Woodshop in my Basement

[boese.c]

I have a 2 story house with a unfinished basement. I am thinkning about putting my wood shop in the basement, 2 questions, any advice on this? Also how good are dust collectors??

Thanks Chad

[George]

So's mine.

Control the humidity, use partitions and your dust collector to keep it neat enough for the spouse. Leave your shop shoes and smock outside the door.

[dr-whoopie]

my living-room 16x16 is on the main floor but 2 feet below the rest

so in my basement 8 feet high except for that 16x16 area wich is actually

6,6 high (good cause i am 6,3 tall)i closed up some walls installed a de-humidifier + vaccum system insolated & sound-proofed the ceilling & walls painted the cement floor grey and instaled some rubber mats

i sometimes get little traces of dust in the hall way due to walking out of workshop without cleaning my shoes first (bad habit) good thing i have my wife to remind me,,, (nag nag nag)

over all i have no problems with a in-house workshop

she also nag's me about buying tools so i tell her every projects needs a new tool ( why is that she say's) well sweatheart no 2 projects are the same hehehe

i have lots of tools,i started buying tools about 5yrs ago cause i knew woodworking was for me i have a love for wood.router station,table saw/band saw/drill press/mortiser/miter saw/grinder station/spindle sander/belt sander/ + many other hand held tools

its not always easy to handle a 4x8 plywood in my 16x16 area

i been doing some learn has you go projects but never anything to be proud of so i decided to enroll in a beginner woodworking class that starts in febuary i cant wait

[Searcher]

I had my shop in the basement for two years. Along with a good dust collector and a WET/DRY vac I had no problems, Until that is we bought a new house. Lugging all that stuff up and out of the basement was horrendous. I had a few dust issues and I had the urge to finish my projects no matter what, this included staining and the fumes were a bit of a bother once they permeated the house. I found a way to combat this by building a wooden box and installing a spare dryer blower inside it. The bottome of the "box" was open with a filter. I had an exhaust vent running into the dryer exhaust which in turn would vent the odor out of the house. My wife thought it was ingenious and I racked up more brownie points. The only problem that I could not find a solution to was the noise of the tools.

Searcher

[Charley]

If you have a hot air furnace or central air do your best to block this off from your shop and provide your own shop heat/air conditioning. If you don't you will have sawdust everywhere in the house and she will forbid you from using your shop. Mine is now in a separate building.

[Pop]

-- Be sure you can get whatever you build, OUT of the basement. I'll never forget my daughter's bed: I built one for my son, did all the calcs, it went out OK. Couple years later, did my daughter's, used the same plans 'cause I knew it'd fit to get it out. But ... I added a little trim here & there - couldn't get it out!! Disassembly wasn't an option - glued & screwed, a near perfect finish. I eneded up cutting it in half with a good, expensive ply saw and carted it up that way, added a little more "trim" to the cut lines, and thank gosh it worked. But I've never forgotten that! Luckily, I had feet in the center of the bed too, so the extra blocking etc. inside wasn't too hard to do. They're those kind with headboard, footboard, all with shelves but detachable, and 14 drawers, 7 to a side. Grandkids use the beds now!

HTH,

Pop

[julvr]

I haven't done this yet, but I'm planning to once I get the money and time -- I was thinking of installing an air to air exchanger in the woodshop to complment the dust collection. The only mod I would make is to have a portion of the incoming air vent to into a neighbouring room -- this would create negative air pressure in the room, and prevent any dust from escaping into the house whatsoever. Also, it would be very useful for paint fumes, etc.

I'd let you know how well it works, but the car broke down, and all my money dissappeared :crybaby:

Outside of this idea, so long as you have a good dust collection system (make sure you visit

for information on this), you shouldn't have any noticable problems. (NOTE: a shop-vac is not sufficient as it does not filter out the fine dust particles that you can't see, and this can be a health hazard).

John

[Phisherman]

My shop is in the basement. I'm lucky that it is a walk-out basement. Put in lots of electrical outlets, and a few 220v outlets. A good DC is a must--look at PennState or Grizzly. I have a 1.5 HP, and wish it was a 2 HP when I'm surface planing or using the lathe.

[LarryLev]

wife or workshop?

[fredfighter]

Indeed.

I just recently did a little work in the basement at my mom's house, heated with an oil furnace. I applied shellac by brush out in the garage and then brought the project inside to 'finish the finish' as Bob Flexner would say. That involved light sanding, a bit of touch-up shellac applied with a pad, (e.g. like French Polishing) and then rubbing off the gloss.

There are a couple of carbon monoxide detectors in the house and they began to annunciate after I began rubbing out the shellac with steel wool and mineral oil. We think that some vapors from the oil entered the heat exchanger via the cold air return where the heat broke it down producing a little CO.

The alarms trigger on _rate_, not just level. Whenever the furnace came on they beeped, even though the actual level stayed below about 40 ppm. Apparently there was a rapid rise from near zero to ~ 30 ppm or so whenever the furnace blower kicked in.

Saw/sanding dust and other solvents might do the same.

[Paul Currie]

seperate building in a seperate town now!

[Keith]

If the wood complains, it goes in the out-building. ;-)

[Keith]

That's the situation I'm in now. I wanna buy the tools while I'm working, but want to retire and move soon. I'd really like a cabinet saw (have some bonus money coming that SHMBO says is mine to play), but I don't feature moving the thing downstairs and then back out. A contractor's saw may have to do.

You'll have that. OTOH, she likes the looks of the woodwork and all the rest, so a little pain isn't terrible. ;-)

The noise isn't an issue here, even though the "shop" is right below the kitchen/dining room. Venting the smell would be good, though I don't want to take all the heat out of the house in the winter and i *surely* don't want to suck the moisture down into the basement in the summer. Sink happens.

[Ranger Paul]

Hey Chad,

Check out this shop planner thingy on Grizzly Tool's web site:

might help,

RangerPaul

[Robert Haar]

That site refuses to work for anything other than Internet Explorer.

[Robert Haar]

The annual Tools and Shops issue of Fine Woodworking has an article on this subject ob designing a basement shop from the ground up as part of a new addition. It does not have a great deal of depth but does cover the basics.

[Mike Marlow]

I just did some layout with Mozilla.

[George]

Plug-in, actually.

[Robert Haar]

I tried both Safari and Firefox. Both times, I got a screen with a message saying that I had to use IE and a bib blank space that looked like it should have loaded something. Maybe it just doesn't work for Macs, but the message said I needed to to IE.

[DJ Delorie]

Works fine in Firefox for me. Maybe you just need the right plugin pre-installed.