Garage Lighting

[Andy Hall]

The roof is pitched with tiles (this is a detached building) and has trussed roof frames. I boarded onto the top side of the "ceiling" joists - if you imagine it like a house, the underside would have had plasterboard. This boarding is T&G floorboarding, of which I was able to obtain a good price for quantity at a timber yard. So from below you can see the joists and the underside of the boards.

The roof is insulated with Celotex between the rafters, with air gap behind, soffit vents etc. - the floor boarded area is not. The effect of this is that the boarding reduces the effect of heat rising all the way up into the top part of the roof but still allows some passage of warmth through the boards to keep the roof area slightly warmed.

I use the roof area for storage - things don't rust or otherwise deteriorate. I put in a loft hatch with integrated fold down ladder for daily access, and then a much larger removable panel behind it with a hoist above for lifting up larger or more awkward items like bicycles.

I framed in front of the (single brick) walls with pressure treated

75x50 timber, screwed to the joists at the top and the floor at the bottom and with a 25mm air gap behind. I fitted Celotex between the framing, and then plywood onto that. The plywood was quite a good quality external 18mm WBP from Finland, sourced from Jewsons. One side tended to be better than the other and small defects were easy to sand and fill.

The trick seems to be to buy all the materials at once and contact a few places for pricing. Once the order is of a reasonable size and they realise that they are in competition, the prices drop quite markedly.

.andy

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[Dave Plowman]

As others have said, fluorescents are ideal for this use. New twin 6ft fittings with metal reflectors will cost about 40 quid each from the likes of TLC, so will be fairly pricey to do the job properly. It's worth looking for a factory or office block which is being demolished or re-furbished - these are usually scrapped at this time, and can be had for very little. Try and get more than you need for spares, although many designs have a very long production span so are easy to repair.

[Dave Plowman]

I was going to say it seems an expensive solution to a problem that shouldn't exist in a garage, but looking at TLC prices, you get a Telco twin 6ft IP65 for 47.50 quid against about 35 for a 'normal' fitting with reflector. Prices plus VAT, of course.

[NJF]

I agree with the flouries, perhaps taking the layout into consideration you need to think about what task lighting you require. Having 8 6ft doubles in my painted walls 4m x 10m workshop here fed from 3 phases, the full splash proof type, we still have incandesant task lighting on all rotating machinery, the strobe effect is dangerous and is avoidable. If good colour rendition is important blue daylight simulation bulbs in task lights are invaluble.

Niel.

[PoP]

Thanks for that. I imagined you'd boarded from below (as well).

PoP

[Christian McArdle]

Definitely walls. Then you don't have to worry about splashing paint on the floor, because you just don't care. This means you can go like the clappers with the roller!

Christian.

[PoP]

Walls. Any paint drips will be covered over when you paint the floor (and paint tends to drip downwards, not upwards).

PoP

[Andrew Gabriel]

In a single garage with white ceiling and bare brick walls, I have 3 x 5' 58W single fittings, and that's good enough for regular woodwork. Bought a 4-pack and the 4th went into the loft. It might not be good enough for very intricate work.

Have replaced the ballasts in the ones in the garage with instant start electronic as the freezer is in there, and nipping in for a few seconds to access the freezer could be anoying when the lights only finish coming on as you have finished in there. (Actually, only got round to replacing two of them so far -- last one's been waiting a couple of years for me to get around to it;-)

[Christian McArdle]

I did mine the right way round. Then, when I'd finished, I smacked my roller on a pole (loaded with taupe floor paint) into the lovely white ceiling. The splat is still there!

Christian.

[nightjar]

As my garage is unheated, I used IP65 sealed units, which not only protect the tubes from accidental damage, but also, if you make sure the entries are sealed and close them in warm, dry conditions, from condensation in winter. As the tubes lose light output with age, it is a good idea in a workshop to replace them every 2 or 3 years, depending on the use they get. Cleaning the diffusers regularly also makes a lot of difference.

Colin Bignell

[PoP]

Following on from a suggestion raised on this forum yesterday I decided to paint the inside of my garage white.

I did a few feet of wall today (one car bay width). I have to admit that I haven't had to work that hard getting paint from tin to wall when painting before!

Actually, getting the paint to the wall with a roller is no problem, but getting those pesky mortar runs between bricks using a roller, that's another matter. In the end I made better progress with a large brush. At this rate I should finish the garage by the end of the week.

PoP

[James Hart]

Add an ordinary light or 2 for quick acces jobs like getting to the freezer, no point firing everything up when all you need is a little lighting.

[nightjar]

Until I glued a rubber speed bump across the door, my garage would flood every time there was heavy rain. As the raft has sunk in the corner furthest from the door, it could be a couple of inches deep there. Even now, a rain-laden North wind can bring water seeping through the single skin brick wall after a few hours. Painting it with Aquaseal has been on my to-do list for a few years now.

I don't think I paid as much as that, but I don't have the invoice to hand. One of my factory units has a low-roofed mezzanine floor and I used sealed units there to protect the lights from damage. When I bought those, I added a couple of units on for my garage, so was able to buy them with both trade and quantity discounts.

Colin Bignell

[Peter Ashby]

Get a nice long handle for your roller to do the floor, better for your back.

Peter

[PoP]

I was in Focus DIY shed earlier today and swung by the lighting section.

4ft x 38w with diffuser costs £25, VAT included. May not be IP65 spec but it looks like I'll be grabbing 4 of those shortly.

BTW, I thought metrication had taken over big time these days? Why are flourescent lights described in feet then?

PoP

[Bob Eager]

Especially when flour is measured in kilograms...! :-)

[stefek.zaba]

Describe 'em how you want: call the 5ft length 150cm if you're being usefully descriptive, or 2.54 * 60 = 152.4 if you're being inappropriately exact (like those recipes which tell you to take '56g of butter' when it meant 'about 2 oz'. But, unusually, I digress ;-). Not even the Society for Mass Metrication is going to suggest changing the physical dimensions of existing flourescent tube fittings, meaning people having to keep twice as many tubes in stock and fitting too-loose/too-tight or otherwise marginally incompatible tubes into fittings made 20 and more years ago!

[PoP]

Agreed - I went to the TLC web site last night.

I was comparing the Focus price with the 40-50 quid someone quoted in an earlier message for IP65's. They must have been talking about something different :)

PoP

[Ben Blaney]

I need to finish the glosswork in my hall - and, ideally, do my bedroom

- before getting cracking on the garage.

[Andrew Gabriel]

It really doesn't matter much, since there's no dimension on a

5' tube which measures 5' anyway. The bi-pin tube size measurement for the original tubes was the spacing between fittings when you ran them in a continuous line. However, that doesn't apply to all tube sizes. A quick check of the datasheets shows 18" and 6' tubes must be based on some other scheme.

In practice, tubes are now quoted in mm sizes, but again, not their real size -- the conversion is simply to convert the old tube size to mm using conversion factor 300mm = 1', so a 5' tube is now called a 1500mm tube. Of course, there's no dimension on it which is 1500mm, and because 300mm is not really the same as 1', the quoted measurement is not even the fitting spacing anymore either ;-)