Oh yea we do! snow then rain, then more snow, then more rain. I was surfing yesterday in the back yard while it was snowing . Supposed to be a big snowstorm tonight.. Had chicks last year until one of our foster dogs got into the pen and killed them all, ate two of them, then barfed them up in the bathroom....
Have everything pretty much cleared out and have the heater kicking. Tomorrow I'll be starting to move all the shop equipment.
This is the 20 x 30 garage that will be the machine shop. The floors in it probably are 30 years old lol..
Looking very good! Unless you are just a wood burning kind of guy. I would suggest a small furnace rather than wood. While wood is the nicest feeling heat on a cold night it is hard to keep everything at an even temperature in a machine shop and it does take up a lot of space. How are you going to heat the new shop? Joe
I won't be heating the new shop for quite some time. Unless you count firing up the foundry as a heat source. Where I'm at my options for heat are oil, propane, or free wood...Just have to cut and split it..
About 4 half lifes would be my guess. The one this guy had in one of his videos, used big brake drums for it's combustion chamber. Not sure what the pot is on this one.
I've got a 3 ft diameter, 8 ft long piece of 304SS with a cone and 6" pipe on one end with 2,600F refractory lining (AA-22). Might make a waste oil furnace.
It's hard to argue with free. My biggest holdup isn't the ambient air though. You can dress for that and I can place an electric space heater in my immediate work area. That helps a lot and makes short jobs doable. But it's every single item in the building being sub-freezing that eventually wears me out and sends me back in the house or prevents me from going out in the first place. I would never leave my electrics unattended, but it looks like for the cost of a few lbs of wood a day and a little effort you could maintain a fair temp in there, at least for short periods. Pete
Same here. I've been using an OR-77 kerosene heater to get things warming quickly while the wood stove gets warmed up and burning good. It takes about 3 hrs. before the tools are comfortable to touch. I then shut down the kero heater. Feed the stove about every hour thereafter. Speaking of which, I need to fire up the stove. I think I'm going to be working in there today.
Relatively constant heat is a great thing to avoid condensation on machine tools. Ways and lead screws will rust from condensation which then leads to more rapid wear. Sometimes you just can't avoid the condensation, but a little heat goes a long ways toward preventing it.
I agree on the condensation. I keep the shop at 45 degrees when I am not in it and around 60 when I am. For those with no heat in there shop. If you have an old bad refrigerator. You can cut the compressor leads and just break off the door switch so the light is on all the time to make a hot box for your chemicals and welding rods or go a bit further and install a thermostat controller and regulate the heat. Joe
I built a 700 sqft insulated machine shop inside an insulated 2700 sqft high bay metal building. The plan was to just use electric radiant heaters, but the cold slab made it uncomfortable. I picked up a motel under the window heat pump and installed it in the machine shop and vented it into the big bay. It's backwards, because like today at 27* when I got up, the machine shop is 65* but it is colder in the main building. If I start it soon enough in the Fall, I can keep the concrete warm enough that I can work comfortably. The reverse takes place in the summer when I'm cooling the shop to 80*, but then I can roll up the doors and the main building stays near ambient. The Metal Shaping guys talk about the pleasures of heated slabs fired with boilers, or even in ground heat exchangers.
