Bus Barn Lighting

As some of you have gathered from recent posts, I am in construction of a bus barn and have asked advice from the pros on a variety of subjects. I have read in some past post about the desire for "surgical suite" lighting. I am trying to plan that, but haven't engaged an electrician as of yet. Do any of you have suggestions as to types of fixtures, i.e. flourescent, high pressure sodium, metal halide, etc.? Wattage, candlepower, or anything else that will help in the planning process.

I realize this is outside of the normal area of expertise for this group, but I have learned that there is some great advice out there if you just ask, so let hear me hear your opinions. Thanks.

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Originally Posted by aggies09

As some of you have gathered from recent posts, I am in construction of a bus barn and have asked advice from the pros on a variety of subjects. I have read in some past post about the desire for "surgical suite" lighting. I am trying to plan that, but haven't engaged an electrician as of yet. Do any of you have suggestions as to types of fixtures, i.e. flourescent, high pressure sodium, metal halide, etc.? Wattage, candlepower, or anything else that will help in the planning process.

I realize this is outside of the normal area of expertise for this group, but I have learned that there is some great advice out there if you just ask, so let hear me hear your opinions. Thanks.

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Deb and I used four foot long florescent fixtures. Whole barn has 47 fixtures, or 94 bulbs total, but not all of those are in the "bus" side of the barn. We used "daylight" bulbs, which I think are supposed to be a little brighter than normal florescent bulb. On ceiling, we ran three rows of five fixtures lengthwise with the bus. And we switched them so could hit Switch 1 for five fixtures along left side of bus, Switch 2 to get five more fixtures directly over center of bus. Then Switch 3 to get five more along right side of bus. These fixtures were evenly spaced along the 56 foot length of the barn, and evenly across the width of the barn.

Then on walls we did four horizontal fixtures on each of left and right sides at eight foot level, and the bulbs aim toward the bus (not the ground). These four fixtures split the difference on the five ceiling mounted fixtures. Each side is switched separately. The horizontal fixtures are spaced between the five ceiling mounted fixtures. Then one foot above each horizontal (and centered on the horizontal) is a vertical fixture, for a total of four vertical fixtures on left and four on right, with each of the two vertical sections separately switched.

So depending on what I want to light, I can light left, center, or right of ceiling, or left or right 8 foot height horizontals, or left or right 12 foot height verticals, or I can turn 31 fixtures on all at the same time.

This doesn't address lighting under bus, where we use shop lights to see where we're working (make that "where Deb is working," since she's the brains and brawn behind all the underneath bus goings on, which she learned paying attention to Jon W. or doing what he told her to do). For under bus, we run an extension cord from one of the four place outlets we have all the way around the perimeter every 12 feet. Attach shop light and work away.

We also put garage door at each end of bus, and Deb likes the natural light provided when both end doors are opened when she's underneath. Plus provides ventilation and sometimes, when we're lucky, a breeze.

So that's how we did it. No science behind it other than we were told to put more lights than we could imagine we'd need (because we were aging and our eyesight would not be getting any better), and that's how we came up with what we did. So far works for us. I know there are other solutions, too, which others will share with you.

Barn has 200 amp electrical box, too, with a Jamestown Advanced Products electrical campbox both inside and outside barn.

Hope this is all helpful.

eric faires
huntsville, TN

You might want to consider skylights so your electrical meter does not spin too fast. I'm in an old commercial plumbing company building. It has several plastic skylights. They have become cloudy and mossy over many years but still are able to pass light. If they were clean I can only imagine how light it would be inside.

Also, with that great expanse of roof available, how about some solar panels to reduce your personal carbon footprint. Oh no, that sounds too much like AG and we all know what he does about his personal carbon footprint. Just how big a shoe can one human place in its mouth - inquiring minds want to know.

I'm outta here while the gettings good.

Eric thanks for the detailed explanation. I had been contemplating a similar layout, but thought about using 8' units instead of 4'. Did you give any consideration to different types of lighting or just hone in on the florescent strips?

Hi Tony. What you might want to do is hire a lighting consultant. The short answer is , it's going to be your personal preferences which determine your Lighting. Are you going to have an open ceiling design, or a T-Bar ceiling. Do you want a simple good lighting design or do you want something more hi tech. A simple design would be to do a pattern lay-out of light fixtures to accomplish even lighting thru-out the building at a pre determined foot candle strength. This can be accomplished with a variety of different types and looks of light fixtures, depending upon your budget. If you want to have a secondary set of lighting which would then high light the bus or a certain area of the barn, you can consider a tungsten type lamp and fixture on cable hung track, or monopoint.
Fluorescent is the most efficient for your money per kw used. It turns on emmediately, no warm up time like high pressure and low pressure lamps.
It also has an large choice of color choices.
A Licensed Electrical Contractor with Commercial and Institutional back ground should be able to help you with your project. Just remember, the lighting can be as simple or as complex and unique as you want it.

Tony,

Are you going to have a "pit" in your bus barn? As you know, Jon has one and he loves it. Dale (Roadrunner) also has a pit in his new barn. If I were going to build a new barn, I would consider one. I think that the additional cost is minimal.:)

I would suggest you consider the 8 foot long double tube flourescent HIGH OUTPUT lights and fixtures. I have both (regular flourescent and High Output) in mine and the High Output just put the normal daylight fixtures and bulbs to shame. The cost is almost twice and so are the results. As My fixtures have aged 4-5 years they hum in the cold and if you are trying to zero in on a leak, that sucks. I have been told that I could remedy the hum by changing the ballast, but in 20 minutes or less the hum stops when they are on.

If I had it to do over I would run the High Output Lights only everywhere--better light and no hum!

thats my 2 cents

We installed these lights in the hanger. Pretty easy to do with a lift and they are plenty bright. They are the metal halide version.

http://www.cooperlighting.com/images...oliter_15x.jpg

They are the Lumark brand from Cooper Lighting.

http://www.lumark-lighting.com/commo...20Bay&id=11404

I used 4-foot, dual bulb fixtures laid out centered on an 8x8' grid. I used flor. bulbs of mixed color to prevent tautomeric effects. I used a mix of floods and spots mounted on the wall for area (benchtop) and task lighting. In some areas, I had IR heat lamps to drive out/keep off condensation on some pieces of equipment (especially in spring and fall).

Most important thing I found, I tried a lot of different ceiling materials. In the end, what worked the best was a sheet rock ceiling, 3 coats of a deep cover primer and the brightest, most reflective ceiling white paint (2 coats). I used fixtures without reflectors, suspended about 18" from the ceiling. This is what seemed to work the best. I got a lot of improvement when I made the last change and that was to extend the ceiling white down the top 4' of the walls.

Good luck.

Tony, if you are going to have a pit or a specific place where the bus will be parked, I would suggest light fixtures in the floor and also in the pit focused to the underside of the bus. Many years ago I managed a shop where we had a set up like this and as I recall it was great and, in most cases, didn't involve moving corded lights around.

Sounds like you are getting great advice from some real experts so this is my only 2 pesos worth.

Darl

Tony, I like Eric's plan, but with Roger's Hi Output fixtures.
When I get to my lighting it will be like that.
Sawdust has some good ideas on how to paint the walls and ceiling, and the color.

Before you buy a whole mess of tubes, for a lot of Lew Bucks, try a couple to different kind to see what color you prefer.
I like cool white the best.:eek:

If you have some areas where you think that it would be too easy to break a tube accidentally, or where a broken tube would cause a lot of heart ache, you can buy plastic sleeves to cover the tube and retain the glass chards.:cool:

JIM

When I had the chance, I would go back to my studio and work late into the evening (early morning). One night when I was particularly productive (measured by how big the mess was) the power went out. Finding my way around the shop in the dark wasn't the issue, finding my keys in the dark was impossible.

So, make sure you wire in a couple of battery powered backup light fixtures. I also remembered that when I was going through this, I found a review of the lighting options at the Grainger web sight to be very helpful.

Lastly, in my notes for if I ever did it again, regarding the wiring, I had decided that I would home run all my major circuits back to the panel. The reason was that I had found a design for a circuit that could be used to detect current on a wire using toroids. This coupled to several relay circuits would allow me to have my various dust collectors come on/off when I started/stopped a machine. I had tried the hand held remote units and kept destroying them, or none were heavy duty enough. I could just flat wear myself out walking back and forth to turn on and off the collector for every operation.

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Originally Posted by aggies09

Eric thanks for the detailed explanation. I had been contemplating a similar layout, but thought about using 8' units instead of 4'. Did you give any consideration to different types of lighting or just hone in on the florescent strips?

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Focus from the start was florescent strips, but we toyed with some other kinds. To construct my "bus barn," we added 40' x 56' on to a 30' x 56' structure I already had. In my old barn, I had eight foot florescent tubes (two bulbs per fixture) in a similar pattern, with plain florescent bulbs. So in the bus barn that we just finished mid-May this year, I followed similar plan but went with four foot fixtures. While at Lowes, I saw the daylight bulbs which looked a lot brighter than regular florescents so I bought those.

We briefly considered other kinds of lighting, like what might find in Home Depot store ceiling, or basketball gym, or parking garage. But I have always been happy with what I had in my old barn, so I added lots more of them, in different configurations (walls, not just ceilings), used daylight bulbs, and called it a day. So far have been very happy. We did buy what I think Lowe's called "commercial grade" fixtures, for what that's worth. When we need a light focused somewhere, I pick one up and carry it there. Gives us maximum flexibility and is probably cheapest. I wouldn't have been able to predict every place I'd need a light, but I have lots of plugs and lots of extension cords.

From the other posts on this topic, lots of other folks have had good experiences with other methods, locations, types, backups which will be very helpful as you figure out what you want to do. By the way, we also have a pit and are extremely happy we do. If you can have one, have one (our opinion).

eric faires
huntsville, TN

Tuga,

I am planning on a pit and in fact already have it formed up and will start the rough in plumbing process tomorrow for the building. I already have planned to install electric and air connections into the pit.

There have been some great ideas on this thread and I appreciate the input. I will try to take some progress shots and post pics at a later date so that all can see the process.

Thanks.

Tony,

When you do your pit there are a couple of small details that will prove important as you use it. First, understand that your pit is going to be a grease collector. No matter how clean you try to keep it you will drip grease and may have a spill. Small spills happen, but you have the potential for a big one. Also recognize you you may want to power wash your engine. So do not put drains in the pit that go directly to a septic system or municipal sewer. I have a sump and a pump that I can pump to an oil trap that separates oil and greases from water before it goes into the ground. I can also discharge the pump into my septic if I choose via a hose. Consider that if you put floor drains in the pit whatever hits the bottom of the pit ends up where those drains lead.

I have air and electric in my pit. Very convenient. I considered lighting, but a trouble light or several trouble lights will work better.

My pit used to extend beyond the length of my 40 footer (Not any more with the 45). The steps were at that end, and running the full length on both sides is a groove so I could put 2 X 10's across to form a floor when I worked from garage floor level at the rear of the coach, or to support my drain pans. If you omit the grooves on the sides you have to lay whatever goes across your pit on the flor surface and it will not be flush.

When it is done, take pictures and enjoy the clean white concrete. It will never be that way again.

Just a little reminder, the electrical code states that all convienance outlets in garages shall be no less than 18 inches from the slab. This is to prevent a spark from igniting any gases or fumes which may be accumulating at floor level. This is also why you see hot water heaters on platforms in garages, to keep the pilot light above floor level.
So, it may be convienant to have a recepticle in a pit but they are not allowed by code unless the recepticle and the cap which plugs into it are explosion proof rated.