How cold is too cold?

[Jimmie Mayfield]

My attached garage/shop is unheated and on a day where the outdoor temperatures approach 0F, it drops to the mid-30s (empirically, the garage temp sits midway between the outdoor temp and the house temp...at least in the winter). Since the interior door goes to the laundry room, I've been known to reroute the dryer vent into the garage and run a cycle with an empty dryer (hence, no moisture). This warms the garage enough to work without a jacket but the tools themselves (and the wood also?) probably need much longer to warm up.

I'm particularly interested in the cold's effect on my belt-driven tools. My tools appear to have two types of belts: The BS and compressor have "normal" fan belts while the TS and Dewalt planer both use what appears to be a yellow, rubbery belt. Seeing what happened to the Shuttle Challenger's rubber O-rings, am I asking for trouble by using these two tools while cold? I didn't find any mention of operational temperature ranges in either manual.

Jimmie

[Myk Rian]

You can't really compare your shop tools to the shuttles' o-rings.

If the tool turns on and runs, use it. I might hesitate if it was 0 in the garage.

[David Keller NC]

While true that the shuttle's o-rings were made of a special fire-resistant polymer compound to withstand the high temperatures and pressures, it wasn't just the o-rings stiffening up that caused the disaster, it was also a problem of differential expansion of the metallic parts in the rocket booster seal.

On you power tools, most of them have a belt-tensioner device that will take up/give up some degree of slack in use, and the kinds of silicone rubber normally used in newer power tool belts will stay flexible down to just above liquid nitrogen temperatures (let's hop your garage never even approaches that (-277 degrees!)). You should be fine.

[John Keeton]

...newer power tool belts will stay flexible down to just above liquid nitrogen temperatures (let's hope your garage never even approaches that (-277 degrees!)). You should be fine.
I am pretty much out of the shop when the ambient temps get to about
-150:eek: I'm just afraid to push my luck on those belts!!

[Jimmie Mayfield]

Thanks for the quick responses!

[Joe Chritz]

If you use the dryer sometimes to heat it a hanging electric heater would be likely reasonable to use. With the added bonus of being able to leave it set at 34 so the garage never freezes.

Northern tool has several starting at just over $100.

To answer the original question, the cold shouldn't hurt any electric tools. The swings in temp may cause condensation which could but I found this to only be a problem in the summer when the shop is much cooler than outside.

Joe

[John Lucas]

While true that the shuttle's o-rings were made of a special fire-resistant polymer compound to withstand the high temperatures and pressures, it wasn't just the o-rings stiffening up that caused the disaster, it was also a problem of differential expansion of the metallic parts in the rocket booster seal.

On you power tools, most of them have a belt-tensioner device that will take up/give up some degree of slack in use, and the kinds of silicone rubber normally used in newer power tool belts will stay flexible down to just above liquid nitrogen temperatures (let's hop your garage never even approaches that (-277 degrees!)). You should be fine.

Liquid nitrogen is -320°F. (I was cryogenic "expert" in one of my lives.)

[David Keller NC]

"Liquid nitrogen is -320°F. (I was cryogenic "expert" in one of my lives.)"

Indeed - that's a "whoops" on my part. We used vapor-phase nitrogen at the condensation point to cool our apparatus in grad school, but our set point was -277F. Grad school was a long time ago, and everything has sort of blended together...

[Matt Meiser]

Regarding that dryer vent--is it a gas or electric dryer? I'd be careful about pumping CO into your garage.

[Jimmie Mayfield]

If you use the dryer sometimes to heat it a hanging electric heater would be likely reasonable to use. With the added bonus of being able to leave it set at 34 so the garage never freezes.

Northern tool has several starting at just over $100.


Funny you should mention that! I've had my eye on one at Northern Tool that seems to get pretty good reviews. I've also toyed with the idea of getting a small 15-30k BTU propane heater but the electric one has the benefit of not having to worry about CO or depleted oxygen at the expense of a lower BTU rating.

[Jimmie Mayfield]

Regarding that dryer vent--is it a gas or electric dryer? I'd be careful about pumping CO into your garage.

It's an electric dryer so no worries on the CO front. However, I -did- manage to allow a mouse into the house the first time I did this. Haven't decided if it got in through the open door or if it came in via the (unblocked at the time) dryer vent hookup. Lesson learned.

A standalone heater is definitely a preferable solution but an electric dryer works in a pinch so long as it's empty.

[Frank Drew]

Jimmie,

Be careful that any water based finishes, dyes or glues don't freeze.

I really don't like working in a very cold workshop.

[John Sanford]

If you do decide to keep it warmed up in there, you want to keep it slightly above the minimum working temperature of the glues that you use. Of the normal "yellow" wood glues, Titebond III has the lowest temperature, 45f. Gorilla Glue (and likely other polyurethane glues) are good down to 40f. I have no idea what sort of temperature considerations hide glue may have. When you're going to be finishing, you'll want to take the finish's temps into consideration as well.

The upshot is, the chemicals we use in woodworking are more temperature sensitive than we are, and we are more temperature sensitive than the tools. :cool:

[Andrew Joiner]

In Oregon last I checked electric heat was cheaper than oil. Maybe cheaper than propane too. Electric is 100% efficient.

Your TS a planer are made to be used in cold construction sites, so your fine.

You could screen the dryer vent and call it done! Or you could put a sign on the vent in very tiny letters saying " No Mice Allowed "

[Andrew Joiner]

You can also hang a few clear 250 watt heat lamps above you main work area. Light and heat for one price.

[Joe Chritz]

You break even with electric heat at about 9 cents a KwH. More than that and propane is more efficient but you need to account for efficiency loss and generally larger start up costs.

I am going to heat my finish room with electric, the rest of the shop is propane. For the small area the cost to run lines and get a propane heater isn't effective.

Joe

[Chris Schumann]

I've also toyed with the idea of getting a small 15-30k BTU propane heater but the electric one has the benefit of not having to worry about CO or depleted oxygen at the expense of a lower BTU rating.
Burning propane also creates a lot of water vapor. Not a problem for me, but that may introduce some wood stability issues.

[Jason White]

I'm in Boston and work in my one-car unheated garage.

Trust me, it's too cold!!!

JW



My attached garage/shop is unheated and on a day where the outdoor temperatures approach 0F, it drops to the mid-30s (empirically, the garage temp sits midway between the outdoor temp and the house temp...at least in the winter). Since the interior door goes to the laundry room, I've been known to reroute the dryer vent into the garage and run a cycle with an empty dryer (hence, no moisture). This warms the garage enough to work without a jacket but the tools themselves (and the wood also?) probably need much longer to warm up.

I'm particularly interested in the cold's effect on my belt-driven tools. My tools appear to have two types of belts: The BS and compressor have "normal" fan belts while the TS and Dewalt planer both use what appears to be a yellow, rubbery belt. Seeing what happened to the Shuttle Challenger's rubber O-rings, am I asking for trouble by using these two tools while cold? I didn't find any mention of operational temperature ranges in either manual.

Jimmie

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

Bear in mind that friction of a running belt will warm it quick.

[Bruce Wrenn]

To me, when shop falls below 50, ventless infared propane plaque heater comes on. When it gets to 55, heater shuts off. I don't have the problem of the water vapor, as heater seldom runs for more than an hour a day. Lowes will begin clearancing them second week in January, which is our coldest week. Go figure! If I was building my shop today, it would have solar hot water in floor, with gas WH back up. Once you have experienced heat in the floor, there is no going back. Wish I could have afforded it when I built my shop, but the pipe would have been Quest, which has had problems. May be better off with what I have.

[Sonny Edmonds]

When I lived in Wyoming, there was a time usually the second week in January, when the mercury would dip sub zero for a time.
Once acclimated, when the temperature got up to zero it was T-shirt weather.
But brass monkeys usually lost their balls when the "witches teat" came down from the North and dipped to the lower side of Colorado. :eek:
Worst I lived through was the winter of '78-79 when we saw wind chill temperatures off the chart. -60 and 60 MPH winds one night. Calculated to 108 degrees below zero wind chill.
That winter killed over 70% of the wildlife in Wyoming.
At 40 to 50 below the #1 diesel gelled up and shut down the heavy equipment.
And one winter the city of Riverton asked everybody to leave a tap running so the water mains who stop freezing. They knew the frost went over 13 feet down, because that was the deepest they had had to dig to thaw a frozen main.

That was 7 years of my life that was "too cold".
I've never been cold since. :)

[David DeCristoforo]

It's really not possible to answer this here because of the nature of the necessary language. But I will give it a go. First of all there are only three degrees of cold we need to concern ourselves with. Cold, Damn cold and "Effing" cold. Cold is anything below your particular sense of warm. This will vary from person to person. "Damn cold" is a lot colder than that and "effing cold" is a lot colder than "damn cold". "Too cold" is anything below "damn cold". For us, "effing cold" is the point at which the glue freezes before it dries. When it gets "effing cold", we figure we have done enough woodworking for the day and go home. Measurements of anything below "effing cold" are irrelevant.

When we talk to "Grandpa" in Nevada (we are in the Central Valley of CA) on the phone the conversation might go like this:
Is it cold there?
Yes, it's cold here.
It's been cold here too.
How cold is it?
Well last night it was only forty.
Above?

[David Shleifer]

An expensive but warm option is a pellet stove. It warms the room up quick and the pellets aren't that expensive. It does have to be vented outside though. Out bedroom is cinder block and exposed on five sides (it is above an unheated garage). A 50K BTU kerosene heater takes an hour to heat the room up. The pellet stove does great. It will take two or three years to pay itself off, but that has more to do with the cost of heating our room than anything else. One word of caution. A woodstove would be cheaper to run, but takes longer than a pellet stove to heat up. On the other hand, it makes disposing of waste wood easy.

[Chip Lindley]

Um...cars and trucks started on Zero mornings for eons before serpentine belts were invented. I would say your woodworking machines will not suffer too much if you use them in the 30ish degree environment of your garage. My garage is attached, BUTT cold! I have never had a belt failure. Lumpy going until everything warms up perhaps, but no breakage!!