Upgrading garage lighting, electrical help please!

[Brunkel]

I`m in the mood for a little thread revival tonight


I am in a similar boat as the OP but just moved into a very old house with terrible garage lighting. After the recommendation of many detailing friends I plan to go with the T5 HO fluorescent bulbs and fixtures. Here`s my little catch though...I am renting this house, and only plan to be here for a year or two. I have full permission from the owner to modify the garage; in fact, I`ve already gutted it and disposed of 400+lbs of junk and am pressure washing the concrete and painting the walls tomorrow. After living in apartments for the last 10 years I`m pumped about having my own garage space finally! So, I am looking for a simple way to wire in the fluorescent lights so that I can easily take them with me when I move out. I have zero experience with wiring any kind of lighting but have learned a fair amount from reading this thread.

Right now there is a single light bulb on one of the joices and it`s connected to a light switch that is on the outside of the garage... strange. There are a fair amount of outlets around the garage but I`m not sure what switch they go to yet...I will do some testing tomorrow.

I have an open attic garage so you can see all of the joists. I was thinking about maybe suspending the fixtures from chains since that would be easy to remove and take with me as well.

So, is there a simpler way to install fluorescent lights that will be easy to remove and take with me for later?

[Stokdgs]

Brunkel -
Welcome and welcome to the future world of a nicely lit garage !! I love it !!!

The word for those beams is joist or the plural - joists..

Please look carefully at the existing wiring you are planning to splice into and make sure it looks in good shape, not very ancient, and not major or minor damage to the sheathing that you can see..

Look at the switch you are planning to use, and if possible how about trying to relocate it just inside the garage from where its mounted outside, if possible...

It might not be a bad idea to possibly replace that switch if its old and not looking so great... If you replace it, make sure you get a 15Amp switch to match the circuit that you identified from the panel and insured you read the rating on the on/off switch and it read 15Amps, ok ?

Another thing I always do is wire in a couple of 20AMP dedicated circuits on their own 20 AMP breakers, so any power tools, steamer, Extractor, Master Blaster, etc., Im using is not adding to the load of all those lights...

You would want to get 20Amp circuit breaker/s, 12AWG Romex wire and 20AMP electrical outlets which will look a little different than the normal electrical outlet, but of course, work the same way just fine.. And if you wanted to run this off a switch for whatever reason, then you have to get a 20Amp rated switch as well...

When I moved into another house once that had an unfinished ceiling like yours, I just went to H/D and bought a pack of stainless steel wire and used it to hang 14 - 4 ft T-8 Shop lights (2 tubes per light).

This wire is of course very thin, easy to work with and cut, and can carry way more weight than the weight of a light fixture...

I just put the lights between 2 joists with the stainless steel wire supporting each end of the light fixture on that one joist, and the other end of the light fixture on the next joist..

It all worked great, and when it was time to remove, took just a few minutes of cutting the wire and lowering the long string of lights to the floor, and putting them all, still connected, into a big long cardboard box...

I knew I was leaving in a year, so I made this temporary on purpose... You may choose to make your installation more permanent or not...

I know its not code, but I did not put the Romex between each light fixture into any conduit, etc., and just made sure to not be sticking anything into the air up there that might cause an issue.. I did not have any plywood on top of these joists for storage on purpose, so I would not have anything up there that would interfere with my light wiring..

Of course, it is always best to follow the standard electrical code and if you have to get it inspected, well then for sure, it has to be done to the code..

I have been around about every type of A/C and D/C electricity, phases, etc., for around 50 years, so I feel comfortable doing it my way...

Again, the electrical code is going to be the best, and safest way always...

I have not seen T5 HO lights or bulbs so will be interested in learning more about them..

Good luck with this ! Be careful !!! Dont rush !!

[Brunkel]

Brunkel -
Welcome and welcome to the future world of a nicely lit garage !! I love it !!!

The word for those beams is joist or the plural - joists..

Please look carefully at the existing wiring you are planning to splice into and make sure it looks in good shape, not very ancient, and not major or minor damage to the sheathing that you can see..

Look at the switch you are planning to use, and if possible how about trying to relocate it just inside the garage from where its mounted outside, if possible...

It might not be a bad idea to possibly replace that switch if its old and not looking so great... If you replace it, make sure you get a 15Amp switch to match the circuit that you identified from the panel and insured you read the rating on the on/off switch and it read 15Amps, ok ?

Another thing I always do is wire in a couple of 20AMP dedicated circuits on their own 20 AMP breakers, so any power tools, steamer, Extractor, Master Blaster, etc., Im using is not adding to the load of all those lights...

You would want to get 20Amp circuit breaker/s, 12AWG Romex wire and 20AMP electrical outlets which will look a little different than the normal electrical outlet, but of course, work the same way just fine.. And if you wanted to run this off a switch for whatever reason, then you have to get a 20Amp rated switch as well...

When I moved into another house once that had an unfinished ceiling like yours, I just went to H/D and bought a pack of stainless steel wire and used it to hang 14 - 4 ft T-8 Shop lights (2 tubes per light).

This wire is of course very thin, easy to work with and cut, and can carry way more weight than the weight of a light fixture...

I just put the lights between 2 joists with the stainless steel wire supporting each end of the light fixture on that one joist, and the other end of the light fixture on the next joist..

It all worked great, and when it was time to remove, took just a few minutes of cutting the wire and lowering the long string of lights to the floor, and putting them all, still connected, into a big long cardboard box...

I knew I was leaving in a year, so I made this temporary on purpose... You may choose to make your installation more permanent or not...

I know its not code, but I did not put the Romex between each light fixture into any conduit, etc., and just made sure to not be sticking anything into the air up there that might cause an issue.. I did not have any plywood on top of these joists for storage on purpose, so I would not have anything up there that would interfere with my light wiring..

Of course, it is always best to follow the standard electrical code and if you have to get it inspected, well then for sure, it has to be done to the code..

I have been around about every type of A/C and D/C electricity, phases, etc., for around 50 years, so I feel comfortable doing it my way...

Again, the electrical code is going to be the best, and safest way always...

I have not seen T5 HO lights or bulbs so will be interested in learning more about them..

Good luck with this ! Be careful !!! Dont rush !!

Hey Stockdgs thanks for the in-depth reply! Joist spelling corrected

I`m looking forward to working on this project although am pretty intimidated with all the electrical work. Especially since the electrical in the garage is ANCIENT!

So here are some pics of the garage right now:

I cleared out all of the flat plywood on top of the joists when I moved in. They had it for storage with junk from the 50s up there...over 400lbs of junk! Nice and clean now.


And....here is what I`m dealing with. This stuff looks ancient.


Close up...


Light switch on the outside. I think I`ll keep it. It looks fine...



Here`s my breaker box in the basement. It doesn`t look like there are any open circuits. Will this be a problem?


I definitely plan on running sidekick blaster, shop vac, buffers, and more power tools out of the garage so you make a good point about not having those on the same circuit as the lights. Will that be possible with my set up?

Thanks for your help!

[Todd@RUPES]

I know this is an older thread, but the info on it is awesome!!!

[Stokdgs]

Brunkel -

Wow, some nice, clear, pictures - great job !

Nice, very old garage -

Your Panel shows no empty slots left over for adding new circuit breakers, so you will not be able to add new circuits to your panel..

You will have to make do with what you have..

Whether or not this will be a problem for you will depend on how much of a load is assigned to this circuit already perhaps somewhere else, or not, and then how much load you add to the circuit when you are up and running..

The best thing that can happen is that only 1 circuit on 1 breaker is assigned to the garage only..
What you can do initially, is to turn on the light in the garage, then turn off 1 breaker at a time, (start with the 15AMP breakers), and see which one turns off the light in the garage...

Then, go into the house, and see if anything else is not working that was working before you turned that breaker off...

You need to be accurate here, to get an idea of what that circuit is carrying all the time.

If it is just that light or perhaps that light and the garage door opener (if you have one), then that would be the best scenario for your lighting and power tool project..

Do you have an Electrician in the family or a friend who is one or knows one? It would always be good to get another set of eyes and experience to look at your project with you.. And good Electricians will have the test equipment to measure how much load you have on each circuit when they are in use, and be able to help you with the math if you need to do this..

I see a lot of 20 amp circuits on those breakers - what brand circuit breakers are those ? I cant read the little writing.. they look like Challenger, but Im not sure...

I am assuming that this light you pictured is then powered on and off from that really ancient looking light switch that you said is outside the garage, right ?

Dan F

[Brunkel]

Thanks, Dan.

The breaker box was already labeled so I will confirm tomorrow. It looks like the garage is on circuit 19 (one of the 20 amp circuits). It says living room too but there are already 2 circuits dedicated to the living room so it`ll just by trial and error like you suggested.

Looks like the company is Underwriters Laboratories.

I have a friend from church who has done electrical work for over 20 years on RV`s. He`s going to come by this week to sort of coach me through things and make sure I don`t do something dumb. Very thankful for that.

The light switch on the outside turns on that one light inside the garage as well as one other light outside the garage...I`d like to change this one to a motion detected light. All of the outlets in the wall are only 2 prong so I`d like to update those to 3 prong. The one outlet on the ceiling is 3 prong and the garage door opener is plugged into that. I`m waiting on a guy to come buy and fix my other garage door and that opener will most likely plug into that outlet as well. I have a double light switch inside the garage which does nothing right now...unless it controls some of the wall outlets but I didn`t test any of those since I was using 3-prong power tools today: sanded the walls, pressure washed the floor...painting tomorrow!

[spiralout462]

Thanks for the revival! I`m in!

[TacoHerder]

I always love working with old cloth covered wiring.... Cant believe they actually did that back in the day. Be careful with that stuff, its very brittle, but stiff. It doesn`t look like it, but is that a federal panel?

[C. Charles Hahn]

So, is there a simpler way to install fluorescent lights that will be easy to remove and take with me for later?

Obviously this won`t work for you exactly since you have open rafters, but here`s a way to wire up lights that will be easily portable later on down the road:

That is how I have my shop set up right now; I did it mainly for sake of convenience and ease of serviceability. Granted there are several items powered on the single circuit, but I rarely ever come close to running at its limits. Just have to be careful and know your loads, especially since the circuit is fed by old brittle cloth-insulated wire.

[Brunkel]

Well I finally got around to installing new lights!

6 fixtures and 12 T5 54W High Output bulbs. Very happy with it! The T5`s are great. They turn on instantly. Here`s just a few pics including a reflection shot of a jeep I did this weekend.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Stokdgs]

Brunkel -

Congratulations !!!!!

Your lights and wiring looks great !!!!

Garage set up = outstanding !!!

Jeep reflection = Amazing !!!!

Im really proud of you !
Dan F

[tropicsteve]

what a difference good lighting makes.

[XxBoostinxX]

Well I finally got around to installing new lights!

6 fixtures and 12 T5 54W High Output bulbs. Very happy with it! The T5`s are great. They turn on instantly. Here`s just a few pics including a reflection shot of a jeep I did this weekend.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Nice! T5`s are awesome! I have some fixtures I want to change the ballast in to T5`s.