Supplemental Shop Lighting

The roll-up door in the shop is opened by an industrial type chain-drive opener.  Although it's industrial, it still has a standard socket for a light bulb.  Unfortunately, like most modern fixtures, the light bulb socket is only rated for 60 Watts.



You can increase the amount of light you get for 60 Watts by avoiding incandescent bulbs, which are easily the least efficient bulbs out there.  I've learned the hard way that you cannot use LED bulbs in garage door openers, because they produce RF (radio frequency) noise that interferes with the signal from your garage door remote.

I had previously installed a 150 Watt equivalent compact fluorescent corkscrew bulb into the socket.  This bulb uses 42 electrical Watts, so I got a bit more  light without exceeding the limit of the socket.  The bulb is still not all that bright (9700 lumens).  It's really poor when the shop is cold, and it doesn't light the 1600 sq ft area well at all.

I decided to try installing a stand-alone LED fixture with its own remote control.  With this arrangement, I could turn the LED on separately from the garage door opener light, and then it would not interfere with remote operation.

With that said, here are some pictures.  First up, the 100 Watt "Glorious-Lite".  It's equivalent to a 500 Watt halogen, and cost $39.95 from Amazon.

Looking straight up at it after installing the bracket and light.  The power cable is still dangling in this image.

A view with both the corkscrew and the LED bulb on, showing the difference in illumination and color.

And lastly two comparison pictures of how it looked with just the corkscrew bulb, and how it looks now that I have both.  Check out the background illumination in the images below, and bear in mind that the corkscrew bulb was already warmed up when the top image was taken.  Big improvement!