Carport work ligthing

[morsing]

Good morning,

Does anyone have any experience with fitting strip-lights to carport to help work on cars during those lovely, long winter evenings?

Just wondering about positioning. I initially thought above, but I'm now thinking you end up blocking the light with your head or body. Maybe vertically high up on the wall is better? And how many and at what intervals?

Thanks

[Simmy]

on the walls is much better. a hand held worksop light with a magnetic base i also use an led head torch try several solutions to find out what works for you.

[tofufi]

No direct experience (I tend to use daylight hours as a time to reasonably be making noise in winter!) but from similar things I'd definitely aim to have as many light sources as possible.

If all the light is coming from one direction, whatever that direction, at some point you'll have a huge shadow just where you don't want it. The more light sources you have, the less any shadows will be a problem.

[andy_d]

consider LED baton light perhaps. you Can get some with the right water resistant rating for a decent price, and if you are competent with the wiring, nothing would stop you making a "old skool" extension lamp with one of the shorter (2-3 foot) led baton/strip lights

wherever you place it you Will find shadows and wrong placement, on the Walls/sides "yes" and Defo a "work light" thats movable

i suggest the LED versions as they Generally do not give out much if any heat, come in various grades of "water resilient" to "water proof" anyone remember working under the car with the old skool light Bulb in a cage on a lead extention lights? and the "oh" when they went pop due to exposed bulb and tiny spec of liquid

[Forg]

The answer is basically that you want all the lights ... like, all the lights that exist in the world, that's what you want. The shadows ARE annoying, so you really want a bunch of lights installed so almost whatever you're doing you don't get dark patches. You'll still need some portables (whether 18V or with a lead - I find I still need the lead).

LED's are a lot nicer to work under, especially if you choose the colour temperature you prefer.

Given it's a car-port & you don't have walls, I think you'd want a few on the underside of the roof, but some others on the posts as well.

[Tannaton]

Look on screwfix for the ansell tornado led battens, they’re a doddle to fit, really good light.

You can’t have too much light…..

[Tannaton]

Also.... for working on cars - reflected light is much better than direct light, so if you can paint the walls white and have several smaller lights than fewer bigger ones.

[DaveNP]

Whilst I'd usually agree with the thought that you can't have too much light I do find on a sunny day that working under the car becomes harder as the contrast of the direct sunlight and the shadows is that much greater, so for the carport I'd go for a lot of distributed light such as the led battens but a good led portable worklight too, probably wired because you know the battery will run out just before you finish the job.

[ITSv40]

The neighbours will love a car port lit up like the landing lights at Heathrow.

[Whippy]

And a magnetic rechargeable led lamp.