Worksop lighting Rant!

[krismusic]

Hi, following on from my thread asking advice about workshop lighting. Wanting to update the lighting that I have been perfectly happy with for 30yrs, 4x 200watt bulbs. Partly because 200 watt bulbs are supposedly being phased out and I thought, ok. 800 watts of incandescent lightbulb is not very green. So I decided to change to fluorescents. Put two up. Hopeless. :roll: Asked my supplier for advice. He tells me I need at least 4 doubles, if not 6! :shock: Buy two more. Nope he is right! I need 6x 2x 70watt fittings. So, this is going to end up costing me £360!!! :evil: The real kicker? I will be burning 840watts. 40w more than my original bulbs. How green is that! :twisted: Wish I had never started! Feckin' greens. :lol:

 

[Corset]

Have you tried the daylight high luminx things. I have some and they are very good.
Owen

 

[John. B]

I have 6x5ft and 1x4ft strip lights, also individual spots for both lathes, bandsaw, radial arm, disc sander and so on.
Each light is individually switched, so I only put on the one or two I need at the time. Keeps the cost down a little.

John. B

 

[krismusic]

Yup got the high output daylight. Individual switching sounds like a good idea except that the unlit areas of the workshop look very gloomy and I am used to nice high light levels all round.

 

[big soft moose]

70w sounds very high to be the cfl equivalent of 200w - especially as 18w cfl equates to 150w incandecent.

I thought the next one up would be 25W CFL - 6 of these would be 150W rather than 840.

 

[krismusic]

70w sounds very high to be the cfl equivalent of 200w - especially as 18w cfl equates to 150w incandecent.

I thought the next one up would be 25W CFL - 6 of these would be 150W rather than 840.

The 70's are only just ok. I wish I still had the old bulbs!

 

[Rich]

Good old Brussels, they know best don't they? :roll:

Rich.

 

[Woodmagnet]

Love their sprouts though. :lol:

 

[Benchwayze]

Let's be fair.. These 'energy saving' bulbs are pretty feeble, despite claims they equal tungsten bulbs, once they are at full luminescence.

Their only grace is that they last a long time. They do flicker though and some people have reported migraines and vision disturbances since they started using them.

I suppose eventually even the daylight bulbs will be phased out because some of them have a filament.
The 100 watt bulb is about to be consigned to history. So what's the answer?

Maybe we should just go back to candles. Oh no I forgot. Tallow comes from animals and the manufacture of paraffin-wax is energy consuming. Let's just go to bed when it gets dark!

Just so long as they don't try all year round BST, because some people think it gives us an extra hour of daylight. :lol:

 

[Benchwayze]

Good old Brussels, they know best don't they? :roll:

Rich.

That's a point.. But if they are grown here in UK, are we allowed to call them Brussels Sprouts?

 

[Benchwayze]

Love their sprouts though. :lol:

Ooops... quoted the wrong post! Same comment though!

 

[joesoap]

Hi, following on from my thread asking advice about workshop lighting. Wanting to update the lighting that I have been perfectly happy with for 30yrs, 4x 200watt bulbs. Partly because 200 watt bulbs are supposedly being phased out and I thought, ok. 800 watts of incandescent lightbulb is not very green. So I decided to change to fluorescents. Put two up. Hopeless. :roll: Asked my supplier for advice. He tells me I need at least 4 doubles, if not 6! :shock: Buy two more. Nope he is right! I need 6x 2x 70watt fittings. So, this is going to end up costing me £360!!! :evil: The real kicker? I will be burning 840watts. 40w more than my original bulbs. How green is that! :twisted: Wish I had never started! Feckin' greens. :lol:

And meanwhile Kris , your supplier is rubbing his hands , but not to keep them warm !!! Cheers F!

 

[andycktm]

When they've milked LEDs till they'll take no more.Then we've got cheap
lighting.

 

[ivan]

According to the catalogue, a 200W incandescent produces about about 3x the light of one current 20W "energy saver" style plug in fluorescent. A single 5 ft tube (60 to 80W according to detail) produces about 1.5 times more light than your 200W gls bulb.

Initially at least, using small tubed "saver" fluorescents from Tesco appears cheaper to install, (but output does drop over lamp life). Why not suck and see? you can use simple proportion on the above figures to calculate how many fittings = 4x 200W gls bulbs.

I sized the lamps here 20 yrs ago according to a Min of Ag. farm lighting guide booklet, four double 6ft fittings for about 30 sq M floor area for a (mechanics) workshop; this has proved OK for woodwork, walls white, floor very pale grey - you need more light if dark colours. Unless your workshop is much smaller, I would imagine this is a much higher light level than you have at present. I still need the odd anglepoise for critical jobs, but us old 'uns need a bit more glim.

How many sq M, and what's the main colour?

 

[jhwbigley]

iv got a box of 200w light bulbs, and also a box of 150w, not that i use them in any thing, but i could always sell them on the black market! :lol:

 

[Ironballs]

As an aside, I have 3 halogen bulbs (50W) above my bench and I winged one of them the other week with a piece of wood. After that it was noticeably brighter than the others, on the downside it expired about 3 weeks later. Thought it might

 

[krismusic]

Thanks to everyone who replied. My workshop is about 300sq. ft. White with a pale floor. I now have 4x 2x70w Daylight flories and the level of light is pretty good. I still need to add at least one more 2x70w to stop one end of the workshop being dingy. If I get away with just the one more then I will be running a whole 100w less than I was before and the exercise has only cost me £300 plus time! :lol: The light levels may be theoretically higher than my old bulbs but my perception is that the light seemed brighter before. :roll: The light is much more even and cleaner though.

 

[Jake]

The tubes should have their output marked on them in Lumens, what do they say? If not marked with output, what's the brand?

You could be losing a lot just by choice of tube as some are about 50% as efficient as the best.

Choosing daylight tubes was a handicap in that regard - so you will end up with both dimmer light, and a light your eyes will not take to naturally as the CRI is all "wrong" for the brain's expectations at those light levels. That may be contributing to your perceived sensation of lower light levels, as the old incandescants will have had a much warmer CRI (more like warm white tubes, but those can be a bit unpleasant, so normal white tubes is what I go for).