Garage LED Lights.

[Itsme]

Originally Posted by .:4:.

LED retro fit tubes do work, but the light output is the equivalent or only marginally better then a regular fluorescent tube. Yes they save on power, but replacing a say 4 foot fluoro batten fitting with a 4 foot LED batten fitting would give better light output.
As for work lights, the modern LED ones are a lot brighter then the old school linear halogen jobbys. For detailed work they make a lot of sense.

I was actually surprised how better the lighting in my garage by changing the old flouros to the led tubes as I was considering ripping out the flouros but the led's did the job for minimal cost.

[DFB FGXR6]

Originally Posted by .:4:.

Other minor thing with LED tubes, so for iron core ballast fittings you need to replace the starter with the one that comes with the LED tube. If you leave the fluoro starter in, LED tube goes bang.
So yes, if the fluoro fitting has an elctronic ballast you have to wire it out. Old iron core ballasts you can leave in provided you put in the dummy starter. However if you leave an iron core ballast in, yes the LED tube will work perfectly fine, but theres a loss. So not the most energy efficiency compared to deleting the iron core ballast. Its not difficult to do if you have your head around it, but if you dont, find someone to do it for you.

You have an open invitation to come and sort out my garage lighting. I'll detail your car, you do the lights.

[DFB FGXR6]

Originally Posted by bangm001

I have a garage thats is 5.6m by 9.0m and 2.4m high at the sides, with a high pitched roof. 6x double Clipsal fluoros which i put 10.5W LED globes and electronic starters in and its lit up quite well. All of the pics were taken at night.

image
upload
image
image
image

Always love seeing pics of your garage!

[Franco Cozzo]

Originally Posted by FoxtrotGolfXray 5.0

This is the engineer in me, but I'd be starting at what lighting level is required for the type of activity you want to undertake. Referring to AS1680.2.0-1990, Interior Lighting, Part 2 Recommendations for Specific Task and Interiors, Table 2, the following relevant (I've picked a few to show the level of disparity between the different purposes) lux levels are specified:

Carparks 40 lx

Garages and Service Stations:
General servicing, greasing, pits, washing, polishing 160 lx
Repairs 400 lx

Paint Shops and Spray Booths
Rubbing, ordinary painting, spraying and finishing, fine spraying, painting and finishing 400 lx

Probably overkill to start here for a home setup, malbaby and probs more complicated than you want it to be, but if you want to do it right, this is where I'd start.

There's nothing worse than being in a workshop with ****ty lighting and you're all arguing over who gets the company work lights so you can actually see what you're doing

[Citroënbender]

FG-X, does the Standard have a fixed lighting spec for boudoir photography - or is it a table based on BMI/age?

[Franco Cozzo]

Originally Posted by Citroënbender

FG-X, does the Standard have a fixed lighting spec for boudoir photography - or is it a table based on BMI/age?

The ****en darker it is the better from my experience

[whynot]

Originally Posted by malbaby

Suggestions on what to buy and wattage?

As others have pointed out, your lighting design depends on its purpose. AS/NSZ 1680 provides a guide for this. While one has to pay for the standard, the most critical table is readily available on the internet. For example here;

https://australianbuildingservices.w...ghting-levels/

For example, if the garage is used for storage, the light level only needs to be around 80lx.

If doing fine machine work, you will need around 600lx over the work area.

Paint retouching, you will need around 800lx.

The type of use determine how much light you will need. Keep in mind that it is OK to have, say, 80lx in most of an unused garage and a set of lights that gives 600lx over a workbench.

The tricky bit is that light output is given in lumens and the light that falls on a worksurface is measured in lux. Fortunately, there are a number of online calculators that help do the maths. Like this one here ...

https://www.rapidtables.com/calc/lig...alculator.html

As an example, we have a garage that is 10 metres by 8 metres (80m2). For this exercise, we break that up into four areas, 5m x 4 m (20m2). Next, we select a typical 9W LED downlight from Bunnings. Looking on the side of the box we see it has an output of 740 lumens.

Using the online calculator, we type in 740 lumens, set the area to be in square metres, set the surface area to be 20 m2, and hit calculate. The result returned is 37 lux, which is a bit low for a general garage. We probably want double that.

If we break up the garage into eight areas (this means eight LED downlights); 2.5 x 2m (5m2), and re-run the calculation, we get an answer of 137 lux per square meter. This is well over 80 lux and more than acceptable.

Just say there is a workbench at one end, with a work area of 4m by 1m (4 square metres). For a workbench we need the lighting level to be over 600 lux. We divide the bench into 4 blocks, each 1m2 (this means four LED down lights immediately above the bench). If we rerun the calculation, we get around 740 lux per square meter (which is above our target lux).

Some tips;

The lightning levels quoted in the standard are a minimum. It is better to have more light than less.

The finer the work, the more light is needed. This is because your eye works on the same principle as a camera lens. More light allows the pupil to contract, increasing the depth of field that an object stays in focus.

The older one gets, the more light is needed. This is because the eye looses its flexibility to adapt to a shallower depth of field.

It is far better to have multiple lower power light sources than one very bright light source.

[Vesper Martini]

An incredible amount of information has been given here, there's some real passion on this topic
to the OP let us know what you go out an buy

[FoxtrotGolfXray 5.0]

Originally Posted by Citroënbender

FG-X, does the Standard have a fixed lighting spec for boudoir photography - or is it a table based on BMI/age?

Surprised you missed the fact that I'd already addressed that in my OP, CB:

Garages and Service Stations:
General servicing, greasing, pits, washing, polishing 160 lx

Although, perhaps Franko is right and something around 20 lux or lower would be more appropriate. Not that I think I have the same experience level as him.....

[Franco Cozzo]

Originally Posted by whynot

As others have pointed out, your lighting design depends on its purpose. AS/NSZ 1680 provides a guide for this. While one has to pay for the standard, the most critical table is readily available on the internet. For example here;

https://australianbuildingservices.w...ghting-levels/

For example, if the garage is used for storage, the light level only needs to be around 80lx.

If doing fine machine work, you will need around 600lx over the work area.

Paint retouching, you will need around 800lx.

The type of use determine how much light you will need. Keep in mind that it is OK to have, say, 80lx in most of an unused garage and a set of lights that gives 600lx over a workbench.

The tricky bit is that light output is given in lumens and the light that falls on a worksurface is measured in lux. Fortunately, there are a number of online calculators that help do the maths. Like this one here ...

https://www.rapidtables.com/calc/lig...alculator.html

As an example, we have a garage that is 10 metres by 8 metres (80m2). For this exercise, we break that up into four areas, 5m x 4 m (20m2). Next, we select a typical 9W LED downlight from Bunnings. Looking on the side of the box we see it has an output of 740 lumens.

Using the online calculator, we type in 740 lumens, set the area to be in square metres, set the surface area to be 20 m2, and hit calculate. The result returned is 37 lux, which is a bit low for a general garage. We probably want double that.

If we break up the garage into eight areas (this means eight LED downlights); 2.5 x 2m (5m2), and re-run the calculation, we get an answer of 137 lux per square meter. This is well over 80 lux and more than acceptable.

Just say there is a workbench at one end, with a work area of 4m by 1m (4 square metres). For a workbench we need the lighting level to be over 600 lux. We divide the bench into 4 blocks, each 1m2 (this means four LED down lights immediately above the bench). If we rerun the calculation, we get around 740 lux per square meter (which is above our target lux).

Some tips;

The lightning levels quoted in the standard are a minimum. It is better to have more light than less.

The finer the work, the more light is needed. This is because your eye works on the same principle as a camera lens. More light allows the pupil to contract, increasing the depth of field that an object stays in focus.

The older one gets, the more light is needed. This is because the eye looses its flexibility to adapt to a shallower depth of field.

It is far better to have multiple lower power light sources than one very bright light source.

There's also reference to the table you are talking about with one of Worksafe Victoria's compliance codes - its on page 26.

https://www.worksafe.vic.gov.au/reso...rk-environment

Even though its in a compliance code with Worksafe Victoria they're only 'guidelines' and not 'law', they're 'recommendations' and if you follow said 'recommendations' you'll be complying with OHS legislation.

I've worked in a dimly lit glorified 4000m2 Bunnings shed in the past with just a bunch of old-skool metal halide 400W high bay lights, what is barely adequate for a warehouse doesn't cut the mustard for an automotive workshop when you can't see what you're doing and even ends up with eye strain and migraines.

[.:4:.]

Not that anyone ever actually reads the front of a standards book, but in there theres a bit for terminology. So the terms should and shall. Should is the recomended, but not law. Shall, thats the you have to do it.
Eye strain however. Theres a bit towards that really. So for example, lets use an automotive workshop. You grab tools from your toolchest which is well lit from above, you duck under the car on the lift that you are working on. So your eyes have to adjust because its dark under the car. So not so much an issue if you have what you need and arent constantly going from light to dark. Yes torches are great, but even still, theyre static sorta so leave ypur work light under the car then duck over to grab whatever, your eyes still need to adjust. Thats why i like headlamps. Yeah they are no fashion statement having one of them on your noggin, but it creates a constant, your eyes dont need to adjust as frequently.
So from my proffesional experience predominantly working comercial. The people who 'complain' about eye strain are the ones sitting on the ends of work stations. They arent complaining. Its not too uncommon for offices to have dark carpet tiles to hide the fact the workers are grubs, yet the desk tops are white. So the persons on the end of the workstation, their eyes are constantly adjusting from when they look over to the dark carpet then back to the white desk. So the remidy for that isnt rocket surgury. Either put a dark mat thing on the desk, or a partition on the edge of the desk.
You typically do not find as many eye strain issues with say an office that has brown woodgrain looking desks and beige or brown carpet compared to white desks and dark carpets.