New workshop build options - advice and opinions welcome

[pooka]

As an update, I opted for PCV 100x50mm trunking. Cost was a factor but I also reckoned it might be easier and quicker to fit than metal. It was, but it still took a long day to do it. There are 6 vertical support which tie the wall sections together and they are proud of the steel box-section horizontal pieces I was attaching the trunking to - at every such junction I had to cut a section out of the back of the trunking, which was tedious with PVC but would have been a real pain with metal trunking.

On one wall the presence of the windows meant that the horizontal pieces sat lower so I had to turn the trunking down and then across. Again a hassle with PVC, not to mention being a tetris-like challenge to resolve, but metal trunking might have added to the headache. The PVC is more robust than I thought it might be, it should be more than up to the job for my purposes.

I'm questioning my decision on lighting though. I'd planned on 6x double or single 5ft fittings with T8 fluorescent "daylight" tubes. "Daylight" tubes seem generally to be around 6000K, though that figure seems to vary between brands. The light fittings my supplier had didn't come with daylight tubes though, the tubes would have cost extra and had a lead time of several days too. The overall cost would have made them more expensive than LED battens they had in stock so I opted for the battens, the TF55-B ones here:

http://www.greenlamp.ie/product/slim-line-led-battens/

The battens are self-contained slimline 5ft ones, each is 55W and produces 4675 lumens - so a decent amount of light but the wattage isn't far off fluorescent tubes so I'm not gaining much in terms of electricity usage. More of a concern though is that they are 4500K, so could prove to be a far cry from the 6000K tubes I've used previously. Plus, there is no IP rating on the box or on the leaflet inside but the web page above states they are IP20 - I don't need them to be waterproof, but lack of any dust protection could be a very real issue longer term I guess.

Realistically I think these battens aren't really suitable given that IP rating but I'd happily be convinced otherwise. I'm sure the supplier will take them back, but the inconvenience and delay in getting suitable alternatives has me clinging to the vain hope that they'd be fine. Has anyone had good or bad experiences with lights in a workshop rated at anything less than IP5x? I'd be mounting them at a height of a little under 7.5', so by no means "high".

At the real prospect of replacing these lights I'm starting to re-think my approach to lighting in the workshop overall. While I had been planning on 6 light fittings, 3 on each slope of the roof at about 7.5' height, I'm now wondering whether I'd get sufficient light from 3 double light fittings (probably T8, 6500K) suspended from the highest point of the roof so about 8.5' or so high? The small bit of added height should slightly reduce the risk of them getting bumped. In my previous small room, which was about a third of the size of this workshop, I had one 5ft double T8 fitting on an 8ft ceiling and the light from that seemed adequate but I'm not sure whether three such light fittings would be enough for the new larger workshop?

 

[beech1948]

Your dehumidyfier is now probably trying to dehumidify the globe as the concrete pad should have completed its exothemic reaction and set hard. Another month will complete the last 5% of the reaction.

Concrete base should have a DPC plastic sheet under it to prevent water ingress in the future.

I have often wondered if I could use wooden trunking instead of plastic/metal as I could then make my own. ?

Leave the concrete painting until its much warmer....maybe May or June.....and consider a two pack epoxy paint.

 

[stuartpaul]

In terms of lighting, rather than just positioning strip lights at regular intervals in the roof give some thought to how you're going to work and where bench etc. will be positioned.

I wish I'd put a strip light above my bench rather than working in shadow most of the time.

If you still want to put lights in a balanced way then think about supplementing with task lighting as appropriate. I have a couple of desk lamps for particular work areas.

 

[pooka]

At a guess I'd imagine that wooden trunking would raise concerns about flammability, though depending on the wood it may well burn slower and with less toxins being released than PVC.

I bit the bullet and painted the slab already. In the 7 weeks or so it had been down by then, it was (mostly) enclosed by the shed for about 4 weeks - for 2 of those weeks the dehumidifier was running constantly in there and I put a heater in it for a further 1 week. There as no condensation forming on the walls by then, which was encouraging, and the need to get all of my tools and materials out of the house finally made the choice for me. I used a pre-mixed paint which was recommended by a local paint supplier, it claims to take 7 days (@ 20C) to harden fully it will have had two weeks but at a lot lower temperature than that by the coming weekend. I put the heater back in to help it along.

I've been impressed by the effectiveness of the insulation. I'm using a small non- oil-filled 600W heater and even on a very low setting it's doing a great job of maintaining a temperature in there which varies from comfortable to warm depending on the outside temperature.

Re the lights, I have the luxury of being able to quite easily put in more if I need to - the wiring will be accessible and simple to extend, for the first while anyway. I have some reasonable desk lamps for the bench area (I'll be putting in plenty of plug sockets around there in particular) but if I find that's not enough I could install a strip light above the window that the bench will sit in front of. Once I start filling the shed up though then moving a ladder around to access the wiring will just become awkward, so the closer I can get to a good setup initially the better.