For most of us, Summer is hot. This public service announcement is brought to you by Captain Obvious. But in some regions, the definition of “hot” changes dramatically. As we leave the cooler temps of Winter here in Arizona, we have but a fleeting glance at Spring before we find ourselves in the hot and sweaty grip of Summer. Around this time every year, I start hearing the Imperial March in my head as I know the evil forces of Darth Summer are on their way to smite me. So in Phoenix, I just can’t woodwork without air conditioning. I tried for a while, but dang it, I’m only human! So how about you? What kind of climate control, if any, do you employ in your shop?
This poll was created by Tom Iovino of TomsWorkbench.com.
My shop is typically well Air Conditioned in the Winter, Heated in the Summer!
For instance with our 113 Deg F. Temp yesterday, my garage was 140+ until I opened up the doors.
I am in the process of insulating my garage/shop right now, to make it bearable in the summer. I live in southern Louisiana, and the sticky humid summer heat is just horrible. If I can gt comfortable for less than $1000 in materials, that is a no brainer for me. I think I was stupid for not having it done when I built the house six years ago (just after Katrina). I already have a portable AC unit to use.
How do I control climate in my shop? I moved to Santa Cruz CA.
I leave the doors and windows open almost all year long, as it rarely gets hot enough for air conditioning, or cold enough to need a heater. I sometimes close things up on rainy days if a strong wind is blowing, to keep the rain out. Humidity can range between 40-70% depending on the season, which is no particular problem for the wood, but I’ll sometimes do my varnishing and gluing-up inside the house if the humidity gets much above 50%.
DD
Colder the better when the sun is burning the summers hot and just simply warm when the cold winter days set in. There is no better feeling though than walking into a cold shop and turning on the the overhead heater and letting it blow the place warm on a winter morning. It reminds me of being a kid an walking out into the shop with my dad and lighting up his overhead for a blast of hot air! I would stand in direct line of the heat until I was sweating and he would begin working.
I have a 776 sq. ft. shop in my back yard in West Virginia. We have 4 distinct seasons. I installed a through-the-wall heat pump (like they have in motel rooms) that works very well. The summers can get into the 80′s and 90′s with a few 100+ days with high humidity. In the winter our average lows are in the teens and 20′s with a few < 0 nights. I leave the unit on year around and can work in a long sleeve flannel shirt on the coldest days.
We live in Chatsworth, CA. This is the hottest part of the San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles. My son replaced his FAU blower a while back, then the whole heater went out. So…I took the blower and installed it in the peak of my garage end wall. It has a 1-6 hour timer and 2 speeds. So, I still have a hot shop/garage, but I am able to move the hot air from the rafters. I also hung a 24″ box fan for more direct air flow. I am sure you have it hotter, Mark. But we West Coasters are close, here in the Valley.
I live in Indiana, so it is hot and humid in the summer and cold during the winter. My work
shop is our two car detached garage.I have a propane powered Heater for winter, and fans for the summer. Some day I aspire to have a stand alone shop that is climate controlled, and not a permanent home to two cars.
I should have included I’m in Alabama. Usual extremes bad enough…20′s to 90′s…so all “lived in” spaces get heated and cooled. My current basement does have a house duct running thru the back, and I could easily tap in a diffuser, I just never needed it! Sweet! My new shop will have lots of wall, ceiling, and floor insulation, and probably a mini-split or two PTAC’s.
Basement shop. (Very similar to Tom Hunt’s description just a couple of spaces above actually.) That is the one thing I really like about having my shop down there. Naturally cooler in the summer. There is a diffuser from the furnace in the room, so I guess it is fully controlled? (the diffuser is about 3″ x 4″, so not much air comes out…) I still feel I just have heat. Anyway, like Tom, it is also too small. Wish I could build one bigger, but that is not in the cards.
I don’t know if I could hack the Arizona heat….Here in Wisconsin, at 75 degrees, people are starting to say, “Boy, it’s starting to get hot outside.” It makes me chuckle to think in other parts that is when people feel “It’s really starting to cool off.”
I have a natural gas wall unit for the winter. I use a window AC for the summer. I need a bigger unit for the AC though.
I have my shop in the basement so if it gets a bit cold I will open up the vent for some heat or cold. But normally I just let it be since I don’t want the temperature changes. Has not been a problem and I like it a bit on the cool side.
My basement shop is all natural, 80% below grade or against crawlspace. 67 to 73 degrees 24/7/365 w/o any energy use! What a Blessing!
But, alas, it’s too small for my tools, and plans are underway to build a freestanding 32′ x 22′ shop building out back. Windows, elbow room and a place for everything, BUT it will need HVAC. Can’t have everything, I suppose.
I live in Iowa and have a 2 car detached garage that I use as my shop. In the spring and summer, it’s essential to have a dehumidifier running. Other than that, having a fan pushing the air around usually keeps it plenty comfortable to work.
I guess my sympaties are not too deep for Mark going to a 105F day. This morning we had here (Alberta Canada) a 27F morning. It eventually will warm up but there is no need for AC here. Although heat in the winter is certainly nice during glue ups and finishing.
I’m 40 miles north of Minneapolis, so I have the best of all climate issues. For heating, I run a 20′ infrared tube heater so that I have no air movement when the system is running in the winter. It is also ducted to draw combustion air from the outside, so it is completely safe for finishing as well. For air conditioning and humidity control, I use a ductless mini split heat pump. This cools great, and also has precision humidity control.
I live in the northern climate of Canada so heating is a must. Since my shop is in the basement, it stays cool during the hot summer days even without air conditioning provided I keep the windows closed.
In the process of re-roofing my garage shop replacing the corrugated asbestos panels. When done I will have quite a layer of insulation in the roofspace that will keep the shop cool in summer and warm in winter. Hopefully the heat won’t end up going out and warming the birds in the tree above the shop as it does now in the winter.
I will kit it out with an aircleaner and maybe an extract fan or two. Summers never get too hot here so I won’t need aircon.
But it does get cold enough to limit shop time in winter so heating is essential.
I’m in a basement in the inland southeast. Daytime highs range from about 30 in the winter to high 90s/100 in the summer and I work in it year round (I do this for a living) with no climate control other than the ambient coming off the ductwork which feeds the house upstairs. I do run my ambient air filter any time I’m in the shop just for air circulation even if I’m not “creating” dust. I figure I’m stirring it up just by walking around anyway. Maybe five days a year in the winter I’ll run a propane heater for a couple of hours but that’s as much for the materials and finishes as it is for me. Another ten to twenty days a year in the summer I have to be careful not to drip sweat on the work.
Only need heating. In the summer it is hot but not to hot and in the winter I use the heater to get the shop up to temperature for finishing only.
My shop is in my garage. I have no A/C, but do have a fan that helps. If it gets too hot, I don’t work. In the winter I have a kerosene heater that works well as long as the outside temp is over 30. Again, if it gets too cold, I don’t work. Being in Ohio, I have full use of the shop 3/4 of the year. I typically loose the hottest month and half in the summer and the coldest (Except this year, I pretty much had it all winter) month and half in the winter.
One of the few benifits of a basement shop is that it is always cooler down there in the summer than in the rest of the house. In the winter I just use an electric space heater.
I’m in a 2-car garage with no cars, so I can open the garage door and with a fan get some circulation.
A comment on the comment about static electricity and safety: I wonder how much benefit comes from static grounding, etc., when we aren’t using explosion-proof motors. I also notice the arcing inside my electric drill and my circular saw. A spark is a spark, and it is going to ignite an explosive mixture, whether it’s dust or solvent vapor. In my much younger days I worked in a grain elevator, an environment notorious for dust explosions. We used aluminum scoops and wore work boots without exposed nails, and thank God we didn’t get blown to smithereens. I bet the motors were fully enclosed and the switches were explosion-proof. Without some of those protections, I think that installing ground wires in the dust collectors is a waste of money for a home shop.
In the summer I open my garage door and in the winter I close it and wear heavy clothing.
I marked nature is my climate control but I feel guilty. I live in southern California and the weather is almost always tolerable, even tough I find it cold in the winter.
I probably could have just clicked “something else”. My shop is a two car garage that is mostly nature controlled. Here in NW Arkansas we are “kinda” in the south but it still gets hot as hell in the summers. Other than the garage door, I have one operable window that is currently home to a little window A/C unit that I found on appliance trash pickup day… Seems to work fine for me.
~Dozer
Before I had nothing and just dealt with it. As of this week I’ve installed insulation and sheetrock and a ductless AC is next. The only way to have a year round shop in Texas really.
I just sweat till I cant stand it :D
Heating is not an issue in South Florida. At its worst it is in the low 90′s here at midday. But like Jim in Houston humidity is an issue from May into November. After years of trying to jimmy an air conditioning system, I finally bought a 25K BTU window unit and built it into a doorway. During the summer I keep it at 70. :)
In Use / Stored
Summer is nice in Montana, I just open the doors. Winter, well that is another story.
I live on the Gulf Coast in Houston with high humidity and unbearably hot summers. The temperature doesn’t tend to reach quite as hot in Houston as Phoenix – though we do frequently break 100 in the summer time, but Phoenix is a dry heat – the humidity here makes it feel so much worse. I have a downstairs garage shop with the master bedroom over head so 2 walls and the ceiling are insulated. There are no windows. I put 3/4″ insulting panels on my garage door (which leaves one exterior wall un-insulated). I have a rolling portable A/C unit vented through the garage door. The A/C unit is a tad undersized for the space being air conditioned (an probably could use a recharge of coolant), but it does tend to take the edge off and not be quite as hot in the garage. It has the other distinct advantage that it de-humidifies my garage which helps in the constant rust prevention fight.
I have a basement workshop in Pennsylvania. Its warm enough in the winter, and pleasantly cooler than the rest of the house in the summer. A couple small windows within arm-reach and a large walkout door at-grade to my rear driveway for supplies makes it the perfect setup. Now if it only had a wife-proof lock…
I have a dungeon workshop in Syracuse, NY. Windows are not functional down there. During winter, I use a ventless natural gas heater. I also have a humidifier in the room where I do my finishing, to enhance the set of the finish. From late spring thru until early to mid autumn, I do as little as possible in the basement. I have a house over a century old in ample need of constant rehabilitation, so I spend my time doing this when it is nice out and I can open the windows and get fresh air and sunlight. Only necessary woodworking gets done, and then mostly at night, where the coolness of the basement becomes quite refreshing.
In the process of fully insulating and drywalling my garage/shop. Then eventually portable AC or ductless AC. And being in San Diego, having heat isn’t that important.
Window air and gas heater works for me, but I have been doing this for 50 years. This has been my retirement plan.
Would it be inappropriate to say “the rhythm method”?
(work in the hours that the shop is comfortable)
I couldn’t imagine anything other than AC in a Phoenix-area shop. (although was just wondering if a swamp cooler would raise the humidity too high)
Matt
I chose fully controlled. I have infrared heat and a fan to move some air around more as needed. I also have window A/C units (first year in this house, still haven’t needed them).
The main reason for this comment is to mention that I run a dehumidifier with a hose to a drain. This drastically reduces the amount of rust i get in the shop.
It is a balance though; if you get it too dry, then it’s a pain (more particles in the air) and LESS safe (more static, etc). Just something to keep in mind: don’t pull all the moisture out, just make sure it isn ‘t a rainforest in there.
This will obviously depend on where you live, but since the devices run only when needed, it isn’t a bad investment to have sitting there.