garage lighting [part one].

I guess after ten years of having a bare light bulb hanging up in the center of the garage and barely being able to see anything in there at night, it was time to amp up the lighting. Randomly, on our traditional Memorial Day camping trip to Salmon La Sac, we passed through the ol' town of Ronald and - lo and behold - off the side of the road some dude was having a yard sale and selling four fluorescent light banks. He had $15 marked on each, but all I had was $40 so I bargained him down to that much for all four. Boom.

After spending the better part of an afternoon a few weeks ago diagraming the garage circuits, I figured out what I had to do. I seriously don't know how electricians work... I've been as bewildered about wiring circuits in my house as I was about this one in the garage. Whoever wired it up decided to bring in power, then split it so half would go to a light on the backside of the garage, while the other half would go to a box in the middle of the rafters where that bare bulb hung. From that box, he/she brought power back to a switch, as well as split it out to the far corner.

Then there's another circuit that has a switch by the backdoor - I'll get to that next, when I install and wire three exterior lights in a bit.

And lastly, there's a whole other circuit that comes in the side, and seems to be powering a single outlet that is on the outside of the garage. There's a dead wire that just ends (of which I'll connect a receptacle so I can run power tools off that 20A circuit instead of the one now with all the lights), and a 220V outlet in the other far corner (that I know my old neighbor Trevor tapped into while he was building their house next door and living in a trailer, but that was before I had bought this place).

So anyway, wiring schematics are fun, but it was time to install these yard sale lights...

First I went around and just hung them all with self-tapping screws. And yep, that circular box is where the bulb had been (I pulled the wire running back to the switch cos I was going to use as much of that 30' or so as I could to string between the four light banks - instead bringing in power from the box a foot-and-a-half away).

The corner was sort of a mess... The outlet is where the one circuit I was messing with came in, and the box above it is the other circuit (which just held the splice between the cable that came up from underground and the one that ran to now-gone exterior lights - of which I'll install three new ones soon and redo that box - heck, I'll even cover it so there won't be bare wire splices just hanging out). The switches then on the right flipped on the bare bulb and an exterior light on the backside of the garage (handy - but I'm going to replace it with a motion-sensor light I picked up at a garage sale a month or so ago for $5 so the new switch will just stay 'on').

A closer look at the two boxes for those circuits...

And the new switches - the one on the right will be for the new lights, the one on the left is for that backside light...

But since I wasn't using the end-line circuit the crazy electrician had wired, I had to pull power from that outlet box where the circuit from the house was coming.

Easy-peasy. I just pigtailed the hot and neutral to reconnect the receptacle, while pulling power over to the switch and then running each light fixture in parallel.

And done...

Then it was finally time to, well yeah, string the cable between all four fixtures. This, uhh, took longer than expected...

I was sort of killing myself working with 12-gauge cable (I could've used 14, but it's a 20A circuit and so whatever - the newer 12-gauge seemed more supple than the old stuff I pulled and reused, but that could also just be cos that cable is, well, probably thirty years old). But after a couple hours it was done, and the garage now has a bit more light than that bada** bulb was putting out...

So yeah... next will be wiring and installing those three exterior lights (I picked them up years ago at - yep - a garage sale, so I'll have to spray paint them an oil-rubbed bronze to match the front porch light and backdoor light that cost a touch more), and then installing that garage sale motion light so when we go back behind the garage to take out the compost after dinner it'll light the way for us...