Shop lighting

[56-210Sedan]

"Marty, what have you decided to do? My guess is you're going with some suspended fixtures, since I don't think you plan to put a drywalled ceiling in your shop. I don't want those.

I will put 3 eight foot lights per truss so nine total in the main body of the shop, in the future i will do something different in the lean tube portion as i want a loft in that area so it will have a ceiling to it.

[chevynut]

Thanks for the links Marty. It seems that there is a kit for some of those fixtures so they can be installed in drywalled ceilings. I need to take a look at what HD has to see if I can make them work. My lights are Lithonia, and they have a flange that goes over the drywall. They may be lights made for suspended ceilings that I made work for my application 10 years ago.

[Maddog]

Have you ever visited that forum for garage builds? I don't recall the name but there are some very talented folks there in building their garages. I would bet someone has posted on lighting and like I said there are some very talented folks there.

[warren57]

Have a friend that's an electrical engineer. If you can provide more specifics such as how bright you want it, etc. I'll ask him what to use and where to buy recessed fixtures.
In recessing you will loose a lot of light, even with good deflectors, the light only has one direction to go.
It it were open on bottom with no cover, a shiny diffuser (polished/chrome/etc.) would reflect good, but with a solid cover the reflection gets broken up and much softer. Very much the same as a clear light bulb vs a frosted, the watts can be the same, but totally different light. Another option to a solid cover would be an egg crate style.
Anyway, let me know if I can help.

[destroyertta]

Have you ever visited that forum for garage builds? I don't recall the name but there are some very talented folks there in building their garages. I would bet someone has posted on lighting and like I said there are some very talented folks there.

http://garagejournal.com/forum/ i think this might be it some very nice garages makes me jealous lol

[chevynut]

I went to Home Depot and asked them about the lights I want. They have them in 1x4, but not 2x4...weird. They're going to call Lithonia for me and see if they have what I need. The only 2x4 lights they had didn't have the flanges on them for a drywalled ceiling. I can't believe they don't make something like that....seems like such an obvious market.

Warren, I don't see how recessing a light changes the output from a surface mount with a reflector. The light can't come out of the sides of the reflector anyhow, so placing it up inside the ceiling shouldn't change anything. But I guess that depends on the style of light too. I just like the clean look of the recessed lights in my picture above.

[56-210Sedan]

You know i just threw out a an old HD supply catalog wish i had not now, oh i am not a worthy pack rat

[56-210Sedan]

take a peek at this Laszlo http://www.lithonia.com/commercial/2av.html

[warren57]

You're right if the surface mount has covers it would be the same. I was thinking an open surface mount with three sides open. In my last shop I mounted standard surface mount lights between the joists, flush on bottom and sheetrocked and it was not bad at all?

[56-210Sedan]

Find anything yet?