Garage Lighting
 

Pretty close to writing on a townhouse with tandem garage tonight.

The whole place will probably get some facelifting, but first things first. My first garage!

Suggestions for lighting? It’s a tandem garage, and the Z will sit at the back where it opens up a bit in width. I do believe there is only two standard light fixtures (ala normal light bulb). I’d like this place lit up like a foot ball field.

Are your standard fluorescent style tube lights the way to go? Is LED worth while?

With only two lights in the ceiling now, can I wire in extra fixtures without getting my hands slapped by strata, city or inspector? This house stuff is all new to me.

any goals of what you want to do with the garage?

we changed our old florescent to these https://www.amazon.ca/HyperSelect-Ut...d+light+garage

They are brighter and more cool in terms of colour, but it really helps with spotting defects or water spot when i am detailing my bike or car.

Go with LED. We switched our store to LED lights and it's way brighter. Check out Costco they sell led shop lights that are 4 feet long.

I put 7 of these 4' Phillips commercial grade LED strip fixtures in my single car garage:

FluxStream LED Strip - Strip - Linear - Indoor Luminaires | Philips DayBrite

Because of where I work I get them at wholesale pricing, ~$100 per fixture (plus I got one for free).

It's massive overkill amount of light, 4 fixtures would be a lot of light for my space. They're 0-10V dimmable too, but I never bothered hooking that up.

Picture of them in my garage:
http://www3.telus.net/bryster/20170325_070524.jpg

I don't think your strata has any say in what kind of or how many lighting fixtures you can have inside your garage.

Installing any additional hard-wired fixtures (or additional receptacle outlets) would technically require an electrical permit.

Depending on the way your joists run you could add LED pots, they give off a tonne of light and it would be very simple to jumper them from the existing fixture to the next light and so on.

Surface mounted lights like the bars above are obviously much easier to install however

Basically comes down to the amount you want to spend on fixtures. Any of the suggestions above will work great, LED or even 4' fluorescent strip lights are quite bright. I'm a maintenance electrician and we started using 4' LED replacement bulbs that go in old 4' fluorescent fixtures, without having to do any ballast work, just remove old bulbs and replace with new bulbs, easy direct swap. So you have couple options, just have to decide how much you want to spend.

Lowe's just happens to have some sales on now too.
https://www.lowes.ca/search/Flouresc...rm=Flourescent

PM me if ya have any specific lighting questions as I deal with lighting all day erry day

Thanks for the recommendations.

The garage will be painted white, and if I'm feeling good and junk doesn't start filling up the space i'd like to epoxy coat the floor too.

As for lighting, Costco had some 4' LED bar style lights for $50 each. I'm betting with white, or light coloured walls, 2 fixtures in the rear above the Z/workbench and then 2 more towards the centre of the garage should be plenty of light. I confirmed this evening there is only 2 fixtures currently in the garage. 1 at the back, and 1 in the middle. Is someone going to slap my wrist for doing some DIY work splitting these into 2 each? As much as i'd like pot lights, I have a feeling it may be the more expensive route.

That amazon link looks very similar to the Costco ones, but slightly cheaper. Score. bcdehk, do you know if those light fixtures could be mounted directly to the ceiling, vs hanging on the chain?

Not lighting realted but definitely, do the floors first - like asap. The first place all your stuff gets moved into is the garage and it's a pita to move everything out after.

+1 on floors.

I was in a similar situation a while back. Ended up with LEDs, but my garage is pretty small compared to what you are describing.

I saw those Costco fixtures, I didn't see any any options for direct surface mounting.

Also, they're corded. So your options for wiring are:

A) Install a receptacle everywhere you want a fixture
B) Cut the plug off the cord and go into a junction box at each fixture

I considered them for myself but I didn't care for either of those wiring options

Not unless a neighbor reports you on it

offer is in. let the waiting begin. Don't think i'm the highest offer, but i'm the only subject free one. Did my inspection before hand ;) should find out shortly.

This is what I see with most of those lights. Doesn't seem like they are meant to be hard wired in. Could I not cut off the cord of each one, and run two into each one of the old junction boxes for the old fixtures?

Yup you could do that. You'll need a cover over the old box, and to do it properly, the appropriate clamp/strain relief connector for the fixture cord

New Poco resident over here ;) My stubborn germeness wins. Fuck ya. haha

Hawthorne or Laurier? Lol

At my old place I used this for the garage. Will probably buy another set for my new garage.

https://www.amazon.ca/DiCUNO-Splitte...socket+adapter

Why not use these?

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon....L._SL1102_.jpg

I'd keep an eye on the wattage limits for everything, but with LED you should be good to go. The nice thing is it's all easily reversable should you decide later on to change things up for whatever reason. The way the cables attach to those Costco lights looks like you could easily mount it directly to the ceiling if you wanted (it looks like it's just a keyhold slot like for mounting stuff on the wall).

I thought they had grounded plugs (could be wrong, can't remember), which won't work with those

Are these areas or streets? lol This place is too new to me.

I put one of these up in my rental garage space. I just looked at it the other day. With the 150w incandescent bulb I was running the white plastic looks burnt. Oops. It saw 500w limit I do believe. LED's are probably fine. I'm betting it was the heat.

As an earlier member posted, since it is corded, we did ours with the hanging cables. I guess you could techincally mount it directly if you cut the cord, but, ain't nobody got time for that

We had receptacle installed on the ceiling, so we use one plug for the light and another one to plug either my polisher/vacuum, etc....

^^ Did the same as bcedhk took off the old light fixtures and put receptacles there and just plugged in the new costco lights. probably the same amount of work but have to spend a couple of bucks buying the receptacles and the finishing plates

Streets. Guess you moved to Riverside them lol

Yup. Haha

I went LED and love it. So close to sunlight. Anyway, one thing to remember, LED's will affect your garage door opener. How much effect they have on the garage door openers depends on location and type of garage opener.

Quick fix is to extend the antenna. It solved my problem. You can buy non interfering LED bulbs or just do the extension. Now my garage remotes work better than before, lol.


BTW, I went with those Costco, Feit LED workshop lights that you can hook up together. They go on sale quite often and are cheaper and better than those you get at Costco up here.

https://www.costco.com/Feit-Electric...100284402.html

I have them on an individually switched, 6 outlet, power bar.