New Shop in the Works

[poolhound]

Nearly There

Over the holiday break I have made a lot of progress and am nearly at the 'fun' part. I managed to complete a number of major jobs although the all had challenges I did not expect.

• I ran some ducting under the floor to get DC to where my tablesaw/router will be located.
  
• Ripped out the old door and installed a new one. I cant tell you what a pleasure it is to have a door that opens and closes properly. This was hampered by the fact that the threshold was rotten and I had to cut out and repair a good check of it.
  
• Installed 3 new 20A circuits including a box in the floor next to the table saw. One emerges on the exterior for where I will next build on the room that will house the dust collector.
  
• Got all the flooring back down and replaced two sections near the door that had rotted due to the door issues.
  
• All wall panels replaced
  
• All remnants of old wall paper removed.
  

I have the wall and floor paint ready to go but it seems I was handed one more 'GOTCHA' as I completed the wiring today. When I went to wire in the 3 new circuits into the subpanel I thought it was odd that all the neutral and ground wires were connected together in the same bar. When I checked I confirmed that in a subpanel there should be a separate ground bar and in fact it should also have its own ground point which should be one of those 8ft copper rods. So now I need to install this and add a separate ground bar bonded to the box. Its not that tough or expensive but its yet another job that keeps me from getting tools in there. As there will be a lot of large metal tools connected I guess I would rather not have them go live on me

I hope my next pics will be of a nice newly painted shop with at least a couple of tools in there...

[bigstick509]

Looks great Jon, I am so jealous. Working in my garage/shop with to cars that need to be bought in most of the time in the winter is getting old.

[JoeyGee]

I agree, I'm jealous of the shop, too, but more jealous of the Phoenix "winter".

[poolhound]

Looks great Jon, I am so jealous. Working in my garage/shop with to cars that need to be bought in most of the time in the winter is getting old.

Having been doing the same as you for the last umpteen years I am very excited to get my own space. I can say that before I decided to renovate the existing structure I did look at pulling it down and using some prefab building structure. Assuming you can put in a slab or a basic foundation they can be pretty reasonable in comparison to a new custom build.

[poolhound]

I agree, I'm jealous of the shop, too, but more jealous of the Phoenix "winter".

Believe it or not it had been freezing here the last week yes actually below 32 degrees first thing in the morning although it would warm up to 50-60 later. We actually had snow on new years eve at the slightly higher elevations.

Although we only got light rain on NYE, this picture is from only a few miles north of me.



Of course give it a few weeks and we will be nice and warm again

[JimD]

We stay pretty warm most of the time here in SC too. No heat planned for my new shop. It is in some ways further along than yours, Jon, and in some ways less. No DC piping so far but it has a garage door on one end and a regular door on the other end, lights, and one 20A outlet. I'm using it but with no storage (or walls) it is a mess. I'm concentrating on getting some rooms finished in the house at the moment. But it's still nice to have the tools here and a chance to use them.

I have no experience with a Super Dust Deputy but I am tentatively planning to get one based upon the performance of my Dust Deputy on my shop vacumn. I have a little 6 gallon rigid shop vac. I added a hepa filter to it. That stopped it from blowing fine dust all over but the filter plugged rapidly. So I added the dust deputy. No more problem with filter clogging. Even fine sanding dust and drywall dust goes into the bucket beneath the dust deputy, not into the vacumn. I haven't had to clean the filter or empty the vacumn yet and I've dumped the 5 gallon bucket several times. I have a thien pre-filter for my DC and I like it but it is nowhere near as effective on the small stuff. I'm sure a little of the fine dust actually makes it to the vacumn but it can't be much or I would be seeing some when I check.

Jim

[poolhound]

Dang Jim, one 20A outlet how do you manage with just that one? When I rewired my garage I put in a subpanel with 4 20A circuits each wired to 2 different locations giving me 8 double outlets and in most cases I was pretty close to one of 3 circuits no matter where I was.

The new shop is probably overkill as I now have 6 20A circuits plus one 240V outlet for the AC/heater unit. The original building had 3 20A (+the 240V). But they weren't all in the places I wanted so the only way to do that was to add 3 new circuits. For example I have run a dedicated circuit to the location the DC will be located as that will always be on its own and I wanted power in the middle of the room so ran another dedicated circuit to a box in the floor for the TS and Router.

We stay pretty warm most of the time here in SC too. No heat planned for my new shop. It is in some ways further along than yours, Jon, and in some ways less. No DC piping so far but it has a garage door on one end and a regular door on the other end, lights, and one 20A outlet. I'm using it but with no storage (or walls) it is a mess. I'm concentrating on getting some rooms finished in the house at the moment. But it's still nice to have the tools here and a chance to use them.

Jim

[JoeyGee]

I have been limping along with one outlet myself for almost 8 years now. It sucks, big time. Putting in a subpanel has been at the top of my shop list for a long time. Of course that list is at the bottom of several other lists...

[poolhound]

Got the subpanel properly grounded this weekend and the walls are painted and the floor just needs a couple more coats. Next weekend I can start moving in tools!!

BTW sinking an 8 foot copper grounding rod into the ground was much easier than anticipated (Phew ). Doing that and adding the ground bar to the subpanel and separating all the grounds & neutrals took less than 2 hours and the parts were only about $20 so all in all not a terrible extra job. The end result is a safe electrical system in the shop which is what one would want.

[atgcpaul]

BTW sinking an 8 foot copper grounding rod into the ground was much easier than anticipated (Phew ).

How do you do it? Is the rod stiff enough to hammer in?

[poolhound]

How do you do it? Is the rod stiff enough to hammer in?

Yes but I didnt want to risk damaging it by just using brute force, here is what I did.

1. Loosened the topsoil and gave myself an approx 6-10" head start by digging a small hole.
2. drilled a 1/2" hole with an 18" masonry bit
3. filled the hole and depression with water and repeated a few times.
4. took a 1/2" 6' pipe and began plunging it in and out of the hole, filing the hole with water periodically (poured down the pipe). I happened to have a piece of EMT conduit lying around but cast iron would probably be a better choice as it has more 'heft'
5. once I had more resistance I placed a cast iron cap over the end of the pipe and used a small hand sledge hammer to continue to 'tap' it in.
6. Once that hole was made i placed the ground rod in the hole and then using the same technique only had to get it approx another foot in.

Given the various setbacks I have had hit me in the back of the head during this project I was pleasantly suprised at how easy this one was to deal with.

[JimD]

I could put in more outlets pretty quickly with the stud walls open but I'm managing by running an extension cord to each machine I need as I need it. If I had the tools arranged well, it would actually be worse, I think. Because everything is a mess, the plugging and unplugging kind of fits.

I only had one 20A for tools and one 15A for the lights and the DC in my old shop. I built several rooms full of furniture in that shop and was never limited by the power. I do not have a tool that needs more than 20A and I only use one tool at a time. The 15A light circuit limits me to a little DC but I only have a 1 hp Delta. My lights only use about 1 amp (8 13W CFLs). The only thing that might drive me to run another circuit would be a bigger DC - at least that I can think of now. And I don't plan a bigger DC.

Wish I had time to work on the shop. I spent an hour or so after work taping drywall. Still several hours to go plus sanding. Then paint, finish electrical, and flooring.

After I make a parallel ripping jig for my DeWalt track saw I'm thinking a sort of a Paulk style workbench will be the first major shop project. It will have drawers for tools on the bottom and a two level top with holes in it like the Ron Paulk workbench. It will be on wheels and will go against the wall when not being used. 3 feet by 6 feet. It should let me give most of my portable power tools a "home". After that, I'll probably make my long wall setup for the radial arm saw, CMS, with wood storage above and more drawers below. Above the workbench on the other long wall will probably be open storage like Ron Paulk has in his mobile shop. Thinking and planning now while I'm doing other things.

[poolhound]

Moving In!

Last week the last coats of floor paint dried and at the weekend I moved in all the big tools. The BT3 on its base, even minus the drawers full of stuff was/is very heavy and a real pain and the PM bandsaw wasn't far behind.

Here are a few picks of it clean and clear and then with actual tools in it. OMG it starts to look like a real shop and it may be the last time it will be this clean!

The wide angle lens makes it look bigger than it is so remember is only 13.5 x 17.5




I am still thinking about what goes where and happy to take suggestions. The TS is pretty much in optimum position so I can use the door for long rips and have approx 12 feet to the back of the shop. The bench in the corner is not going anywhere so I am stuck with that. The position of the BS seems optimal and it is on a mobile base so I can rotate it 90 degrees and move it closer to the middle of the shop when I have longer pieces. The pair of cabinets on the same wall is where I think I will install my miter saw although not sure whether to bias the longer side to the left or right. I would be interested in ideas on what to do with the dead back corner. Not sure whether to just fill with cabinets or something else. I am also totally stuck on the puzzle of what goes on the walls e.g. shelves/cabinet for general storage/stuff and of course there are clamp racks to consider. I am thinking about a custom tool cabinet on the back wall above the bench but that may have to wait for a while.




The sharper tools among you will notice the missing dust collector. Once it has had a good clean it will come in temporarily but the intention is to have it installed outside. I am going to build an external room for it on the left flank wall seen here below. You can see a patch on the wall which is actually a dedicated power outlet just for the DC and possibly later a compressor. I intend to build all along this side of the shop with the first 4-5 feet enclosing the DC and the last 13-14 feet to be a large wood rack. My garage still has a lot of my wood stock and it will stay there along with sheet goods. On the left of this last photo you can see my surplus stash under a tarp as this was previously just stacked around inside the building before I started the conversion.



Its been a long time coming and I am looking forward to using my new shop for some real projects very soon.

[jussi]

Great job. Looks like all that hard work is going to pay off. Great looking space. is the floor slippery?

[atgcpaul]

That turned out very nice! It's very nice and bright.