I understand what you mean when you write about the 16 ft ceiling in the big bay. My friend Tom built a triple wide garage with an "A" frame roof to match his house roof.
Few people even own a extension ladder that will reach the joists at 16'... as you know it takes a 24 foot ladder by the time it you get the slope right and enough above the ceiling to get off the ladder safely. It is scary looking down... even a little terror creeps in to my mind.
The thing that I immediately noticed at Toms was how dark thet "Cave" was. The light from the ceiling joists just couldn't reach the floor. If you dropped something it was hard to find it... you had to have a flashlight. It really got bad when his garage doors were installed. At night they covered the ceiling lights when opened.
He couldn't lower the floresent lights on chains because that would defeat the reason for the high ceiling, the camper... and the doors wouldn't open if the lights were in the way.
The
Inverse square law explains it well. Each square foot of floor space will only receive 1/256th of the amounted from 16 ft above.
It would be prohibitivly expensive to install enough light up there to make the area lighted like a normal room with the doors closed
There are several partial solutions... and my thinking was to keep it (them) as simple as possible.
I'd personally get a lighting expert to advise me as to what fixtures would help the most and be most economical (not an electrician... but the electrician in you can make the solutions work)
Since the lights won't be on much of the time... incandesent spot or flood lights for task lighting would cover specific areas toward the center of the space.
Floresent lighting around the walls at the 8 foot level would help overall, especially at the perimeter where we tend to do a lot (at 8' you'd get 1/64th at the floor... and 1/16th at 4' off the floor... these numbers would extend out from the walls toward the center of the room too.... even back toward the ceiling.
You know that floresent lights work well at 8'.... and they'ed be that bright 8' toward the center all the way around the room... at 8' apart....
I'm not trying to teach you, I'm not sharp enough to do that... just thinking on the key board that I don't want you to waste a lot of effort and money on solutions that won't wotk.. Please don't be offended.
Thanks again for sharing... I have really enjoyed watching you from cyber space.
Sleepy
