My dream home workshop: construction is underway

I've just come inside for a rest after spending the day with the sparkie dragging cable. There's now 400 meters of power cable roughed in, and I've just started dragging the cat 6. I'll be heading back out there in a minute to get as much of it roughed in tonight as possible.

@graynomad: built-in benches around 2 walls. There'll also be a heavy workbench on locking casters for mechanical work. I have a rough floorplan drawn up but I'll try to do a neater one and post it here.

By the way, you do live in a house: just not one with a fixed address! Or maybe it's just that your stumps are made of rubber and they rotate. That truck of yours is bigger than some houses I've seen.

built-in benches around 2 walls

The reason I asked is that I had something similar years ago and I drilled 2" holes in the bench (as close to the back as possible) at regular intervals because no matter what combination you think of now there will always be a reason to run one more cable from top to bottom or vv.

Admitedly with that many sockets it's hard to imagine that would happen, but just a thought.

Or maybe it's just that your stumps are made of rubber and they rotate.

He he, they haven't done much rotating lately, we've been camped in the same spot just outside Perth for two months. We'll have to move soon though because I'm meeting up with some photographers to photograph Karijini Nat Park in May. Although I did spot a good EE job just yesterday, just up the road from where we are. I almost applied but had a lie down until the feeling passed.

That truck of yours is bigger than some houses I've seen.

We had a builder from Sydney come down to check the truck out a few years ago. He was building "studio apartments" or something, they where 27sqm in size and he wanted to see how we packed everything (including a double garage) into 25sqm.


Rob

Admitedly with that many sockets it's hard to imagine that would happen, but just a thought.

Might want to run a video cable up or something...

@graynomad: Regarding the number of outlets on a circuit, I was a bit worried about that too so I had a good chat to the sparkie about it. He said the regs previously had a hard limit on the number of sockets per circuit, but that it's now been relaxed to allow a higher number at the judgement of the electrician. In this case I'm likely to have a lot of low-power devices plugged in so we came to the conclusion that it would be OK to have a higher than average number of sockets per circuit. For example, a typical workstation may have a few things plugged in at once:

  • Laptop
  • Soldering iron
  • Cellphone charger
  • VoIP phone
  • Scope
  • Logic analyser
  • Small bench power supply
  • Desk lamp
  • A plugpack or two

That's 9 or 10 devices, but none of them are real poweraholics so the total current draw would be fairly modest. In any case we still split them up in reasonable numbers so there are a bunch of separate circuits cabled back to the distribution panel.

I did something similar but I was retro fitting an existing basement and only had one circuit to add sockets to. I did the work myself and reasoned the same as you, but every now and then in winter I'd forget and switch on a 2400w heater :slight_smile:

Still as long as you have appropriate breakers it doesn't really matter.


Rob

I would also add (perhaps per workstation - though the walls will be getting pretty full): compressed air and natural gas (might as well have the capability for chemical lab work, as well as light metal soldering and glass blowing).

Looks great - and I'm pretty envious (two things I wish I had - more space, and air conditioning).

:slight_smile:

Oh - one more thing: Add one or two circuits for dedicated arc welding use (maybe on the outside of the shop).

@cr0sh: A couple of people mentioned compressed air in the original "ideas" thread, but it's one of those things that I haven't got around to organising and I'm not totally convinced I'd get a lot of benefit from it. It's not too late, but I figure that I can run a hose around under the bench if I find it would be useful once the walls are closed up.

The welder circuit idea is something I arranged with the sparkie yesterday. I wouldn't run a welder in what I've been referring to as the "workshop" area, which will be a clean area for smaller work (more like a cross between an office and an electronics lab) but I want to get one soon and use it in the "dirty" workshop area at the back of the garage, so we made sure there were three separate power circuits cabled to the garage area.

Imo maybe one compressed air station with a couple outputs...

Probably not - but having it handy at each workstation just for blowing out dust from stuff would be useful, IMHO. Something else that might be handy would be a vacuum line. Both could be useful for bench-testing pneumatics or other such devices. You don't get many chances to make the perfect "mad-scientist" lab...though it sounds like you are getting close!

:slight_smile:

I have a small 110 VAC "buzzbox" that I can use inside my shop if necessary, though the majority of time I use it outside. I would love to get a 220 VAC AC/DC welder, but I don't have any circuit to plug it into except maybe the dryer circuit (if I made a converter cable box). One of these days I have in mind to have an extra 220 circuit run to my garage (probably if/when I have A/C run to my shop). My shop's so small that at times I have to do "dirty" stuff in it, though I mostly use it for cleaner electronics and fabrication work (my office is inside my house).

cr0sh:

[quote author=Jonathan Oxer link=topic=53102.msg380907#msg380907 date=1298496234]@cr0sh: A couple of people mentioned compressed air in the original "ideas" thread, but it's one of those things that I haven't got around to organising and I'm not totally convinced I'd get a lot of benefit from it. It's not too late, but I figure that I can run a hose around under the bench if I find it would be useful once the walls are closed up.

Probably not - but having it handy at each workstation just for blowing out dust from stuff would be useful, IMHO. Something else that might be handy would be a vacuum line. Both could be useful for bench-testing pneumatics or other such devices. You don't get many chances to make the perfect "mad-scientist" lab...though it sounds like you are getting close!

:slight_smile:

I have a small 110 VAC "buzzbox" that I can use inside my shop if necessary, though the majority of time I use it outside. I would love to get a 220 VAC AC/DC welder, but I don't have any circuit to plug it into except maybe the dryer circuit (if I made a converter cable box). One of these days I have in mind to have an extra 220 circuit run to my garage (probably if/when I have A/C run to my shop). My shop's so small that at times I have to do "dirty" stuff in it, though I mostly use it for cleaner electronics and fabrication work (my office is inside my house).
[/quote]

Oh, I see your point, I was thinking of only for pneumatics, another idea would be a overhead rail thing (though in home workshop the ceilings will be pretty low for this)

There's been a lot of work done over the last couple of weeks, but it's mostly major structural stuff that's probably not all that interesting for Arduino people. It's getting close to the good stuff now though.

The electrical roughing-in has been done, and the workshop / garage now contains about 400m of power / lighting cable and 600m of data cable. Because the house is being automated (using a lot of Arduino bits embedded around the place) the cabling has all been brought back to a central wiring cabinet. Typically electrical wiring is done by running power to a light switch in the wall, and from there to the light fitting. I've had all the light fittings etc wired directly back to the cabinet so they can be connected to automation control modules. Anywhere that a light switch would be mounted on the wall has Cat-5 cable running to it where there will be a control surface, perhaps an Arduino-powered physical switch (like the one I did in the bathroom: http://jon.oxer.com.au/blog/id/307) or perhaps something like an Android tablet fitted into the wall.

The wiring cabinet currently looks like this:

As you can see it has a back fitted to it (floor sheeting) to give it a strong surface for mounting a couple of switchboards and a small rack cabinet. It's located on the centerline of the house with easy access both top and bottom so cabling can run in from either direction. Inside the ceiling I've mounted 19mm floor sheeting with carpet tiles on it so that crawling around dragging cable is actually quite comfortable.

There are 35 Cat-6 drops (the big grey bundle) and 15 Cat-5e drops (yellow) in that picture. I'm using Cat-6 for wall mounted network jacks that computers will plug into, and Cat-5e for fixed automation devices mounted in the building such as Freetronics "Eleven" boards (Eleven (100% Arduino Uno Compatible) | Freetronics) inside the ceiling space with temp / humidity sensors, IP cameras, security sensors, etc. The single blue Cat-5e you can see is to connect to an electric curtain controller from Elegine (http://www.elegine.com) with a TCP/IP interface so I'll be able to use Arduino-based sensors to control the curtains. There will be about another 8 of those going in over the next couple of weeks.

This weekend I stuffed the ceiling insulation in place ready for plasterboard ("drywall" for you yanks) so tomorrow will be a big day. It'll suddenly go from an exposed frame to feeling like a nearly-completed room:

A previous update showed a regular frame over the double door. I've since knocked out the studs over the door and replaced them with floor sheeting mounted flush with the close side of the frame. I'm intending to mount a pair of 22" LCDs over the door facing into the workshop / office area, recessed into the wall so the faces are close to flush with the plasterboard on the office side.

The workstations have been cabled up using almost the plan I posted previously:

Two sets of 4-way outlets over the bench, one set below. One double-outlet LAN plate over the bench, one below. If you compare reality with my original plan you'll see there's a blank space where I intended to put in ducted-vacuum fittings for fume extraction. I'll still do that, but not in the wall. It turned out to be a pain to put the fittings through the wall so I'm going to mount the vac fitting on the bench surface itself, with the pipes running along under the bench tight up underneath.

Jon

More structural work has been done so time for another quick update. All the walls had insulation batts put in them a few days ago, so the corner for the computer desk looked like this:

The plasterers then hung sheets and began stopping off the joints. About 2 hours later that same corner looked like this:

Since then they've come back again and finished stopping off and all the joints are perfectly smooth. Paint soon!

Standing right where my main workbench will be under the window, this is the view out into the back yard where you can see the start of construction of the glass conservatory and a great view out to the hills in the distance.

To give some overall perspective, this is looking from the front of the new garage through to the workshop at the back. You can also see the cabling closet on the left with all the network and power cable bundled up waiting to be terminated.

All the internal walls have been insulated too, mainly for soundproofing. I want to be able to fire up a Dremel or other noisy tools at 2am without worrying about the neighbors slapping a Noise Abatement Notice on me!

Since that last photo the double doors have been hung, and architrave and skirting fitted. The cornice goes in early next week, then a floating timber floor in the office / workshop area (I should just start calling it "The Lab") followed by fittings such as benches, shelving, and cupboards.

Can I ask how much it's costing?
Or would you rather not divulge that information? :wink:

It's coming along really nicely - I know where to go for my holidays now :smiley:

Lack of updates on this recently - how's it going? :slight_smile:

Strange. Australia should be in winter right now, am I right? Why all the green? :roll_eyes:

I envy you Jonathan! All I have is a desk and one cabinet full of stuff. I love working after hours in my department. We have huge storage room loaded with equipment and parts. Some faculty must have built tons of teaching equipment in their days and some of those are still there in working condition. Nowadays people just pick stuff off catalogs.

This is really looking great - should be fun when it's done!

My wife and I just recently had our house repainted; prior to that I ended up installing a window A/C unit on one of my shop doors (I have a double door entrance). In the process of installing that (it involved cutting a 19" x 23" hole in the door), I found that the original paint on the door was done crappy and peeled off easily. Anyhow, the painter painted the doors, but didn't fix any of the issues in the area I worked on (wasn't really specified in the contract), so I ended up last weekend installing a "frame" around the hole, then repainting the area. I changed out the shelf the A/C unit sat on to use L-channel alluminum, then painted it to match the door. It turned out well; I just run an extension cord from the A/C to a circuit on the porch that supplies current to a couple of outlets that used to have ceiling fans hooked up (we ended up removing them for the painting - we need to get new ones). In the winter I can remove the A/C unit for storage, and replace the cutout piece from the door. Its going to make my shop much more comfortable this summer...

I can't wait to see what Jonathan's shop looks like when its completed, though!

Looking at this earlier: http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/

Giving me some ideas for if I get to do something similar one day :slight_smile:

officially jealous<<

I think I'm a lot more like most.. a makeshift desk covered with parts, papers, soda cans and junk food wrappers.. taking over the kitchen table from time to time, much to the chagrin of Mrs. Focalist.. and if you haven't daisy-chained something like five power strips and a string of Christmas lights to run your corner of madness, you aren't doing it right...

Speaking of which, it might be good to consider a fire supression system, considering your investment. Halon systems work great but can also kill you if you don't make it out before you inhale...

Sorry about the lack of updates. Life has been rather crazy recently, and my entire family is now living in the new workshop!

The workshop is just one small part of the renovations we're doing and we're at a stage where the rest of the house is uninhabitable, so we got the workshop to the point of being usable (painted, doors hung, floor laid, toilet / sink plumbed, lights and power operational) and moved in. Right now it has a King-size bed, two single beds, and a 3-piece lounge suite in it, and it still feels spacious.

The bathroom in the main house is still usable and we can use the kitchen, but it's a mess. All the bedrooms have had plaster ("drywall" in US-speak) hung but the joints haven't been stopped off, and the kitchen ceiling was replaced last week. The whole house is full of plaster dust, timber offcuts, tools, and general mess.

So no progress has been made in terms of fitting out the workshop since we moved into it, but hopefully in a couple more weeks we'll be able to move back into the house and I'll be able to reclaim the workshop for the purpose for which it was intended.

Jon

Heh great to hear we haven't quite lost you there then :slight_smile:

Looking forward to hearing more updates when it's done then.