Light cove

[MiamiCuse]

I am toying with the idea of building a light cove around the entire living room (about 28'x22') then use recessed lights and other lights towards the middle.

My idea is to attach a 2x6 horizontally to the concrete block wall, which will make a "shelf" about 6" wide. I will route the top side on the outside to put a small notch in which I will insert a thin strip of frosted glass or fiber glass about 3 to 4" tall so this will form the "lip" of the shelf.

Inside the shelf I will put 48" long florescent light fixture and chain them up all around.

This seems simple to do I just need some suggestion on how I would secure the 2x6 sideways to the concrete block wall. I don't want to use any visible braces. Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance,

MC

[nicksanspam]

You might not need the glass if you attach the fixtures to the wall or put them on the shelf near the wall so you can't see the tubes from the other side of the room. If the top of the tube is 3" above the shelf and 2" from the wall, how wide must the shelf be to make the tube invisible to someone

6' tall and 28' away?

Corner brackets above the shelves or blue screws in deep countersinks?

Nick

[ransley]

Use 1x6 attach 1x2 to the 1x6 with L brackets , screw the 1x2 into the wall, or just screw L braclets to the wall. Look at T-8 dimmable flourescent lights.

[MiamiCuse]

I was thinking about that, but I think it is visible from some angle, also without the glass I think the light will be too "direct" instead of all bounced off the ceiling.

As far as attachments, with your suggestions I have three options:

1 - use concrete anchor bolts, deep into the concrete, and drill holes on the 2x lumber on the side facing the walls to insert the other end of the concrete anchor. This probably is the strongest but may be tricky to align all the holes with all the anchors.

2 - tapcon with deep countersinks.

3- L brackets tapcon to concrete wall, wood screw on 2x.

I wonder which one will be stronger 2 or 3?

MC

[MiamiCuse]

Use 1x6 attach 1x2 to the 1x6 with L brackets , screw the 1x2 into the wall, or just screw L braclets to the wall. Look at T-8 dimmable flourescent lights.

Thanks. Will you use L brackets spaced every few inches (say 8 or 12) or will you get a continuous long L bracket?

MC

[MiamiCuse]

Just talked to someone that makes me think I may need to change my design.

He said that since a florescent light fixture box is say 48" long, and I need to chain them one after another to create this continuous light effect, the fixtures need to overlap about 4 inches. His reasoning is that the actual tube is not 48" long, may be 42" long with the sockets on both ends, so if I chain them together, the socket from the last one to the socket of the next one will create a six inch gap without lighting, therefore when I turn on these lights, I will see light for 42", then a six inch gap, then light for 42" again...and so on.

That seems to make sense, so to solve this I need to overlap the fixtures, which means my "shelve" needs to be even wider?

Or will the light "wash" into each other and still have the continuously lite effect?

MC

[nicksanspam]

About 16". Or less, if the shelf tilts upwards.

Clear glass won't change the angles much. A linear parabolic reflector might focus the light onto the center of the ceiling...

I'd vote for this:

Nick

[nicksanspam]

The tube itself is about 47.75", including the pins.

I think so.

Nick

[ransley]

You need to calculate Lumens, Using single T8 around a room will be plenty bright for a home, How big is the room. One double fixture T8 might be equal to 320 watts, for a 16x 16 room that is near equal to

5000 watts incandesant, or Daylight, and when you dimm them the color goes kinda red.

[nmbexcuse]

Ransley thanks again for your reply.

The room is about 16'x32'. I plan to do this all around except at the fireplace which is about 6' wide. So the total perimeter that would be lit would be about 90 linear feet, or 22 fixtures of 48" in length. I was thinking either single T8 or T12...I thought the T8 is

32W so if I have 22 of that would equate to 704W? I am not sure I am doing this right. What is a decent total wattage, I don't think I need it to be bright daylight.

I never seen florescent tubes dimmed, is this even possible?

Thanks again,

MC

[nmbexcuse]

So it seems using L brackets is the way to go. The drywall is down now and all I have is the bare concrete wall with 3/8" furring strips in place. Should I install drywall first, then install the cove/shelf on top of drywall? Or is it better to install the L bracket and cove/ shelf now, then drywall after (which will make more work for the drywall installer)?

Thanks,

MC

[ransley]

s the

704 watt of T8 will be extremely bright, it might be uncomfortable. A 100 watt incandesant is 1400 lumen. A 32w soft white Philllips T8 is 2950 Lumens. 22 of them is 64900 Lumens! Or equal to 46, 100 watt incandesants or 4600 watts of incandesants. Dimmer ballasts are expensive maybe adding 600$, and they dont dim to Zero but maybe 20- 30% and there is the slight color change to red as you dim. A dimmer for that might be 40-50$ before spending 1000 on lights put every light you own in that room to see what 64900 lumen is like. But I have 46000 lumen in a kitchen, my T8 are in hollow beams shining up 12 of them and the halogens dim to zero. The kitchen is like daylight if I want it but the dimmed T8 gets a little red and im not that happy with that. It could work, get one with a dimmer and test the idea. research ballasts, new ones might get you to dim to 15%

[nmbexcuse]

rds the

Thanks for the advise. Yes I need to do more homework to make sure the effect is what I want, thanks for the heads up again.