Interior/task lighting
Lighting was important to Barb. The temporary vehicle, the school bus, had full windows and two 48" standard fluorescent strip lights on each side of the area. This was satisfactory, probably because all grooming was done during the day.
The new vehicle would have much less window space, so task lighting was planned assuming there would be no natural light. Obvious questions were; how much light, what type of fixtures and where should they be located?
The ceiling height is 78", six and a half feet. Barb argued for less. Trey argued for more. Functionally a taller ceiling would be better for lighting and air conditioner dispersion. Barb wanted to minimize the height of the vehicle from an external perspective.
After looking around, Lithonia Lighting's MS5 series of fluorescent fixtures were chosen. These fixtures have a very low, 2 1/4", profile and use T5 lamps. These are the small diameter tubes. The T5 lamps also put out more light than the larger lamps. The typical 48" fluorescent tube is a 40 watt lamp. The 46" T5 lamp offers 54 watts output. A T5 fixture with two lamps occupies the same space as a standard single lamp fluorescent strip and puts out two and a half times the light.
The MS5 series comes in three, four and eight foot lengths. With the layout of the truck, the curb side will accommodate a full eight foot fixture with four lamps. A four foot and a three foot fixture each with two lamps will run down the center of the cieling, and a dual four foot fixture will mount over the work area on the street side. That adds up to 22 feet of tubes or about 47, 500 lumens of light output. The work area has about 60 square feet of floor space. Assuming perfect distribution, that means about 750 foot candles of illumination. This linked discussion of lighting suggests 300 fc for "fine machine work" and 500 fc for "difficult inspection. I'm not sure where grooming falls in that range, but the groomers may be wearing sun glasses.
