I has been a little time since a post and another small step has been taken. I have the electric work on hold for now due to budget issues, but a temporary solution will help out.
The used florescent units I bought, hoping to get a good bang for the buck, were a bust. All the ballasts were bad. I had to go out and buy new light units. The ballast replacements would have cost more than these lights.
One thing I do not like about these lights is that they require a junction box. Most florescent lights I have worked with have the wire going right into the unit and no box is needed. Of course I only realized this after I got home with the lights and figured I would put them up. Off to Home Hardware for some junction boxes. Now I am putting in a finished ceiling eventually and the boxes have tabs on them so they hang below the ceiling joists by 1/2" so they come through the finished ceiling. So I put some vapour barrier up around the boxes and hung them using the tabs as a guide.
Since the lights are flush mount I have a 1/2" discrepancy in level now, right in the middle of the light where the wires come through the box. Also, the holes for mounting don't line up with anything. To solve this I ripped some 1/2" plywood, 6 inches wide, and cut them to 16 inches in length. I spanned two rafters and screwed them in place. Now everything is level.
The lights are nice and solid on the ceiling now.
The wiring was pretty straight forward from there. I make it a habit of securing the green/bare earth wires first and making sure they are solid. I really dislike that these lights have no physical connection between the junction box and the light unit. So I made sure to add a wire to electrically connect the box to the earth wire so it is grounded. I ran the wires to each light and then to the wall switch. From the wall switch I just put in a pigtail to a plug. I didn't take any photo's of the actual wiring. If you know how to do it, you know. If you are not familiar with wiring, call an electrician. I am not a pro, nor is this meant to be instructional, so if you go messing around with electricity and get zapped, it's your own fault.
That being said, I think the results were well worth the effort.
This should get me through for a while. At least until the days start getting longer in the spring and I can start trenching in the permanent electrical.
Now I can start thinking about making a shop tour video. Looks like this heat wave is going to break soon into a couple of rainy days. After that, and some clean up, I can do the video. Until then though, I am going to the pool.
Thanks for dropping by!
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