Moving shop from Garage to Basement

[SHADOWFOX]

Tried to work in the garage this weekend and I was only able to last for an hour because it is freezing. Over a foot of snow outside and both vehicles out in the driveway. I've had it, moving all of my stuff in the basement but my dilemma is trying to figure out which part of the basement I should set up my shop. One bad thing is the furnace and water heater system are both smack right in the center of the basement. Wife is concern that I would get sawdust in the furnace and spread all over the entire house. Anybody ever encounter this problem when setting up shop in the basement?

Attached is somewhat a floorplan of me basement. All walls are drywalled.

[zintk]

Re: Moving shop from Garage to Basement

I moved into our new house 21 months ago. My shop is in the basement also. I essentially built a furnace room with a door (four walls sheetrock with insulation placed between the top plate and the sub floor above). I also built a room for my shop and covered the entrance with plastic sheeting that is slit for easier access. This helped tremendously. There is no dust getting into the furnace room. Now when I get my dust gorilla dust collector running, there will be no dust anywhere in the house.

[LCHIEN]

Tried to work in the garage this weekend and I was only able to last for an hour because it is freezing. Over a foot of snow outside and both vehicles out in the driveway. I've had it, moving all of my stuff in the basement but my dilemma is trying to figure out which part of the basement I should set up my shop. One bad thing is the furnace and water heater system are both smack right in the center of the basement. Wife is concern that I would get sawdust in the furnace and spread all over the entire house. Anybody ever encounter this problem when setting up shop in the basement?

Attached is somewhat a floorplan of me basement. All walls are drywalled.

If you have central heating I doubt very uch the air intake for the heating is in the basement next to the furnace. Most all heating systems will have an intake in the center of the house that air is sucked by the circulating fan through a filter on the grate of the intake. Then the air is circulated past the furnace where its blown past a heat exchanger and the warm air is then blown out the registers in the individual rooms. The heat exchanger also takes in the furnace hot air and exhausts it to a flue which goes outside. The two compartments of the heat exchanger are sealed so that no furnace air is mixed with the house air. This prevents carbon monoxide poisoning. That's why you should have the furnace heat exchanger checked every year or so, for leaks between the comparments.

So anyway, sawdust will NOT get into the house from proximity to the furnace. It will however waft its way up the stairs, riding the return air (I suppose you do have hot air registers in the basement) eventually to the air intake for the circulatin fan. Some of it will drop out along the way and yes, you can have dust all over the house as a result.

You should probably have an air cleaner which circulates a lot more air thru it's filters than the heating circulating fan will pull from the basement, so that the air cleaner will remove most dust before it gets back into the house.

[Tom Miller]

Do you intend to occupy most of the space, or just some part of it? How finished is the space right now, just drywall on exterior walls?

It only took the hint of winter coming to cause me to move what little tools I had at the time into my (at the time) unfinished basement (6 yrs ago). We were planning to eventually finish it, so I carved out a little niche with 4 mil plastic tacked to the ceiling joists. I filled in between the joists to keep dust out of the other space, as the kids were carving out their own niche in the rest of the basement. (I'm glad I marked my territory when I did, as I was able to figure out a judicious placement of a wall to give me an extra 18" on that side -- made a big difference in the shop layout.)

When we finished the basement, I purposely left out furnace supply and return ducting. We really haven't noticed any extra dust in the basement.

So, in your case, you could either wall off the furnace, as suggested, or wall off your space. Try it with poly, first, if you want to get an idea how well it'll work.

Regards,
Tom

[big tim]

My shop (approx. 8' x 16') is in the basement and was used by the previous owners as a bedroom for one of their boys. The walls are wood paneling which I painted white to brighten things up. I installed 3, 2ube fluorescent fixtures on the ceiling, installed a number of outlets in the room and a dust extraction system piped to a DC ( 1 micron bag) installed adjacent to but in another part of the basement. I also have one of those Shopvac airfilters suspended from the ceiling. The room has an air register installed in the ceiling and is part of the central heating/cooling system of the house. The heating/cooling sytem has an elctronic filter.
We haven't notice a significant change in the amount of dust in the house, when I'm using the shop. I do keep the shop clean and vacuum frequently.
What I like about having the shop in the basement is the fact that it's nice and cool in the summer and very comfortable in the winter, but not too warm because the basement is kept at a lower temperature than the rest of the house. The room has a small window up high on the outside wall.
The drawback of course is getting large items in and out of the basement sometimes.

Tim

[crokett]

My situation is exactly like yours. I have been in my house 2 years and there is no problem with dust getting sucked into the heating system. As Loring says, the return is upstairs so there is not a way for dust to get into the system. If there is any ductwork coming down from upstairs for the return just make sure joints are well sealed

[gwyneth]

My former shop was in a very finished basement room, behind a door to the rest of the basement, without a dust collector. Believe me, if any sawdust, visible or perceived, had escaped at any time, via air, feet, clothes, or any other route, or even the illusion of sawdust, the crazy doc to whom I was engaged would have let me know.

[lrr]

I've been in basement shop for 20+ years. I keep saying I'll get a dust collector, and an air filtration system. Now it is still just shop vacs, and frequent cleanups. I've not had any really noticable problems with furnace (located at edge of shop) pulling in sawdust. I did have issues with my compressor, though, breaking a vane on some large sawdust chunks. It got relocated to the garage, and I've plumbed the basement with airlines.

I could never have a garage shop, and really not because of heating. I just do not want to leave the cars out in the cold, nor do I want to have everything on mobile bases and have to move it back to the walls if indeed the cars might come back in. I like having the shop arranged to my liking, and keep the tools and benches mostly in the same arrangement. Moving is dome mostly to see if I can rearrange items to get a little more room or a better workflow. Over 2/3 of our basement is finished as a den or it was the kids playroom, but they are grown, and I'm trying to convince my wife that we really do not need the area as a guest room. We ahve two kids bedrooms unoccupied! But, I am sure my dilemma is shared by a few -- it takes time to win these differences of opinions (OK, battles ..)

I am at a point now where we think about moving to a home with acreage for an above-ground shop (and to avoid neighbors!), or maybe build a shop in the back yard (depending on code, and how much I think the neighbors will scream!).

My only regrets about the basement is that the giant cabinet saw (SawStop, Powermatic, etc.) just is never gonna make it down the stairs. But, I have thought of getting the basement escape window cut into a double door, and making a walkout access to my shop!

Like many, I suppose, I think often of what that dream shop might be, and if that dream will ever become reality.

Lee

[Thalermade]

Basement shop dweller here. My furnace/water heater are located underneath the steps, almost. You will most likely want to enclose the furnace and water heater, just make sure you have easy access to filters and big enough doors to remove the furnace/water heater if they need replaced.

As for sawdust in the furnace
It depends on how well sealed your air filter cavity is. My house is 9 years old and their is a pipe from the outside which runs to near the furnace filter to pull in extra air when needed. Now that houses are built tighter, sometimes they need extra air, is what I was told

As for location, think about the rough lumber being brought down and the finished projects being carried out. Leave room for manipulating 4 by 8 sheets of whatever. Avoid the area where the sump pump is because it will just be more moisture. It takes up valuable shop space, lol.

[Veramacor]

I have my shop in the basement that has the furnace, hot water heater , circuit breaker all in one room.

The circuit breaker in the shop is quite handy to do circuits for tools and such. If you have a new layout to work with, I would have in mind that it's pretty easy to add breakers and make short runs to your tool stations.

In fact I just added 2 15 amp circuits for my bt and future Dust Collector last weekend. My wire run was all of 10 feet. Most of my fun tools require power and a Circuit breaker is your best friend!

The price of copper wire is sky rocketing so 50+ ft of wire is kinda costly. I bought some 25 foot 14-2 at BORG for $20+ Since my BT3100 will sit right next to the breaker, I had plently of wire left to wire up my Torsion Box

[Ed62]

Mine is in the basement too. Furnace, hot water heater and circuit breaker box are there also. No dust collection, just a shop vac. But I hook it up to whatever tools I can when I'm using them. No problems to speak of, although I'm not in my shop every day giving it heavy use.

I won't go with anything less than no. 12 wire when wiring new circuits. There's not that much dollar difference between 14 and 12.

Ed

[TheOne]

The first winter in our just built house I was cutting 2x6 with a circular saw in the
basement right next to the furnace with the dust port aimed towards it. This was
on a Sunday. Monday morning it was down to 15 degrees C (around 60F). Good thing
the furnace was still under warranty. The repair guy couldn't understand how so much
dust had gotten into the furnace motherboard. He said we were lucky it was still
under warranty. A new motherboard is worth at least $200. Wife put her foot down
on any work until I had a separate room. After five years I still have poly walls.

Wow! My first post. Didn't realize I had been lurking for so long.

[SHADOWFOX]

Wow! My first post. Didn't realize I had been lurking for so long.

Thank you and welcome to one of the best woodworking community you can find on the web!

Thanks for the previous responses received as well! I am slowly disassembling some of my machines and carrying it down piece by piece.. Getting there but back surely is killing me.

I might do the poly walls for now and maybe put up walls sometime next year.

[jziegler]

Chris,

Something to watch out for, which is one (of several, noise being a big one, since LOML teaches music lessons in the evenings) is dust entering the burner of your furnace, at least if it's oil. I had so much dust in the burner at one point that it wasn't working well at all. Realize that the burner takes its air supply from the surrounding air, unlike the circulating air. The poly should be enough to deal with it though.

Jim