Building a workshop in my basement?

Considering the incredible confined spaces that they regularly weld in (with a vent duct and a respirator) when building ships, I would think that a basement is certainly an option.

Probably a decent kitchen vent hood over the welding bench (presuming relatively small parts) ducted outside and a fresh air intake on the other side of the room should be ok. You don't want so much ventilation that you pull away the argon at the weld.

Pete C.

Reply to
Pete C.
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I'm not buying that argument. TV fills the void created by the lack of any outdoor space to play. TV was certainly around when I was growing up (35++ now) and I didn't watch that much. I was far more interested in climbing 70'+ trees, blowing up frogs and building flame throwers.

Same thing, need to be a mindless worker drone to get the money to be a gullible consumer.

Pete C.

Reply to
Pete C.

Do you have a good way to carry the 200 lb tanks down the stairs?

AFAIK, you should be pretty safe unless you're welding some exotic materials, or galvanized parts. I would guess the dust would be very hard to control though.

Reply to
Dave Lyon

Way too small for eventual uses, but it's a good start if that's all you have. But there are a lot of considerations. I have to go to work so I'll touch on the points and they can be hashed out later, but here's the basics:

If you do any welding, you need a fresh air makeup source (preferably heated or with a heat exchanger if you live anywhere north of Florida - and even there it gets chilly. Or air conditioned in the summer.

And you MUST provide a vent hood over your welding table that exhausts to the outside. Even if you have a variable speed fan so you turn it down while doing relatively clean TIG welding, you still produce fumes of nasty stuff that have to be removed. Oxy-Acetylene MIG Fluxcore or Stick all make varying levels of bad stuff in the smoke that has to be removed, and the metal fumes in the weld smoke can cause severe health problems - zinc fume fever is just one.

Any ventilation blowers should have another control switch outside, so they can be used by the FD for smoke ventilation in case of a fire. The fan needs to be remotely mounted and the power and control wires all run outside the extreme fire hazard area, so it keeps working.

Yes - but you'll need to do so much prep work to build a welding or machining workshop under the house and do it safely that it would be a WHOLE lot easier to sell that house and buy one further out of town that does not have the restrictions on a shop outbuilding in the back yard, or to build a new house from scratch (or a total almost-ground-up remodel) that was planned for that use in the first place. I'm thinking a concrete slab floor between the basement and 1st floor as the ultimate firestop.

To get around the codes somewhat, you can just build an addition to your existing garage to make it a 4-car, or add a second two-car garage on the other side. After it's all built and the permits are passed as a garage, then you can turn it into a workshop. (Creative Interpretation.) ;-) Or go up - make it a 2-story detached garage and you have the whole upstairs.

With a separate shop building 100 feet from the house you don't have to be nearly as paranoid about life safety, because you don't have people sleeping upstairs. If it burns down or blows up it can be a serious annoyance, not a tragedy when a few people die.

Fire Safety: You need outside windows from all main basement rooms for ventilation so the fire can go out instead of only up - or worse, the heat builds until the floor above flashes over.

You need automatic fire sprinklers inside all basement rooms, a water-curtain sprinkler head over the windows so the flames pouring out the basement windows don't catch the house on fire. And an outside sprinkler booster hookup for the pumper. This way if they decide it's too dangerous to go inside, they can let the sprinklers keep working on it.

Lots of extinguishers, including a bucket of Class D powder on hand in case you ever machine magnesium or other highly reactive metals. And a few strategically placed 1-1/2" hose racks with a fog nozzle by the doors might prove useful if you can jump on a fire while it's still small.

NOTE: You always put the fire stuff near the Exit door - that way you have the exit behind you when you decide to fight or flee. Or you try to fight then change your mind as it gets worse.

And you need an outside walk-up or storm door access to the basement (two ways to get in would be even better) so the FD can get inside safely to fight the fire without going through the house. And at least one large access door helps when you want to get equipment and supplies in and out, too.

You need a 2-hour rated ceiling and walls in all the basement rooms (double 1/2" drywall or better), and a 2-hour commercial fire door to the upstairs so the fire doesn't spread. You need proper fire dampers in all vent and duct penetrations, and firestop collars on all conduits and pipes.

You need heat (rate of rise) type fire detectors in the shop rooms, and smoke detectors in the hallway headed upstairs - that way the smokes shouldn't give false alarms as often, they are a door away from the welding or paint spraying. The alarms need to be linked to a burglar alarm with a dialer, so even if you work in the shop and leave for the evening and something is smoldering, the FD gets called while it's still small.

You need to keep all larger quantities of flammable gases and liquids outside the house in a steel storage shed, including your welding gas bottles - The odds are very low, but Google the terms 'acetylene deflagration' sometime and you'll get an eye full - the bottle just decides to go BOOM!... There shouldn't be any more flammable stuff stored inside than you plan to use that day.

And on a general basis, you will always have potential moisture control problems in a basement - you may need a dehumidifier that can run 24/7, and you may (depending on the water table and the waterproofing of the basement walls and floor) be fighting a never-ending battle against water intrusion and dampness.

You'll need to do a lot of soundproofing in the basement ceiling. And any ductwork or pipes can still carry the noise upstairs.

Fine aluminum and steel shavings and dusts can catch fire all by themselves, especially if you mix in a little sawdust. Add in some oily rags...

This is why you normally do that work in a garage at home - because by all modern building codes an attached garage is isolated from the rest of the house by fire rated walls and a fire rated solid door, there are ventilation ports at the floor and ceiling levels to prevent fume buildups, there is a big door for easy access...

I gotta go, more tonight. I'll put out the verbal flames then - probably just as many from the people who think I'm being overly paranoid as from the people thinking I haven't gone far enough in my safety considerations, but that's to be expected. It's that "There are Old pilots, and Bold pilots, but few Old Bold pilots..." thing.

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Reply to
Bruce L. Bergman

Put the shop in the garage. Put the cars outside.

Stop asking your wife about this stuff. Makes it look like you just not serious.

Jim

Reply to
jim rozen

--Do yourself a favor; assuming there's nothing unmovable on the floor above, put a hatch in there so you can lift big stuff in and out with a winch.

Reply to
steamer

I am certainly not an exert on welding, but consider that gases do not need to be toxic to be dangerous. We have sensors for CO2, but we do not sense low O2. N2 at least has killed by displacing O2, by the time the victim starts to feel dizzy, it's too late, and other inert gases might be similarly dangerous. Please check carefully before doing TIG in a confined space. At a mimimum, use good active ventilation. If you plan to work on small items, a fume hood might be helpful.

Bill

Reply to
Bill Schwab

Jeff, no need to try to explain about your cars. I'm pretty anal about mine also, as I'm sure some of the other guys are. BTW, what kind do you have?

Reply to
lathenut

Be aware also that when TIG welding you may trash any TV reception. I have a shop behind my house and when TIG welding the cable TV is pretty well in a snow storm. My kids have told me that the neighbors have called to ask if we were having cable problems. The calls always seem to occur while I'm welding...

Reply to
tomd

"Jeff B" wrote in news:Xxqaf.2461$IC.759@dukeread07:

Jeff, Some fire prevention things to mention: A) Use 2 hour fire-rated drywall in the room, including the ceiling. - If something bad happens, the 2 hours can give you time to get something done about it before you lose your house. B) Use a fire-rated door on the room. - Same reason C) Use the commercial type glue-on baseboard molding, and make sure it is sealed to the floor and wall good (non-flammable silicone maybe?) - This helps to prevent any hot dust/sparks from getting under a wall, or behind the baseboard where it would have the highest chance of starting a fire. D) Use aluminum flashing or sheet, or stainless, to line the walls around your welding area, and your grinding area. Make sure this too is sealed to the walls with non-flammable sealer. Make sure it overlaps the baseboard molding so hot embers cannot sit on top of the baseboard lip. E) Have a larger, GOOD, fire extinguisher mounted at chest level near the exit of the room. - Check the charge once a month. F) You will need some type of ventilation for welding, there ARE bad fumes from any type of welding. Make sure that the ducting outside the wall is far enough away, or high enough over the roofline that a fire in that room will not be escorted to the house above via the duct. You could also purchase a fire damper for the intake and exhaust so that in the event of a fire, these close and help shut off the air supply to the fire. See-

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for a kitchen hood with this built-in.

Reply to
Anthony

Great post Bruce. Finally, someone has shed the bright light of real safety concerns upon this problem. I agree with the others who suggested moving your car/cars to an off-site facility during the winter months for storage.

The only thing I would add to Bruce's post is: think about your insurance. Doing any welding (or other machine work, for that matter) in your basement will very likely invalidate any homeowner's insurance you might have. It may also invalidate your life insurance in the event that you kill yourself or a family member.

- Michael

Reply to
DeepDiver

For sound control, look into resilient z-channel attachement for the sheet rock, especially the ceiling. There are also special sound attenuation blankets you can use in the rafters.

You will also need to look into air scrubbers to take care of any smoke generated. There will be smoke. You can probably use a smaller scrubber if you do your grinding and welding under a hood of some sort.

There are methods of arresting sparks from grinders but I'm not very familiar with them. You will also have to give some thought to make-up air so you don't suffocate. Minimally you need CO detectors. This of course doesn't protect you against displacing all of the oxygen in the room with CO2 or Argon.

It's probably going to cost almost as much to convert your basement as it would to build a garage of equal size.

Cheers,

Kelley

Reply to
Kelley Mascher

Reply to
Tim Killian

Welding in my open shop is not messy, and with reasonable safety precautions, not particularly hazardous. Welding in a basement can be stupid, but certainly doesn't have to be.

Peter

Reply to
Peter Grey

Well, now that you've gotten a consensus of opinion, your decision should be easy! ;)

Peter

Reply to
Peter Grey

While displacing oxygen with the Argon is possible and you certainly need proper ventilation, you also need to look realistically at the actual risk. If you're doing small time TIG you probably don't have a huge tank of Argon, I have an 80cf tank. A 12' x 15' room is 180 sq. ft. so if you dumped an entire 80cf tank you could only displace a little less than 6" off the floor. Could be a problem for a cat or small dog, but pretty unlikely to be a true risk to a human. Even a big 220cf tank would only do like 16" off the floor. In real world use you're not going to come anywhere close to dumping that much Argon in an evenings project. If the basement is fully underground I would recommend a low level exhaust vent intake to prevent a continuing buildup of Argon.

Pete C.

Reply to
Pete C.

Don't forget that, in the real world, cylinders have been known to leak.

Reply to
DeepDiver

Our TVs also seem to have troubles when I weld...

i
Reply to
Ignoramus12686

enough time to drive to some insurance agent and buy fire insurance...

i

Reply to
Ignoramus12686

Yes, but my point was that even dumping a full 220cf cylinder will not create a hazard to humans. I am making the fairly safe assumption that a hobby welder will not be storing a dozen leaking 220cf Argon tanks in their work area though.

Pete C.

Reply to
Pete C.

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