Imparted Shop Wisdom

[bow loving man]

Ok guys please give me your wisdom, I have just moved into a new home and it has a 24 x 30 shop with a 12' ceiling. It has a concrete floor.  It is just the metal framework and siding...I plan to wire it for electricity and insulate it.  
Any advice, lessons you learned with your shop or just wisdom for my new shop layout would be much appreciated....thanks

[jess stuart]

About twice as many lights as you think you will need, can't have to many.  I would have a 220 volts available as well.  Congrats that will make a nice shop with some fun times ahead.

[macbow]

First lighting, I just switched over to LED that looks like flourescent fixtures. Love them.

Was the roof insulated when it was installed? Big difference.

Mine has 12 foot ceilings and I bought used celing fans from habitat for humanity stores. Helps bring the heat down in the winter and moves air in summer. Can't aford a/c.

When wireing put in plent of circuits. I can always add runs over head but once the walls are sealed it is done.
Leave,accessfor future wiring.

My walls are covered,with the chip board. Very handy for hanging anything.

[Mad Max]

Texas------ Hot
A/C window unit's put off Humidity
Central would be nice
dehumidifier

[bamboo]

Originally posted by Mark Daniel:
Texas------ Hot
A/C window unit's put off Humidity
Central would be nice
dehumidifier

---and you can just replace window units--
  no calls to hvac guys!!
--figure dedicated circuits for every machine--
 leave room for more in the panel
--frame in a paint booth--and an area for dust collection

[bow loving man]

Thanks guys definitely will go with lots of LEDs for lighting! Keep the wisdom coming...

[LittleBen]

I've been planning a conversion of my garage into a shop and I e been thinking it would make sense to just put a 4-outlet 120v like every 4 ft just above bench height or something along those lines. I remember working in the lab as a grad student and nothing beats having a ton of outlets.

I would probably run two 220v outlets on each wall, each one on its own circuit .... But I'm also insane and prone to excess. It's hard to know where you will need the outlets and it's cheaper to put in too many now than to cut Sheetrock later. I would run wire for more amperage than you expect needing for the same reason.

It all seems like overkill until 5 years down the line when you decide you need to plug in 2 15 amp heaters and mitre saw on the same outlet ... Or something equally silly. 24x30 is a lot of space but don't underestimate your ability to fill it up wih garbage and find yourself plugging in a bunch of stuff in one corner.

[Bowjunkie]

My garage is detached from the house and it has its own 200 amp service, but it's at the opposite end of the building from my shop, so I ran a heavy wire down and put a subpanel in the shop. From there I divied up the circuits, including provisions for 220v circuits.

I have led lighting. At first I thought it was too much, looked like a tanning bed in there... but now I'm glad I put in as much as I did.

I still want to put some good lighting under my upper cabinets to eliminate shadows on the bench.

Oh yeah, cabinets.... start watching Craigslist for used kitchen cabinets. You can find some really good deals. I ended up getting 3 different kitchen's worth of cabinets that all match and put some in my bow shop and the rest in the upper garage. Love em. Ya never have too much storage. I also got a bunch of shelving from a Rite Aid store liquidation to store bow wood, jigs, and supplies on.

My shop still isn't done, but at least now I can work in there. I still have a big chunk of bowling alley I'm going to use to make another bench. It has a perfectly smooth and durable synthetic top. This bench will be heavy duty, perfectly flat, with bench dogs and a pattern maker's vice.

A/c.

Electric heat.

Dehumidifier.... doesn't run much with the last two in there, but sometimes in the spring and fall, it's quite valuable here in western pa.

I don't have a dust collection system yet, and I might not bother since I get by with a big shop vac, but it's something else to consider.

I have almost all of my big tools on mobile bases so I can move them if needed during use, or push them back out of the way.

[leftyfred]

My favorite organization helper in my shop is slatwall.  It is available everywhere and really makes finding things easy.  If I had only studs showing, I would cover at least 75% in slatwall.  Look at all the accessories available for it also.
Mike

[Eric Krewson]

This picture of my shop says it all; build your workbench like a tank so it won't scoot across the floor when you are into heavy draw knifing. I bought prefab drawer units from Lowe's to build my bench around.

   

Insulate your shop to the max in case you end up with heat and air. My wall unit has both heat and air.

My lighting is substandard even though I thought I was putting plenty of fixtures up.

Dust collection is a mighty nice thing to have.

Put up shelves everywhere, even if you don't have anything to put on them. You will need them down the road as your junk collection grows.

Lastly; clean up your shop with the shop vac and put everything up at the end of the day, takes about 5 minutes and makes your shop a joyful place to walk into. It took me 20 years to learn this last piece of advice and put it into practice.

[Wolftrail]

And make sure you have a dedicated 20 amp outlet for dust removal machine.  I would go for a cheap built in vacuum and use built-in pipe very cheap and easy to do.  All you have to do is attach a cyclone can to it so it gathers all the fine dust before it enters the machine and exhaust the vac motor it to the outside of the building.

[Ringbill]

I will second what a few have said. Put twice as much lighting as you think you need and multiple circuits with twice as many outlets as you think you need. I used to have a detached garage and when I wired it up I put a different circuit on each wall with the outlets about 4' off the ground. Stuff seems to accumulate on the floor and this way you can still get to the outlets. I moved about 5 years ago and now I don't have enough outlets and not enough lighting in my garage, but I finally built a workbench that is built like a tank and that is the best thing I have done for my woodworking.

[kennym]

I can't add much to what you've heard, except make it 30 x 90 so you can shoot indoors in that AC or  heat!!    

[bow loving man]

Ha ha Kenny! I can get 11 yards on the angle! Thanks for the great wisdom guys... Lots to consider

[canopyboy]

I have three things I constantly regret with how I set up my shop: I didn't make it bigger; I didn't put in enough 240V circuits; I didn't give enough thought early on to a robust dust collection system. Two of those you can still act on. There will come a time when you will likely want a serious dust collection system. With a shop like that, you might end up with a bigger planer or thickness sander or something else that will simply overwhelm a shopvac or one of those 1hp little dust collectors. Think about running some extra wires and ducting to be able to use dust collection at multiple points in your shop easily. I could have put some ducting up and over in my ceiling before drywall but didn't. (I may still cut it open some day to do it.) I've also ended up with some more bigger tools than I originally envisioned that use 240V. This includes some that could run either way that I rewired for 240 since they don't move. I generally have enough outlets, but most are on the same circuit. I didn't plan to use more than one at a time when I laid it out, so figured it wasn't a problem (subpanel was only so big without upgrading.) But the new dust collector is 240V, and sometimes other things are running at the same time as the big table saw and dust collector. Doable, but I have to be more careful than I'd like.

Things I did that I love: I laid out the shop around my tablesaw which stays put; I did put in a subpanel with multiple circuits including a dedicated one to the air compressor; I insulated very well; lots of outlets (would still have added more); lots of lighting; minimum ceiling height over 8' (makes swinging plywood around a lot easier.)