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Saturday, January 10, 2015

No Longer Working in the Dark

BJ sent me to the store to buy some CFL bulbs for the kitchen can lights. While I was there, I looked for something to update the original warm ( i.e. yellow) incandescent bulbs in the bullets over my workbench. I don't know if it's the lights or my eyes, but I sure needed more light!

I snagged one of these Ecosmart LED bulbs because it doesn't have the "warm-up" delay of the CFLs and it was available in "daylight", aka bright white. I've been a big fan of "daylight" bulbs since one of our profs did some classroom research several years ago. We ended up converting to daylight bulbs in all the classrooms as a result of that research.

After trying one bulb, I immediately went back and bought two more to fill out the set. Went from 180 watts to 45 watts and it's much brighter. I liked it so much ...

that I went back and bought some wire, conduit, boxes, fixtures, and six more bulbs. For years, there's been one florescent fixture in the "wood shop" aka Scamp bay of the garage. For part of that time, there were several temporary florescent fixtures powered by a spider web of extension cords as well, but the cords impacted required overhead clearance for the Scamp.

Now it's a spider web of conduit instead of extension cords. It wasn't a cheap project, but it was quick, and for the first time in 15 years, it's actually bright in the shop. Now we can do something, assuming we put the Scamp out in the cold to use the shop.

2 comments:

  1. Nothing irritates me more than not having enough light for projects. This one is a winner!

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    1. I'm enjoying them - made it much easier to do the layout for the solar panel mounts I just built.

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