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Advice for shop expansion

Signed Out

New Member
With leds you want high CRI and those are >80 which I guess is considered "good" but not "excellent".
Thanks for the reply. Is the CRI more to do about color than brightness?

I guess I should elaborate more, this additions main use will be install bays for lettering and wraps. So I'm not concerned so much about the color of the lighting as one would be for a print room. My bigger concern is that we will have 20' celling's and also when vehicles, like a bus or 48' trailer is pulled in, they block some of the lighting.

I have a couple LED garage lights in my garage at home, nothing special picked them up at home depot. They are bright, but the light seems like it doesn't spread out as far? Is that a thing with LED?
 

Notarealsignguy

Arial - it's almost helvetica
I ended up going with 6 bulb high bay T5 lights. I didnt like the LED lights but the main factor was when the LED lights break, will they still have the same model available? If not, you either have a mismatched light or have to change them all. You can always get bulbs and ballasts or can swap to LED tubes down the road.
 

ProSignTN

New Member
Overhead lights get blocked by tall vehicles in bay. For the install bay, I have linear lighting around the wall at 100" tall. Eight foot clearance below so they don't get hit by a 4x8 panel or a step ladder.
 

Graphic Extremes

Knows To Little
With leds you want high CRI and those are >80 which I guess is considered "good" but not "excellent".
Check with your power company, I'm in upstate NY and my power company had a program to install HO led lighting and they financed at zero percent. Plus you may have a tax incentive to install led lighting.. I got free financing and a five year tax credit..
 

Signed Out

New Member
Wanted to update this. Got the building up, temporary CO. Was hoping to get the walls painted and floor epoxied before starting to work in it, but (14) 53' trailers came in this month, (4) with roof wraps!

We normally do about 14 big trailers in a year, so I don't expect to maintain this many trailers at a time. My initial plan was to build an office/lobby behind one bay making it about 35' deep bay, which limits me to 1 large trailer being installed at a time (rendering in first post). I still plan on doing that, but it is nice having this big wide open shop.

The lighting I put in is (12) 150w LEDone high bay UFO lights. They are awesome, it's really bright, not blinding. I positioned the lights in 3 rows, 1 in the center and the other rows 4.5' off the walls.

I haven't installed any heat or AC yet, trying to figure out what I need. We run propane hot dawg heaters in the other shop so propane is easy. We did 3" closed cell spray foam in the walls and ceiling. I put (2) 8' ceiling fans in to circulate. So far we had a few day stretch last week that was mid 80s and pretty humid, but still cooler at night. The shop stayed cool enough temp wise, was warmer up at the ceiling when wrapping the roofs. But the humidity was too much, wrap vinyl started wanting to stick too much/easy. Ended up putting a 4500 sqft dehumidifier ($250) and that was able to pull the humidity from 88% to 60% in a few hours.

I think though, once the nights are warmer and we get some heat waves, probably going to need some air conditioning. A friend suggested to me to run 1 big propane heater and 1 big mini split system. The propane heater throws heat quick to recover from opening these big doors in the winter (this I know). He said the mini split would be supplementing the propane heater in the winter and would be sufficient to keep the shop cool and dry enough. This seems like a good plan in theory to me, has anybody seen a similar setup?

Also still debating whether or not to add grit to the epoxy when I tackle the floors. They did a really nice job with the power trowels on the floor, it's supper smooth, looks polished. So defiantly going to have to etch it before epoxying, but wondering how slippery this floor will be without any grit added. And how much of a pain in the neck it will be to keep clean if I do add grit.
 

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