What do you use to cool off your workshop ?

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Nickfff

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Hello, I live in Arizona and my garage is too hot to turn pens. i.e. 110 degrees. I know AZ is in extreme heat but thought this topic could help others since most of the nation is in a heatwave. What do you use to cool off a garage? Has anyone found an a/c unit that works in a garage? Has anyone found any luck with insulating a garage? I have tried a evap cooler and it works somewhat. I have also tried a mobile a/c unit vented out my window and that did not work at all.

Any thoughts?

Has anyone found a reliable approach to this?

Thanks,
Nick
 
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When it gets hot here I try to do my shop work earlier in the morning while the heat is still bearable. I don't even bother going into the garage in the afternoon.
 
Our garage is connected to the house. It has finished, insulated walls. A couple years ago, we upgraded the central air in our house and extended the ductwork to include the garage.

I have no reason to believe that a separated garage couldn't be insulated and cooled with an AC unit. It would be kinda spendy, but considering how much use an active shop gets, the price could certainly be rationalized.
 
I have a 10x20 wood building workshop in Kansas. The first thing I did was insulate the celing then make sure all the windows close and seal well and place a 1800 btu air conditioner in one of those windows. The second thing is as Bruce said I start work earlier than normal. Besides as my son that lived in Arizona told me "its a dry heat" out there :D
 
12 by 32 metal building Partial insulation, with a 8,000 btu window mount AC, It's not near enough, 90 deg. out side 95 degrees inside except right next to the AC.
 
Originally posted by Nickfff

Hello, I live in Arizona and my garage is too hot to turn pens. i.e. 110 degrees. I know AZ is in extreme heat but thought this topic could help others since most of the nation is in a heatwave. What do you use to cool off a garage? Has anyone found an a/c unit that works in a garage? Has anyone found any luck with insulating a garage? I have tried a evap cooler and it works somewhat. I have also tried a mobile a/c unit vented out my window and that did not work at all.

Any thoughts?

Has anyone found a reliable approach to this?

Thanks,
Nick
Click to expand...


WINTER
 
Originally posted by cigarman

I have a 10x20 wood building workshop in Kansas. The first thing I did was insulate the celing then make sure all the windows close and seal well and place a 1800 btu air conditioner in one of those windows. The second thing is as Bruce said I start work earlier than normal. Besides as my son that lived in Arizona told me "its a dry heat" out there :D
Click to expand...

So is an oven. :D
 
12x24 stand alone metal shop with a 18,000 btu A/c 95 degrees out side 85 inside not to bad, and as Gentleben said once air conditioned no longer a shop, I tell all my customers that my pens are designed and made in my studio.
 
Started out 24x40 but divided off 8 ft for a storeroom for LOML. Stuccoed, insulated, & OSB interior walls with partially vaulted ceiling [also insulated] w/ 4 skylights, [commode & sink also]. Fiberglass 6500 swamp cooler on outside East wall at end of shop. Hot days outside, nice & cool inside with the overhead door down propped up on a gallon can. Didn't plan it this way but the air blows across the shop & toward the door on my back while I'm on the lathe. Blows shavings & sawdust away from me. One thing missing....a nice couch for those occasional nap times away from the noise of a TV, & police scanner that's on all day.
 
I just had my work crew put a attic exhaust fan on the wall of my "studio" to help control the Florida heat and more importantly exhaust the smell of my casting chemicals. I have a 2400btu R-2 unit portible air conditioner, on the other end of the room. That attic fan is very quiet, and it certainly does exhaust the air. In fact the Hunter ceiling fan makes more noise than the attic fan.
 
Ken--I'll bet if you finished the insulating, it'd make one heck of a diff. You might consider styrofoam, it comes in different thichness & can be cut with a handsaw. Those metal buildings can be darn near impossible to cool & heat. My old shop was one but here, a cooler took care of it fair.
 
We built the house five years ago and the shop is behind the third car stall - a 14 X 28 room. The builders advised us not to connect a return to the AC in the house - but they did put a vent TO the shop. Not enough cool air - so I put in a window unit from Walmart. It keeps it reasonably cool when the temp gets to 90 + outside I can keep it at about 78 without a lot of trouble.

Best,
RG
 
While I enjoyed Doug's answer, I thought I would chime in with some of what we do.

First and foremost is a well insulated garage. Two of our walls are against the house, one wall is an outside wall and then there is the garage door. All of the walls are fully insulated and then drywalled. Our garage door is one of those aluminum ones. We went to Lowes and bought some of the blue styrofoam and cut it to fit in the panels of the door. You would be amazed at the difference this makes and it also helps to cut down on the noise which our neighbors appreciate at 2 in the morning. When it gets hot we have an industrial oscillating fan the we put in front of the door leading to the house to suck the cool air from the house into the garage. This really does make a world of difference. Generally on hot days, mid 90's, the garage will be 80.

Mike & Linda
 
Hi Nick,

I am a fellow Arizonan (Surprise) and have been pondering this question as well. Although, I would be willing to bet that afternoon temperatures are above 120 degrees in my garage. The portable units that I have looked at are not powerful enough to cool a 2-car garage. 2 units would work, but the portable units seem to be more expensive ($ per btu) than window units. Plus, the portable units still need to be near a window or other vent to the outside in order to work properly.

I was in Sams Club today and they had a 26,000 btu window A/C unit for about $450. Their literature said it would cool 1400-1800 sf. My problem is I don't have a window in the garage, so I would have to cut a hole in the wall to install it. The only wall I can put it in is on the opposite side of a 3 car garage from where I do my turning. I guess I have to think about it some more.

Let us know what you decide to do.

Ray
 
I use an evaporative cooler, other wise known as a swamp cooler. Works OK in lower humidity, but not well over 30 or 40 percent. Have no insulation in the shop so air conditioning is out of the question.
 
I have one of these units, and it has a few challenges. If you're just pulling it up next to you, it helps. If you're trying to cool your entire garage, it's efficiency drops after it runs for a short while. This is as a result of it's design, compared to window units. With a window unit, you're recycling the air in the garage, so assuming you have a 10 degree differential in cooling (intake from the room 90 degrees, output 80 degrees), as time goes by with a window unit in operation you have a cumulative cooling effect- when the room gets down to 80, output would be 70, when it gets to 75, output would be 65, etc. Also, with a window unit, the heat extracted from the garage is transferred to the outside coil, where external air passes over the fins to remove the heat. You've basically seperated the heat exchange into two segregated cycles. With the stand alone, you have a single intake that serves both the cooling and the heat exhaust cycles, with all of that being pulled from the garage. If you're venting out a window using the kit provided, you build up negative pressure. You're pushing a volume of air out the window, and at some point you've got to be sucking an equal amount of air back into the room- normally from outside, through gaps and poor insulation. So unlike the window unit with a closed cycle of air on the cooling side where you get cumulative gain, with the stand alone you're having to pull in the hot air from outside to offset the negative pressure and stuck with a limited cooling capacity- if 15 degrees, say, is your cooling differential, and you're pulling in 105 degrees from outside, 90 is as good as it would get. If you're just looking to get a little cool air blowing on you while you're working, pulling this unit up next to you can help quite a bit. But it's not an effective alternative to a window unit if you're trying to cool your entire garage.
Originally posted by Monty

How about a portable AC unit something like this?
http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=productDetail&productId=112247-80003-PAC A110&lpage=none
Click to expand...
 
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