
Also, I'd love some input on lighting.
In my previous garage, I experimented with LED Tubes. Those are the LED sticks that take the place of a four-foot fluorescent bulb in a standard fixture. Overall, I really liked them. The downsides were that they tended to be expensive, and they didn't work with all fixtures, but boy were they bright, energy efficient, and came on instantly to full brightness (unlike fluorescent when it's cold outside.)
This weekend, there are LED shoplight fixtures for sale at the big box store for $20 each. They are 3,000 lumen with a standard plug. (So, they would work well on switched outlets installed in the ceiling.) They also can daisy-chain together, to reduce the number of outlets needed.
I think I would like to just purchase a pile of those fixtures while they are on sale. (Normal price is $40 each, so half off right now.) I'm not quite sure how many I want to get. I've tried finding some info on brightness levels for workshops, and have found numbers ranging from 50 - 150 lumens per square foot.
If the lamps produce 3,000 lumens, and the garage is 783 square feet, I need anywhere from 40,000 to 120,000 total lumens, or 13 to 40 fixtures! That sure sounds like a lot!
Just looking at my garage plan, and spacing out some fixtures in my head, I could see a dozen shop lights going in. It would be easy to space out three rows of four fixtures across the garage.
I think I'll buy a dozen this weekend on sale. I can easily see using that many. If I put them up and decide I need more light, I still have some of the original fixtures I used in the old garage, and I could always purchase more of the matching fixtures.