If, like me, your 16 year old ambition is being hampered by 60-mumble year old eyes, you know that lighting is critical.

I started with 100 watt incandescents in my garage. Better than a coal oil torch, but not much.

Then I heard about cold-start T11 fluorescents. MUCH better, and will start down to near zero, but do need some time to come up to full brightness.

Now I've discovered 4 foot LED strips. The fixture looks just like an old-fashioned chain-hung fluorescent fixture, but the light comes from a double row of LED's. HOLY DAYLIGHT, BATMAN!

MUCH brighter, 34 watts power consumption and WalMart has them for less than $20 per fixture. What's not to love?

Oddly, it's not listed on their web site, but its the Hyper Tough 4 foot Hanging LED Shop Light, SKU 755277813005

Costco carries something similar. I see loads of them go out the door and think I may jump on board soon also.

Cheers~

I put 8 of them in my shop, I no longer care if the light shines in!

I have converted my whole townhouse to LED. It has been excellent. I had compact fluorescents for a while. They sucked.

I converted 4 different 4 foot fluorescents to LED just recently.
It was a little work but great afterwards.
They look great too, cleaned up the old ones, took out the ballasts and painted a cool looking black.
Used Hyperikon Tubes from Amazon > 4K color temp is just right for me.

Put 3 4-footers from HD in my sister’s garage. Now she wants to live out there, I think. 2000 lumens each.
At least 4 going in my new garage.

Just changed over most of my inside from CFC and incandescent to LED that looks like a normal bulb. So much more white lite and less power and way longer life. I may switch over the garage to these shop lights. Same club.com lists one for 35$ by Honeywell linkable to 10 units for 4500 lumens. I think 10 of these in my garage would be great.

Got the same 60+ eye problem! Found a local source for LED shop lights-got 2 8ft with 6ft cords at $25 each. Can't believe how bright they are!

Mike

Obviously, I'm a little late to this party.

I've been aware of LED shop lighting for some time, but the prices were a deal-breaker for me. No longer.

Now we'll all run out and cause a shortage of LED garage fixtures, and all the mice living in our garages will be ordering sunglasses.

I put two of the Commercial Electric shop lights from Home Depot above my work bench and it made one heck of a difference. I love them.

Home Deopt also has replacement LED bulbs for the T8 flourescent lights. Didn’t like those and would not recommend them. Well, they wouldn’t start up cause apparently my lights don’t have the correct ballast for them. They did light up if I changed the bulb with the light energized.

Commercial Electric 3’ Shop Light

Sooooo, going forward from now on, you'll ...

quote:

Originally posted by smschulz:
I converted 4 different 4 foot fluorescents to LED just recently.
It was a little work but great afterwards.
They look great too, cleaned up the old ones, took out the ballasts and painted a cool looking black.
Used Hyperikon Tubes from Amazon > 4K color temp is just right for me.

Some of the Hyperikon ones require changing the sockets and rewiring them to have 120v at them. I don't suggest using this kind, as you can short them out changing the light bulbs or shock yourself. We don't use them in commercial spaces because the employees are too dumb not to shock themselves.

For most people I recommend using direct replacement ones that use the existing T8 ballasts. You loose a fraction of the efficiency due to heat loss in the ballast, but who cares about a watt or two between friends? Or just replace the who fixture with a LED fixture.

PS I am an electrician and I only have a couple LEDs in my house. They don't last as long as advertised and don't save much money in electrical costs either. I am going to wait until there is an industry standard on the products and some with longevity. They change every two months so if you have one prematurely die, you can't buy a replacement that looks exactly the same a few months or a year later.

Upon replacing fluorescents in the shop with LED's, my limited drywall finishing skills were brought to light.

I hung up eight of these Feit LEDs on the 14ft ceiling. It lights up my 30X40 shop better than daylight even from 14ft up. I dang near need sunglasses in there.

Amazon wants $44 each, but I got mine on sale at Costco for $19 each. Cool part about them is they each have a male and female plug so you can link them together.

I might screw an adapter into the socket on my openers and plug one of these LED fixtures in place of two bulbs. I would think I should work as low as the power consumption is on the strips.

I replaced all the fluorescent bulbs in the five garage fixtures with LED bulbs from Costco last year. Had one fixture would overheat and shut down. Bought a proper replacement at Lowe's. Now all the lights come on, full brightness, right away, even at temps in the teens.

About a year ago I put two of these at over 13,000 lumens each in my garage. I love them.

The first time I put led in my shop I tried to put the bulbs in with those little white plastic covers on, it took me about 5 minutes to figure out they needed to come off. total dork moment they are great lights I ended up with some industrial grade ones from platt electric buddy of mine is a electrician.

I changed to these in Kitchen (2 fixtures) and bedrooms (1)
Lithonia FMLRL 14 20840 M4

They are not fancy, but do a great job.

https://www.1000bulbs.com/prod...54455/LITH-0044.html