What type of shop lighting should I use?
Print This Article
There are several lighting options to light the wood shop, fluorescent, incandescent, or compact fluorescent. Which is the right one for my wood shop? Each light option has its strengths and limitations.
Incandescent light bulbs have been the main stay for lighting just about any space in the home. They are cheap and easy to use. However, they give off a huge amount of heat. A typical 60 watt incandescent light bulb will give off 10% light and 90% heat! So, out of the 60 watts of electricity 54 watts are turned into heat. Hmmm. Do you recall what the heat source for an Easy Bake oven is?
Strip fluorescent lamps are the most common lamps. They come in a variety of lengths from ten inches to eight feet long. The smaller units have an electrical plug where as the longer units are designed to be hard wired. Fluorescent light bulbs’ light is, depending on your visual taste, a harsh white light. My wife’s parents do not light tube fluorescent lighting for this reason. However, I have come across replacement fluorescent light bulbs that give off a more natural colored light.
Another draw back of the fluorescent lighting is cold temperatures. When the air temperature drops to the 40’s or lower, the lights need time to warm up. When they are first turned on they flicker and give off an annoyingly loud hum. After several minutes the flickering stops and the hum subsides.
Compact fluorescent light bulbs are becoming more affordable and accepted by the home owner. The early models took a while to ‘warm up’ before they reached their full illumination. It is a pain when you turn on the light switch and the light comes on at a very dim level and it slowly over a minute or two comes up to the full brightness. It looks like the compact fluorescent manufactures have been listening to the consumers, now a days, most all of the compact fluorescent light bulbs in my house turn on at nearly full illumination with the flip of the switch.
The nice thing about compact fluorescents is that they are compact enough to replace an incandescent light bulb in a light fixture that was designed to use incandescent light bulbs. Compact fluorescent light bulbs give off very little heat so most all of the electricity is used to produce light instead of heat.
Compact fluorescent light bulbs are more expensive than their incandescent counter parts. The only other negative I have is that depending on how well the compact fluorescent light bulb was manufactured it could literally burn out and burn up. About two months ago my kids where in the living room with a table lamp on that has a 27 watt (equivalent to 100 watt incandescent) compact fluorescent light bulb in it. The table lamp was on and I was outside working in the wood shop. My kids came running out to get me to come inside. When I came inside I saw smoke coming out of the table lamp’s light bulb. After the compact fluorescent light bulb cooled down I inspected it and noticed that the joint between the tube and the base was blackened and some kind of black gooey stuff had oozed out. Fortunately no damage was done, other than the bulb had died.
How do you determine when a compact fluorescent light bulb is at the end of its life? I don’t know. The only other compact fluorescent bulb that burned out just stopped working, without trying to catch fire. If you have any suggestions, leave a comment.
I have read about wood worker’s who use clip on reflector lights with either incandescent or compact fluorescent light bulbs. It works great for low ceilings, such as a basement, where hanging a hardwired fixture are going to get in the way. Another advantage is that the light is right where you need it.
In my wood shop I went with four foot strip fluorescent lamps. I installed two of them. They model I used came with a four foot power cord. When I was wiring up the shed, I installed an electric outlet half way in between the lights. The lights are controlled by a light switch at the door.
When wiring the shed, I added a separate circuit just for the lights. Yeah, it may seem like over kill to put in a 15 amp circuit just for two four foot fluorescent light fixtures, but do you really want to be standing in the dark when you trip the circuit breaker? The cost of installing the additional circuit was… like $10. My father thought I was foolish for doing so, until I was ripping a long board, the binded the table saw blade and tripped the circuit. If that same circuit also powered the lights I would have been standing in the dark trying to find get back to the circuit panel to reset the breaker. The separate circuit was worth it in my opinion.
Did you enjoy this article? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Comments
Congratulations on installing the spruce vaulted ceiling. There are a few different lighting options for your living room. If you have a ceiling fan in the room, you could install a light kit on it. Track lighting systems are very nice, and your can use compact fluorescent bulbs instead of incandescent, which will reduce your electric bill. Another option would be to use table and floor lamps to provide illumination in the room.
It might be time to take a field trip to a lighting specialty store and check out the many different lighting options. Don’t buy a lighting solution there, unless the price is within your budget. Once, you have a lighting style in mind and possibly a manufacture or two, start price shopping the online retailers to find the best deal.
Toni
I put a nice looking spruce vaulted ceiling and I dont want to ruin the look with fluorrescents. I thought maybe some nice looking trac lights that are flush mounted. whats your opini=on.
Thanks Jim