Looking pretty good. There's one tool missing that you'll never use but when you need it, it is the most important tool you will ever own by far. That's a fire extinguisher. You're mixing woodworking and welding in the same small space and have your living quarters directly above that. I would highly recommend you make the small investment and mount that bad boy somewhere obvious and close to the entrance of the workshop.
@@schwuzi Agreed, 1 is likely enough, but they run out quick, get 2 and put them on each side of the room. I wonder if you can get one of those fire bomb things where you can throw it in an area and it basically explodes this fire retardent powder :D
The previous owner of my house did this. I moved in thinking I had a sweet basement workshop, but within weeks found that it was constantly damp and later that it flooded several times a year. Same deal as yours - Rock formations that flow spring water. It took years of work to discover and solve all the leaks. I've bailed out thousands of litres of filthy groundwater several times. I had to do full perimeter drainage, concrete retaining walls and a vapour barrier. In the meantime all my machines have suffered surface rust, damaged bearings and other humidity related problems. One of my guitars basically self destructed from warping so much that it ripped the glue joints apart. Unless you get a reliable 50% humidity under there you'll regret it before long.
Also owning an "underground bunker" style workshop I found that painting the walls and ceiling white made a huge difference to the light levels; as bare brickwork and timber tends to absorb a lot of your light.
Hey Michael. I’ve never really commented before, much because you always provide insight and an oppurtunity learn. But this time I feel like I can somehow contribute. Firstly, when you are digging in soil like ground, you will need to compress the loose bits. Your efforts in leveling the floor with gravel and sand will help, but not eradicate the issue you will have with uncompressed ground. This might also affect your trench, and will eventually mess with your floor to the point that it gets annoying. Like a lot of other commenters said, with a moisture on those levels this will for sure eat up all your tools - especially your electronics. This will be costly. A dehumidifier works better than leaving it as it was, but the best thing is always proper ventilation of the area.I suspect the dehumidifier will work overtime trying to cope with a well underneath it, and i would definitely try to install both a inlet and outlet fan. I would strongly advise to use money on a contractor to look at the room, to figure out how you could use plastic and concrete to separate yourself from the ground moisture as well as building walls to separate this room from the rest of the cellar. It is vital that you still let the airflow from the rest of the cellar flow as was intended, or for it to be redirected elsewhere whilst at the same time ensuring adjacent rooms to have their needed ventilation. It is also important to know that a woodshop in a humid area like this, with flooring like this and loads of moisture can quickly turn into mold. This will be bad for you, and you might not even know it is there. Vacuuming the cracks both takes time away from what valuable projects you should be working on, but also leaves the possibility of you forgetting larger amounts of wood to the elements. Water specifically. Water and wood is not a great combination. My last keynote are ground gasses like radon etc… Before you start using this room over longer periods you should check this out. Again, this issue can be helped by properly ventilating the area with mechanical ventilation. But, the best thing is for sure to make this a proper enclosure using proper construction techniques and products specifically made for the purpose of sealing you away from them.
I have a basement workshop with two good sized dehumidifiers set at 60% and both automatically drained. Before that, I found I would get gradual corrosion on hand tools and cast iron surfaces.
I had something similar to your setup once I eventually gave up. 10% of the time I used it for projects the other 90% was fighting rust. Even nuts and bolts in bins would get tiny specs of rust on them. Eventually had to move everything into the garage, in the process of building a conditioned building out back. Hopefully you have better luck than I did!
Be very careful with the fume extraction. When sparks are sucked in, the dust in the system can catch fire very quickly. And flowing dust can even explode!
Good start, but you will have eternal humidity issues as well as the potential for ground gas exchange (i.e. radon if you have it there). A friend of mine does basement drainage for a living and recently I worked with him on a very similar issue to yours. The proper way to go about this is to do the gravel base as you did, but use deeper trenches and install weeping tile in the drainage trenches to bring the water to a sump, preferably external if possible. Then you need to cover the gravel over with properly sealed and taped 6 mil poly vapour barrier as a minimum, rather than the weed cloth which is permeable. If there is external soil pressure on the foundation (it appears not, foundation is mostly above ground?) then you also need to pour an internal step footing to bear the side load that the removed soil is no longer supporting. Also if the walls are underground at all you need to install dimple membrane tucked under the vapour barrier to allow leakage water to run down the walls and into the drainage trench. Finally you should pour at least a thin "rat slab" of concrete with rebar in it to protect the vapour barrier and tie everything together, and you can then pour pads of self-leveling grout on top for your equipment or do a thick pour and screed it level (or hire it done as concrete is a lot of work especially for those inexperienced with it). However the builders should not have left your house with such a high level of moisture in the basement, all that water should be already intercepted by perimeter drains! We just bought a house in a high water table area for my wife and we were VERY particular that perimeter drains, membrane and vapour barrier were properly done with no potential for leakage. I would not have bought a house with a basement like this as the potential for future issues is high, at least here in Canada. Hopefully things work out but I would have a professional or at least a professional friend look at this basement before you do anything else!
It isn't really a basement though. Basements are really rare to find in Australia in anything built in the past 75+ years. It is basically just a open area under the house due to the house being built on a slope and they generally have pretty good ventilation. You will find these areas either with the brick veneer like TT's or it may just be completely open or even have some sort of wire mesh instead of brick to keep out vermin/pets/kids from going under the house.
So many woodworkers do not appreciate the pressure drop of various fittings. A "T" fitting has the worst pressure drop by far. I replaced by "T" fittings with "Y". I replaced my short radius 90 deg elbows with long radius elbows. I then felt a big increase in suction at the gates. I recommend avoiding "T" fitting if possible. Dave.
Y fittings wouldn’t be too great either as you don’t have a straight through. Since in this case the air only needs to go one way a better type of fitting would be a mix of a straight pipe and an elbow. Not sure if you can buy any like that but also might not be too difficult to make out of two pipes.
A nice vapor barrier along the one side - like a sheet of 6 mil plastic- would work nicely to make the dehumidifier's job easier. You could use clearer plastic if you wanted it to keep the visual openness too.
Congrats on the workshop, Michael! Thanks for sharing. The most obvious thing (to me) that you didn't mention is your welding area: Grinder sparks & weld spatter are not going to treat your dust collection bags/house-fire-starter very kindly! I'd want a fire extinguisher near the welding area and another near the door.
Have you considered just excavating the entire room and just pour some concrete for a decent floor? You'd get a much bigger room and a decent environment for your tools. As it stands rust is going to be a huge issue, unless you constantly oil all bare surfaces.
And if you do that, first seal the floor. Concrete is water permeable if the bottom is wet, and he top will be too. Either get a professional, or diy. Look for the term “encapsulated crawl space”. Humidity levels that high will lead to mold. Using an electric dehumidifier is 40-250 times more cost effective than to damp-rid and similar chemicals that form gels. Below 50% humidity dust mites die. Lower than 40% humidity is bad for humans. If you diy, you can get a “froth pack” of spray foam. 200 usd pack makes around 200 board feet of spray foam. Often you see: Ground Wet gravel Dry gravel Spray foam Concrete. Make sure to walk the spray foam up the sides of your walls to give you a continuous barrier.
We actually have a very similar water management system under our 13C barn conversion (stable conversion), although there is no space under the floor for a workshop there is channels to pass water through. My house used to be a Stable on a farm with a field above it, the water run off heads to us and overflows under the house through the car port and under the farm yard to the pond in the farm house garden, the pond then overflows down to the next farm and through 5 settlement ponds to the river....the river is about 600ft below us and the water is crystal clear so the farm pumps it back up to a mini reservoir in the field above me and that supplies our house with our water supply.
You could always use some outdoor carpet to lay on top of the fast floor to help with keeping things out of the bottom, would make cleanup still pretty easy, it's like vacuuming a carpet. :) Best of all, if you need to get to the foundation of your fast floor, you can just simply roll up the outdoor carpet.
I'm not going to drag through all the comments to see if this is a duplicate, but congrats! Everyone who's got a walkable crawlspace under the house has dreamed of doing this. My suggestion for improvement is to make use of the space between the rafters, or floor joists, or whatever they're called down under. You can make up all sorts of storage solutions to fit between the overhead supports that would be 16 imperial inches on center here in the States. Simple strapping across 2 adjacent and you have a place to store linear material from lumber to piping to trim. 2 hinge points and you have a cabinet that folds down; 4 hinge points and you have a place to put arms that swing down parallelogram-style to present some flat surface as needed. My basement is 6'2" to my 6' so I have a lot of stuff tucked away overhead.
I saw the thumbnail and immediately thought of Colin Furze... i'm happy to hear that it was an intentional reference in the first few seconds of your video! Cool video :)
I really enjoy transformative projects like this. Congratulations on all that you have accomplished! Consider a dehumidifier designed for crawlspaces as that is essentially what you have. You can improve lighting by mounting your ceiling lights to white rectangles roughly the same size as the benches beneath. These could be painted wood, plastic, or maybe even skirting instead. It will be less harsh than reflectors. With humidity that high you'll also want to look at treating the wood above you. Humidity over 55%-60% will propagate mold, which isn't helpful for anything you're doing. Thanks so much for sharing and great job so far!
I'm glad you mentioned desiccant and dehumidifiers at the end. I was going to suggest that. You can get reusable desiccant and fill little mesh baggies with it and put one in each tool drawer/bin. I use mesh pencil bags or organza bags to portion them out.
Yes, I have seen the same thing. I drill a row of 25mm+ holes in bottom shelves to ventilate floor side to the room side air. That helps a little. Also, paint them with Kilz anti-fungal paint to seal the surfaces.
As someone who grew up on an aging sandstone ridge in Sydney's south, we also had a number of fresh water springs and general seepage through the stone bedrock. Regular rust prevention and good airflow will help prevent oxidisation of unpainted surfaces. I would suggest some time in the future to get a licensed builder in to install some RSJ's to replace the pillars. Then excavate the rest,wall it, drain it appropriately and pour a slab. You seriously won't regret it. But in the mean time you've figured out some great solutions! (But get some airflow happening definitely..)
When I saw the thumbnail, I got worried about digging under the house. -But I see that you're not really digging, just removing what's on the ground. Still ... be very careful, because the walls look like they support the house and if you remove material near the walls, they might sink and the house will sink. It's best to reinforce (downward) in small sections at a time, making sure to have foundation for the brick wall. The brick wall might already have all the foundation it needs; please just make sure... Other concerns ... The moisture will not go away; I believe it needs a better solution in the long run. I'm not only thinking "rust", but also mold (wood, cardboard, paper and the like). If you're going to run a dehumidifier, I recommend running it on solar panels or your RUclips income might not be able to break even with the electricity bill ... Like Marcel HH mentioned: Dust extraction and ESD can spark fires. ESD from dust extraction can also kill your electronics gadgets. ;) -Make sure you don't have anything flammable in there either. Last thing that came to my mind ... you really want a floor without holes in it. 😉 If you happen to come across a click-floor, that could be a temporary solution. Regarding floor, I'd really go for a concrete solution, but you might not be ready for it yet. All that said, it's always nice to get more space and I'm happy that you can spread your wings! 😄
@@kihestad 😄- I've seen someone - who really knew what he was doing; he worked with reinforcing buildings every day - even though he reinforced this old house, the house cracked where he dug. Those bricks are heavy - the roof as well (not to mention all the things in the house). Cracking didn't happen in one go; it was a slow process that took more than a week. Fortunately this house wasn't damaged any further. He did use equipment for measuring pressure and giving proper upwards counter-pressure while digging, but things can go wrong even for the experts.
@@68HC060 I can absolutely believe that. Having constantly running water in the ground is also a big concern if you ask me. As you say: not just to get rid of the humidity, but even more important: to prevent unhealthy mold. The whole basement really needs a sealed concrete floor with vapor and moisture barrier underneath. For this to work the water now running on top of the ground must be managed, i guess a drainage ditch around house would have been the permanent solution. A tricky task when this is not done before the house was built 😳🤔 but not impossible ☺️
@@kihestad I absolutely agree. Hmm, changing the dehumidifier to a pump might save a lot of money. 😆🤣 -I wonder if the water could be "piped" instead; it's not really a good solution though; the walls would be wet near the floor.
Great project 👍 I would Isolate the "roof" to make a more constant temperature at that place, and Make a more constant humidity in the basement. Interesting as always 👍🙂
Imagine the rust in that room. Everything is going to rust so quickly. Also be very careful mixing the dust extractors with the welder. Sounds like a bomb about to go off. Air, wood and igniting should like a fun time especially under your house.
A moisture barrier is a must, I’dve installed some of that plastic slot channeling with grating on top at floor level around the whole perimeter of the workshop to catch water before it entered the area at all rather than letting it flow underneath, then piped it out into a drain. Cover that over with the plastic and your flooring then. Then put in a set of supports and a false wall to block the rest of the unused space off from the workshop itself, that would prevent any moisture in the air from entering the space too. And to help prevent the issues with the floor being easy to drop things through, add a top layer of hybrid vinyl floor planks over the existing flooring. You can buy ones that click together for practically nothing, (AU$20-$30 a sqm if you look online) and they don’t require adhesives, they just sit atop existing floor structures, they’re water resistant and are easy to assemble and care for. The existing flooring will help with airflow, and prevent moisture issues, as well as giving you a decent foundation for the new stuff. I really think your biggest concern is getting the space square and sealed, if you do that, it’ll make moisture management and safety easier to pull off.
Love this man cave! How is ventilation down there? Good ventilation is essential in damp and wet areas and will help reduce moisture in the air. Natural ventilation is good with ducts down on one wall(s) and up on the opposite wall(s), or you could install a bathroom fan or 2 to make forced ventilation if needed, preferably combined with some heating. I'm amazed how quickly moisture can ruin tools, so you will need to combat it. Also, I would consider putting some wooden flooring on top of the plastic flooring to prevent dust buildup, important parts disappear down there as you mentioned, and reducing the moisture even more. Just make sure to first put on a layer or 2 of plastic foil to prevent moisture ruining the wooden floor. If you lay foil on top of the gravel in the rest of the room and connect everything to make a damp barrier you will get all the water running beneath the plastic and then you will get a dry room when combined with ventilation and some heating.
There have been many good ideas listed below. It really depends on how much work you want to put into the place. You could use a waterproof coating on the walls. A shower drain membrane on to of your floor would be durable, act as a vapor barrier, be easier to clean, and prevent you from loosing small parts down the cracks. As mentioned by others, ventilation will make a big difference. For that level of moisture, you may consider a house dehumidifier rather than a portable one.
Excellent. had a similar shop in a basement in our old house, and was going to expand under the house where we had 7-9 ft of head room. Sadly, we sold it and moved but I left the built in benches and electrical expansion. Hope the new owner enjoyed it. Now I am looking to retrofit a garage or even a Home Depot 2 story shed.
Looking real good. Hopefully you can keep the humidity in check to a reasonable level. You might end up having 2 dehumidifiers about a 3rd of the way in from each end
Anytime you're mixing dust and hot work (ie welding), fire extinguishers, fire detectors, and fire suppressant systems (fire balls, etc.) are going to be your friend. I'd also consider running some copper wire through any ducting which includes plastic sections or joints to ground it all out - this will eliminate the risk of explosion posed by static build-up (your space may not have enough square footage to pose a significant risk of this, but better safe than sorry). Just finished moving our local makerspace to a new location so all this fire safety is still towards the front of my mind lol.
Sorry to be that guy, I only want to support you positively :) I'm finishing up a 4.5m x 3m under house excavation through sandstone, including brick pilon to steel post conversion. It is a dry room for 3d printing in peek/ pek. I also have built a 12m long 2.5m high retaining wall in addition to many other significant renovations. The property is on the bottom of a slope and it also has significant water issues. You've basically done most of the hard work and i want to give you some tips as i have dealt with water issues successfully. You need to concrete the ground to stop the moisture, it will destroy your tools. Dig out as much as you can or is necessary. You need to run a pvc pipe outside of the room to drain the water. Don't have open drains as the space is not ventilated to handle the water/ moisture. Base of the slab, put down geomat everywhere under the house. Run agg lines to a drain, however you see fit. 2 sizes of blue metal 10-25mm about 30-50mm deep the entire underhouse, 2 sizes helps with compaction without affecting drainage. Builders plastic the entire ground including further under the house where there is no slab. Put down some mesh and poor the slab, Done! You will have very little issues with water and you'll be surprised how easy it actually is when you take a deep breath :)
Looking great! If you want to lessen the floors flex add some paving sanding to fill the voids. (It generally clumps & sticks together which would help with movement but still allow drainage) I personally would have got some black/grey shadecloth and used some spray adhesive to attach it to the plastic flooring just to give a more "indoor" finished type look...just an idea i would have done that may appeal to you 🤷♂️
Humidity is also high in here. I always buy good hand tools. After I use them I always put Spray Grease oil on them. As they do for the house, maybe it's better to make a room inside room. One more thing is 24h air ventilation. That will reduce it. Also, for your cnc, put some spray grease oil on each axises long rods. Good luck man.
As others mention, the damp will corrode your machine tools. Adequate ventilation of this space will be crucial. You may find that you cannot properly ventilate it naturally and may have to mechanically ventilate it. Making this type of space habitable is a huge undertaking. Read about how basements are retro-built under houses. It mostly involves excavating, piling and casting a concrete bin around the walls and floor with an integral membrane and a sump somewhere in the floor to collect water. This sump needs a pump, running, as and when, under control, to remove the water. I'd ask you if the space smelled damp before you started. If it did, I wouldn't have tried to reclaim it. I wish you the best of luck.
A couple ideas for you - - Look into french cleat locks. It's relatively easy to pull something down by accident, and if it's one of those small parts racks you're going to be pulling up the floor soon enough. Locks to prevent accidental release are easily made/printed.. - Easy method of finding small parts that fall through your floor - stick a nylon stocking over the end of your vacuum nozzle and suck it up. - Covering the slotted floor with puzzle-edge anti-fatigue mats would also help here, and they're generally pretty cheap.
I think you'll eventually need to "encapsulate" the area so things don't rust up real bad. You're close to being incapsulated now so it's not too much more.
Fascinating Video, you truly made the most out of the Space you got down there. Maybe in the future we get a second part where the Space is completely finished.
I put down old carpet off cuts or the office carpet tiles to help with keeping your feet warmer and stopping screws from falling into the gaps of the rubber matting.
I would highly recommend a roll of linoleum for covering over the floor. Its cheap, easy to lay, clean, and especially to replace. would take away the annoyances of those holes but still keep things modular.
I just noticed that the weed matting on the sides and the back wall by the welding table is not flame retardant. Make sure you add a flame retardant curtain or such over the flammable plastic
Have you considered laying down some "protection" layer over the grid, to keep parts from falling through (and not having to disassemble the floor sections)? Those Ikea floor protector have a decent size-to-price ratio, they're rather thick, and have one side with a rugged surface. There's also surfacing you can buy by the metre, like linoleum, pvc flooring, or even short-pile carpet.
I'm glad you found something that works for you. However, I'm concerned for multiple reasons. The first being humidity. I like that you took precautions to combat it and if this set up was going to be temporary I dont think it would be too bad but that humidity over time will absolute destroy your tools and electronics. Second, that space is a major fire hazard. All that water, plus electric is one source. Your welding bench right next to your dust collection is another. I would highly recommend getting multiple fire extinguishers, and it looks like there's quite a few other comments that recommend this as well. If you're dead set on using this space, it would be a good idea to paint everything a bright color such as white. It'll help bounce the light and brighten up the room, plus brighter colors give the illusion of more space. You may also want to get a quote from a contractor to see if a proper workshop can be built, rather than a make shift one. Proper flooring, drainage, electrical, etc.
Creating a new shop is so exciting with all the future possibilities, and you've done a great job. Congrats! I highly recommend using a pedistal mounted oscillating fan to keep constant air movement. Place off to the side, turn it on low, and leave it on 24/7. It is inexpensive to run, and will reduce mold, condensation, and spider webs.
Ventilation will be your key for keeping humidity down. That's not too challenging hopefully! I also use an old offcuts of carpet in my workshop. Low pile cheapy stuff. But it makes life nicer, easier, warmer, quieter and I can easily find screws I drop. Good luck!
If you want a higher powered dehumidifier use a smaller window unit ac mounted on a standing frame with a hole CAREFULLY drilled in the bottom of the unit and piped into a sealed 5 gallon bucket (or even outside). If you want to use the ac as a window unit later just 3d print a plug for the bottom. It won't cool the space off more actually it might warm it up a little it will use roughly 500 watts (one side heating and the other cooling at the same time). It's basically what a dehumidifier does only on a larger scale and more cost effective. Also if a 500 watt one isn't enough you can upscale to maybe even a 1200 watt. If you build one your equipment WON'T suffer from the humidity.
Ever since I was a kid and we moved into a place with a space under the house like this I always wanted to do something like you did with one when I was older. I find your project really cool and I hope that you can figure out any potential issues you might run into (like run-off with really heavy rainfall). We had a family friend who used his space under his house for storage of computer stuff and general knickknacks but he lost a fair bit of it to a storm which flooded the underhouse area - a simple preventative fix would be to ensure that you don't have anything that cannot get wet sitting on the floor but rather use something like shipping pallets to keep it up a few inches.
A shortcut to getting better flooring is to mix in about 2 inches of your dirt in the back of premixed concrete for every 2 to 6 ft. I don’t know what that is a metric it basically works out 2 to times bigger than the bag of concrete takes up. It will take about 2 inches of dirt play mix concrete down dry do you wanna take a garden rake get level and Get a grass tamp Tamp down really good. Then you can lightly mist it with water enough to get it wet, but not runoff the top layer will harden up to about a half inch of concrete in 24 hours and the rest will turn into concrete from the moisture eventually giving you about 2 to 4 inches of solid flooring. What you’re making is something similar to a product called crush run. It also has a good quick repair for a dirt driveway that has holes to get it and keep it level.
Bear in mind that when the area is first dug open that the flow of water will be more than long after it's not disturbed any more after it's finished as it is and it settles down. As for the floor dust, you can put a surface over the material of the floor that is solid, not a rug which will hold moisture but perhaps some flat sheet material like they put under office chairs which is not too large and removable for cleaning. Also having smaller space is better since hoarding and clutter is not possible without inhibiting & choking the workspace itself, rendering the entire area not usable.
You could have possibly dug down a bit more and used slightly longer legs on the front of your workbenches with the rear legs sitting on the concrete footings, but as long as there is enough headroom, it's probably better to keep the floor even or above the footing. Everybody puts their dust extraction ducting overhead, but I don't see a big reason why it can't go underground. You would have to use stronger pipe and make sure that it is watertight, but it would be interesting to have vacuum, compressed air, and power coming up from the floor. You can always dig further and make the shop wider, but you may need to get an engineer to do some load calcs. The house may be relying partially on the under house slope to hold it in place.
Nice! Was wondering why Michael's previous video had footage that looked like he was in a cave. Because he was, a literal man cave of his own making. Look forward to cave updates. Inspire and teach us to make shoveling great again!
Excellent job, that was a lot of work too. My only suggestion would have been to rent a thing called a tamper, it has a large flat head on that vibrates against the floor and packs it all down to get a nice compact floor surface to build on because over time dirt will shift. The only other thing I would suggest would be to get some indoor/outdoor carpeting to lay down over the floor to cover the slots. Also, I wouldn't even bother vacuuming those holes out in fact, it fill them up
I would like to see a curtained welding cubicle like they have at welding schools to prevent those embers from finding anything flammable. Those little lava balls can fly, bounce, and roll like nobodies' business! I have some Kevlar blankets that I use when I have to weld in close quarters, a fireproof blanket fort. That being said, you have done a lot with a little and it has a lot of great features already.
As you said by the end of your video, humidity can be a really problem for your machinery. Having that dehumifier running 24x7 will be expensive, but probably the safest day, mainly during winter.
Nice work mate! A couple of tips: change the T-Connectors for the dust extraction, to two 45 degrees a bit apart, so the airflow isn´t choked. And take a look at the YT channel "A Glimpse inside", he has a lot of ideas and tips for the French cleat system! Keep the good work going!
I can see cleaning will maybe be a big issue with this floor. It can't be swept easily, so it will have to be vacuumed. Vacuuming will be tedious as the tool on the vac will not be able to seal properly because the floor is full of holes. If you drop organic food waste accidentally in it, it will be a hands and knees scraping and washing job to clean it. I'd make a rule of no food down there. It's a good job you put some sort of membrane down, but I'm not sure which way up for a semipermeable one would be best if it is directional. That flooring is designed to lay outdoors and have adequate drainage under it and deal with the movement of organic material through it from both sides. Good luck with doing it this way.
Fantastic work! I love it! My recommendation is to look into an Oneida Super Dust Deputy! I have designed several dust collection systems in small workshops with them, and you current dust collector. I 3d print some custom fittings, and it’s amazing suction, and easy to unload a blue plastic drum with your sawdust!
Dehumidifier with a drainage hose will help so you do not have to empty it. Mine empties into a floor drain but you may need to add a pump with a float.
I'd put some of those square locking foam pads on top of your floor, they're nice to walk on and if you drop things on them they don't bounce much and they're easy to find. They make them pretty thin also so it won't take much height from your workspace.
Yeah worry would also be about rust with that limestone putting water in there constantly. Steel will rust insanely fast at 80% humidity and iron rusts at 50%. Ideally you are going to want to get the humidity down to 50% if you can but really below 60% is fine. Another thing that can cause rust is the temperature change from day to night as that caused slight condensation on the metal with the temperature change. It might never be enough to look wet but it is enough to rust. You might seriously look at adding a heater to keep the room at a consistent temperature.
Looks great! I have my own workshop in a self build wooden shed in my garden. I had a lot of problems withe the humidity. But now i isolated the roof and walls and made the floor watertight with epdm plastic (used for roofs mostly), and i installed an electric heater with an external thermostate from Ali. Since that i have no more humidty problems. Try to keep the temperature above the dewpoint. (here that is about 12 to 15 degrees i think) Maybe this epdm foil is an option for you too, to close the floor and the wet rock wall? Keep up the good work! Greetings from Holland Timm
Love it. All I have is a crawl space under my house and I've always dreamed about turning into a real basement, but I know it's totally impractical to do since I'd have to dig 3 to 4' just to make it tall enough to stand up in there. Good job on the project - few things better than a good workspace.
I think the humidity control with a dehumidifier will be losing battle , i spent 10 yrs using a workshop dug out under my mum's house that had a dirt floor and if i learned one thing it was if i didn't want something to rust - oil it . I can recommend two products for stopping rust - Lanotec and Mako oil , the first is lanolin based and the latter is fish oil based and i have been using these for a long time to protect my machinery in my 1950's era fibro garage that suffers the worst condensation problems i have ever seen . So bad in fact that each machine has to live under either a waterproof cover or ply cover with its own dedicated microcontroller controlled dehumidifier and a coating of either Lanotec or Mako oil . Under the house condensation won't be such a problem as the temperature will remain fairly constant where as in my case the garage fluctuates greatly , it gets cold quickly at night then heats up quickly when the sun hits the side ( it is north / south oriented ) but the machines have had all night to cool down but take a long time to heat up so condensation forms on them easily . The only other thing that i would be concerned with is the plastic bag on the dust collector being right next to the welding bench as spatter might burn holes in it - a piece of ply or MDF set up as a divider or guard would solve that problem .
How is the rust situation some months later? I built a workshop in a similar environment (in the French Pyrenees) What I did was construct leca block room surrounded by insulation and a vapor barrier on a insulated slab poured over a gravel bed with perforated drainage pipes underneath. It was a big expensive project but works perfectly and is cheap to heat and cool with a mini-split heat-pump. You were lucky to have mostly dirt, I got to spend weeks with a jackhammer to remove cubic meters of solid stone :)
Love the work, that's a dream space! Try using a layer of shade cloth on top of your flooring to help mitigate screw loss! Still porous enough for liquid and sand but will stop you from losing the things you don't want to lose.
Michael - a couple of things: 1. It might be a good idea to look into finding a way to provide some grounding to deal with static build up in you dust extraction system. Loads of dust swirling through a plastic tube might cause a static build up, & that combined with a dust/air mixture could create the potential for unintended consequences. 💣 🔥 2. Given the reputation for your part of the world, have you done anything to mitigate the chances of critter intrusion?
Great video, and great work on turning that space into a workshop, and really good use of space! I'd say try a low speed through the wall fan to move air in or out, that would probably be a way to manage humidity and run more cheaply than the dehumi and silica gel. My half a tiny bedroom workspace has a 120mm 12V computer fan that I can run 24/7 and all it does is drag air out in winter and I flip it around for summer use, that way it manages humidity and temperature. Doesn't seem to be doing much at any instant but the effect over a few days is definitely noticeable. And if I had a bigger space I'd just use an array of them, they're cheap, quiet, designed to run continuously unlike bathroom and kitchen extractors, and you can power a 2x2 or even 3x3 grid of them with a middlingly hefty plugpack. Make insect screens and external louvres to keep rain out. (I only have the one so I used a vent outlet from Bunnings outside and printed an adaptor for the fan inside.)
Man that's a really admirable job! It might have made some sense to talk with some experts who deal with digging out basements under existing houses to figure out what they have to deal with. From what I've seen, there's a LOT of labor and materials that go into sealing the foundation walls, and floors from moisture. That said, I hope you are able to control the moisture level well enough. I love the french cleat system you latched onto, and now you've got me thinking about using that in either my garage or a room I plan to convert into a little workspace. It seems like a flexible and safe solution, especially where I live... we are expecting a massive earthquake/tsunami any day / year / decade now.
Awesome effort digging out the workshop area. Unfortunately you will have issues with rust on your mild steel machines, so keep up the maintenance, you are most likely looking at doing a weekly treatment to keep it from forming surface rust. I have a workshop up in Brisbane, even without your water/humidity issues I have to keep up with maintenance. Pretty much anything valuable with steel (router bits, drill bits eta) I put in drawers to reduce corrosion, lucky you know a thing about 3d printing inserts :) Just be mindful when MIG welding that dust collector will be a serious fire risk Keep up the great content
You should be able to handle the humidity with a dehumidifier that has a drainage hose that you can feed right into the gravel. You can set the humidity you want and let it go. It may take a while to catch up but should be fine.
I wish you the best but I had a space similar to that once, but with less water issues (water was seeping up through concrete, not flowing through sandstone) and it was a CONSTANT war against rust and mould until I lost and surrendered the space back to firewood and garden tool storage and built a new shed. You may have better luck with ventilation vs dehumidification with that much moisture in there.
Solid-looking setup! I recommend Zach Freedman's Gridfinity system for your CNC/router bits, as well as just about any other small odds and ends like fasteners, drill bits, etc. Also, I know you're all set up and are gonna hate hearing it, but I think you're much better off pouring a concrete floor with a built in drain trough. It's expensive, but it's a long term solution. Finally, I think the humidity will be fine. I live in Florida where the humidity rarely gets as low as 70% during the summer and I keep my mechanic and power tools in an uninsulated, non-climate controlled garage. I imagine your tools will be fine, but hanging some thick plastic sheeting on the left side can cut down on the volume your dehumidifier has to work with. Just try not to make it look like a scene out of Dextor 😂
I was also going to suggest the Gridfinity system for any small parts storage such as CNC/router bits. I've built my own in the past, but having the community behind the Gridfinity system there is a lot out there such as OpenSCAD models to make it easy to get the size of bins you need and then 3D print them.
That looks like a nice workshop, I'd keep the humidity lower than 70%, but I think you will be happy with the, and I'm looking forward to see what you are doing in that space!
But sanding , especially from 240 to 1500 is when you see that timber show it’s true beauty, and gets to you the most satisfying part of your furniture build, applying the finish. See what you can do to get the dusty outside into its own shed, it’ll save a lot of dust collecting in your underground ‘shed’
will probably need a dehumidifier rated for crawl spaces. There are more suitable means to finish a space like that too including a properly poured floor with french drains under it and a sump pump.
That was fantastic Michael. An awesome result. Sadly, apartment living doesn't allow me to dig below ( my downstairs neighbours would be somewhat annoyed ). I use RackIT shelves for my setups too. Cheers, JAYTEE
Looking pretty good. There's one tool missing that you'll never use but when you need it, it is the most important tool you will ever own by far. That's a fire extinguisher. You're mixing woodworking and welding in the same small space and have your living quarters directly above that. I would highly recommend you make the small investment and mount that bad boy somewhere obvious and close to the entrance of the workshop.
Better yet, get 2 of them. You never know.
@@schwuzi Agreed, 1 is likely enough, but they run out quick, get 2 and put them on each side of the room. I wonder if you can get one of those fire bomb things where you can throw it in an area and it basically explodes this fire retardent powder :D
@@xSensu you can get them on amazon lol i have one in my workshop.
@@schwuzi well you need 2 anyway, 1 water 1 dry chem even a 3rd CO2 can be useful for electrical without damaging surrounding equipment.
I'd even add a first-aid kit.
The previous owner of my house did this. I moved in thinking I had a sweet basement workshop, but within weeks found that it was constantly damp and later that it flooded several times a year. Same deal as yours - Rock formations that flow spring water. It took years of work to discover and solve all the leaks. I've bailed out thousands of litres of filthy groundwater several times. I had to do full perimeter drainage, concrete retaining walls and a vapour barrier. In the meantime all my machines have suffered surface rust, damaged bearings and other humidity related problems. One of my guitars basically self destructed from warping so much that it ripped the glue joints apart. Unless you get a reliable 50% humidity under there you'll regret it before long.
Also owning an "underground bunker" style workshop I found that painting the walls and ceiling white made a huge difference to the light levels; as bare brickwork and timber tends to absorb a lot of your light.
i was just thinking to paint mine one wall black :P
Hey Michael. I’ve never really commented before, much because you always provide insight and an oppurtunity learn. But this time I feel like I can somehow contribute.
Firstly, when you are digging in soil like ground, you will need to compress the loose bits. Your efforts in leveling the floor with gravel and sand will help, but not eradicate the issue you will have with uncompressed ground. This might also affect your trench, and will eventually mess with your floor to the point that it gets annoying.
Like a lot of other commenters said, with a moisture on those levels this will for sure eat up all your tools - especially your electronics. This will be costly. A dehumidifier works better than leaving it as it was, but the best thing is always proper ventilation of the area.I suspect the dehumidifier will work overtime trying to cope with a well underneath it, and i would definitely try to install both a inlet and outlet fan.
I would strongly advise to use money on a contractor to look at the room, to figure out how you could use plastic and concrete to separate yourself from the ground moisture as well as building walls to separate this room from the rest of the cellar. It is vital that you still let the airflow from the rest of the cellar flow as was intended, or for it to be redirected elsewhere whilst at the same time ensuring adjacent rooms to have their needed ventilation.
It is also important to know that a woodshop in a humid area like this, with flooring like this and loads of moisture can quickly turn into mold. This will be bad for you, and you might not even know it is there. Vacuuming the cracks both takes time away from what valuable projects you should be working on, but also leaves the possibility of you forgetting larger amounts of wood to the elements. Water specifically. Water and wood is not a great combination.
My last keynote are ground gasses like radon etc… Before you start using this room over longer periods you should check this out. Again, this issue can be helped by properly ventilating the area with mechanical ventilation. But, the best thing is for sure to make this a proper enclosure using proper construction techniques and products specifically made for the purpose of sealing you away from them.
Nice job! Be careful using the dust extractor while welding, The aerated dust is highly flammable and woodwork factories often get fires that way.
The humidity is going to be brutal on your equipment/supplies.
I have a basement workshop with two good sized dehumidifiers set at 60% and both automatically drained. Before that, I found I would get gradual corrosion on hand tools and cast iron surfaces.
Well, unless you add a dehumidifier
@@TGG141 Or five.
Yup, I just built a garage finally, got tired of all my stuff rusting in the shed. Agressive dehumidification will be essential
Worth regularly oiling all the tools you can.
I had something similar to your setup once I eventually gave up. 10% of the time I used it for projects the other 90% was fighting rust. Even nuts and bolts in bins would get tiny specs of rust on them. Eventually had to move everything into the garage, in the process of building a conditioned building out back. Hopefully you have better luck than I did!
Yeah, that would be my worry, rust on saw, drill and other bare metal tables, unless they are aluminum.
Be very careful with the fume extraction. When sparks are sucked in, the dust in the system can catch fire very quickly. And flowing dust can even explode!
Fascinating Horror and Brick Imorta have done some really good videos on dust explosions.
Plus, be sure to ground the pipes - static electricity can be a problem!
I believe static build up is the concern and that is usually when using PVC and no ground. His system doesn't suffer from those things.
Dust explosion hazards from these units are well known and documented. Enclose the DE unit or place it outside in a safe area
@@steveharper8916 source? Because in my experience, it's over dramatized. You don't need to move it or enclose it. Just ground the thing.
Good start, but you will have eternal humidity issues as well as the potential for ground gas exchange (i.e. radon if you have it there). A friend of mine does basement drainage for a living and recently I worked with him on a very similar issue to yours. The proper way to go about this is to do the gravel base as you did, but use deeper trenches and install weeping tile in the drainage trenches to bring the water to a sump, preferably external if possible. Then you need to cover the gravel over with properly sealed and taped 6 mil poly vapour barrier as a minimum, rather than the weed cloth which is permeable. If there is external soil pressure on the foundation (it appears not, foundation is mostly above ground?) then you also need to pour an internal step footing to bear the side load that the removed soil is no longer supporting. Also if the walls are underground at all you need to install dimple membrane tucked under the vapour barrier to allow leakage water to run down the walls and into the drainage trench. Finally you should pour at least a thin "rat slab" of concrete with rebar in it to protect the vapour barrier and tie everything together, and you can then pour pads of self-leveling grout on top for your equipment or do a thick pour and screed it level (or hire it done as concrete is a lot of work especially for those inexperienced with it).
However the builders should not have left your house with such a high level of moisture in the basement, all that water should be already intercepted by perimeter drains! We just bought a house in a high water table area for my wife and we were VERY particular that perimeter drains, membrane and vapour barrier were properly done with no potential for leakage. I would not have bought a house with a basement like this as the potential for future issues is high, at least here in Canada. Hopefully things work out but I would have a professional or at least a professional friend look at this basement before you do anything else!
this is the way
It isn't really a basement though. Basements are really rare to find in Australia in anything built in the past 75+ years. It is basically just a open area under the house due to the house being built on a slope and they generally have pretty good ventilation. You will find these areas either with the brick veneer like TT's or it may just be completely open or even have some sort of wire mesh instead of brick to keep out vermin/pets/kids from going under the house.
So many woodworkers do not appreciate the pressure drop of various fittings. A "T" fitting has the worst pressure drop by far. I replaced by "T" fittings with "Y". I replaced my short radius 90 deg elbows with long radius elbows. I then felt a big increase in suction at the gates.
I recommend avoiding "T" fitting if possible.
Dave.
Y fittings wouldn’t be too great either as you don’t have a straight through. Since in this case the air only needs to go one way a better type of fitting would be a mix of a straight pipe and an elbow. Not sure if you can buy any like that but also might not be too difficult to make out of two pipes.
@@conorstewart2214 In this situation it would be best for the pipe to come out at an angle, let's say a "half K" fitting
@@IDiveI11 That is pretty much what I meant, although I meant for the offshoot pipe to be curved rather than straight, to help with airflow.
A nice vapor barrier along the one side - like a sheet of 6 mil plastic- would work nicely to make the dehumidifier's job easier. You could use clearer plastic if you wanted it to keep the visual openness too.
Congrats on the workshop, Michael! Thanks for sharing. The most obvious thing (to me) that you didn't mention is your welding area: Grinder sparks & weld spatter are not going to treat your dust collection bags/house-fire-starter very kindly! I'd want a fire extinguisher near the welding area and another near the door.
A new meaning of 'a digger', well done lad.
Have you considered just excavating the entire room and just pour some concrete for a decent floor? You'd get a much bigger room and a decent environment for your tools. As it stands rust is going to be a huge issue, unless you constantly oil all bare surfaces.
And if you do that, first seal the floor. Concrete is water permeable if the bottom is wet, and he top will be too.
Either get a professional, or diy.
Look for the term “encapsulated crawl space”.
Humidity levels that high will lead to mold. Using an electric dehumidifier is 40-250 times more cost effective than to damp-rid and similar chemicals that form gels. Below 50% humidity dust mites die. Lower than 40% humidity is bad for humans.
If you diy, you can get a “froth pack” of spray foam. 200 usd pack makes around 200 board feet of spray foam. Often you see:
Ground
Wet gravel
Dry gravel
Spray foam
Concrete.
Make sure to walk the spray foam up the sides of your walls to give you a continuous barrier.
Building a workshop underneath home is every man's dream.😮
A true man cave
...that turns into a nightmare
We actually have a very similar water management system under our 13C barn conversion (stable conversion), although there is no space under the floor for a workshop there is channels to pass water through. My house used to be a Stable on a farm with a field above it, the water run off heads to us and overflows under the house through the car port and under the farm yard to the pond in the farm house garden, the pond then overflows down to the next farm and through 5 settlement ponds to the river....the river is about 600ft below us and the water is crystal clear so the farm pumps it back up to a mini reservoir in the field above me and that supplies our house with our water supply.
Don't ever move away. You have the best of what everyone else is trying to figure out.
Looks nice! One tip- you shouldn’t use the table saw with the blade tilted toward the fence; doing so increases the risk of kickback.
French cleats are so handy, they are so modular and I LOVE them
You could always use some outdoor carpet to lay on top of the fast floor to help with keeping things out of the bottom, would make cleanup still pretty easy, it's like vacuuming a carpet. :) Best of all, if you need to get to the foundation of your fast floor, you can just simply roll up the outdoor carpet.
I'm not going to drag through all the comments to see if this is a duplicate, but congrats! Everyone who's got a walkable crawlspace under the house has dreamed of doing this. My suggestion for improvement is to make use of the space between the rafters, or floor joists, or whatever they're called down under. You can make up all sorts of storage solutions to fit between the overhead supports that would be 16 imperial inches on center here in the States. Simple strapping across 2 adjacent and you have a place to store linear material from lumber to piping to trim. 2 hinge points and you have a cabinet that folds down; 4 hinge points and you have a place to put arms that swing down parallelogram-style to present some flat surface as needed. My basement is 6'2" to my 6' so I have a lot of stuff tucked away overhead.
I saw the thumbnail and immediately thought of Colin Furze... i'm happy to hear that it was an intentional reference in the first few seconds of your video! Cool video :)
I really enjoy transformative projects like this. Congratulations on all that you have accomplished! Consider a dehumidifier designed for crawlspaces as that is essentially what you have. You can improve lighting by mounting your ceiling lights to white rectangles roughly the same size as the benches beneath. These could be painted wood, plastic, or maybe even skirting instead. It will be less harsh than reflectors.
With humidity that high you'll also want to look at treating the wood above you. Humidity over 55%-60% will propagate mold, which isn't helpful for anything you're doing.
Thanks so much for sharing and great job so far!
I'm glad you mentioned desiccant and dehumidifiers at the end. I was going to suggest that. You can get reusable desiccant and fill little mesh baggies with it and put one in each tool drawer/bin. I use mesh pencil bags or organza bags to portion them out.
I've found that MDF will mould very easily so worth checking underneath the lower levels of the shelving.
Yes, I have seen the same thing. I drill a row of 25mm+ holes in bottom shelves to ventilate floor side to the room side air. That helps a little. Also, paint them with Kilz anti-fungal paint to seal the surfaces.
Mr. Furze would be proud man. Nicely done. Ever since I saw Colin do this I've had an itch to give it a go!!!!
Imagine dropping something in that floor. I love this so much!!!
ROFLMAO😆
I love this! I love the poetry of previously dead space used for neglected lawn equipment becoming a functional creative space. So inspiring!
As someone who grew up on an aging sandstone ridge in Sydney's south, we also had a number of fresh water springs and general seepage through the stone bedrock.
Regular rust prevention and good airflow will help prevent oxidisation of unpainted surfaces.
I would suggest some time in the future to get a licensed builder in to install some RSJ's to replace the pillars. Then excavate the rest,wall it, drain it appropriately and pour a slab. You seriously won't regret it.
But in the mean time you've figured out some great solutions! (But get some airflow happening definitely..)
When I saw the thumbnail, I got worried about digging under the house.
-But I see that you're not really digging, just removing what's on the ground.
Still ... be very careful, because the walls look like they support the house and if you remove material near the walls, they might sink and the house will sink.
It's best to reinforce (downward) in small sections at a time, making sure to have foundation for the brick wall.
The brick wall might already have all the foundation it needs; please just make sure...
Other concerns ... The moisture will not go away; I believe it needs a better solution in the long run.
I'm not only thinking "rust", but also mold (wood, cardboard, paper and the like).
If you're going to run a dehumidifier, I recommend running it on solar panels or your RUclips income might not be able to break even with the electricity bill ...
Like Marcel HH mentioned: Dust extraction and ESD can spark fires. ESD from dust extraction can also kill your electronics gadgets. ;)
-Make sure you don't have anything flammable in there either.
Last thing that came to my mind ... you really want a floor without holes in it. 😉
If you happen to come across a click-floor, that could be a temporary solution.
Regarding floor, I'd really go for a concrete solution, but you might not be ready for it yet.
All that said, it's always nice to get more space and I'm happy that you can spread your wings! 😄
This comment summarize most of my thoughts (and more) after seeing the video, well put @HiSpy ☺️
@@kihestad 😄- I've seen someone - who really knew what he was doing; he worked with reinforcing buildings every day - even though he reinforced this old house, the house cracked where he dug. Those bricks are heavy - the roof as well (not to mention all the things in the house).
Cracking didn't happen in one go; it was a slow process that took more than a week.
Fortunately this house wasn't damaged any further.
He did use equipment for measuring pressure and giving proper upwards counter-pressure while digging, but things can go wrong even for the experts.
@@68HC060 I can absolutely believe that. Having constantly running water in the ground is also a big concern if you ask me. As you say: not just to get rid of the humidity, but even more important: to prevent unhealthy mold. The whole basement really needs a sealed concrete floor with vapor and moisture barrier underneath. For this to work the water now running on top of the ground must be managed, i guess a drainage ditch around house would have been the permanent solution. A tricky task when this is not done before the house was built 😳🤔 but not impossible ☺️
@@kihestad I absolutely agree. Hmm, changing the dehumidifier to a pump might save a lot of money. 😆🤣
-I wonder if the water could be "piped" instead; it's not really a good solution though; the walls would be wet near the floor.
Great project 👍
I would Isolate the "roof" to make a more constant temperature at that place, and Make a more constant humidity in the basement.
Interesting as always 👍🙂
I'm wicked excited for this. I've been in the process of creating a similar workshop in my garage
Imagine the rust in that room. Everything is going to rust so quickly.
Also be very careful mixing the dust extractors with the welder. Sounds like a bomb about to go off. Air, wood and igniting should like a fun time especially under your house.
the whole video I was thinking "wait till you drop a small screw..." and then at the end I was rewarded.
A moisture barrier is a must, I’dve installed some of that plastic slot channeling with grating on top at floor level around the whole perimeter of the workshop to catch water before it entered the area at all rather than letting it flow underneath, then piped it out into a drain. Cover that over with the plastic and your flooring then.
Then put in a set of supports and a false wall to block the rest of the unused space off from the workshop itself, that would prevent any moisture in the air from entering the space too.
And to help prevent the issues with the floor being easy to drop things through, add a top layer of hybrid vinyl floor planks over the existing flooring. You can buy ones that click together for practically nothing, (AU$20-$30 a sqm if you look online) and they don’t require adhesives, they just sit atop existing floor structures, they’re water resistant and are easy to assemble and care for. The existing flooring will help with airflow, and prevent moisture issues, as well as giving you a decent foundation for the new stuff.
I really think your biggest concern is getting the space square and sealed, if you do that, it’ll make moisture management and safety easier to pull off.
Love this man cave!
How is ventilation down there? Good ventilation is essential in damp and wet areas and will help reduce moisture in the air. Natural ventilation is good with ducts down on one wall(s) and up on the opposite wall(s), or you could install a bathroom fan or 2 to make forced ventilation if needed, preferably combined with some heating. I'm amazed how quickly moisture can ruin tools, so you will need to combat it.
Also, I would consider putting some wooden flooring on top of the plastic flooring to prevent dust buildup, important parts disappear down there as you mentioned, and reducing the moisture even more. Just make sure to first put on a layer or 2 of plastic foil to prevent moisture ruining the wooden floor. If you lay foil on top of the gravel in the rest of the room and connect everything to make a damp barrier you will get all the water running beneath the plastic and then you will get a dry room when combined with ventilation and some heating.
That's a lot of dedication for space but seems to have been worth it good luck with moisture that's a never ending battle
There have been many good ideas listed below. It really depends on how much work you want to put into the place. You could use a waterproof coating on the walls. A shower drain membrane on to of your floor would be durable, act as a vapor barrier, be easier to clean, and prevent you from loosing small parts down the cracks. As mentioned by others, ventilation will make a big difference. For that level of moisture, you may consider a house dehumidifier rather than a portable one.
Excellent. had a similar shop in a basement in our old house, and was going to expand under the house where we had 7-9 ft of head room. Sadly, we sold it and moved but I left the built in benches and electrical expansion. Hope the new owner enjoyed it.
Now I am looking to retrofit a garage or even a Home Depot 2 story shed.
Looking real good. Hopefully you can keep the humidity in check to a reasonable level. You might end up having 2 dehumidifiers about a 3rd of the way in from each end
Anytime you're mixing dust and hot work (ie welding), fire extinguishers, fire detectors, and fire suppressant systems (fire balls, etc.) are going to be your friend. I'd also consider running some copper wire through any ducting which includes plastic sections or joints to ground it all out - this will eliminate the risk of explosion posed by static build-up (your space may not have enough square footage to pose a significant risk of this, but better safe than sorry). Just finished moving our local makerspace to a new location so all this fire safety is still towards the front of my mind lol.
You're right to be proud of your hard work! I'm really impressed by your efforts and the end result 💯💯💯
Sorry to be that guy, I only want to support you positively :) I'm finishing up a 4.5m x 3m under house excavation through sandstone, including brick pilon to steel post conversion. It is a dry room for 3d printing in peek/ pek. I also have built a 12m long 2.5m high retaining wall in addition to many other significant renovations. The property is on the bottom of a slope and it also has significant water issues. You've basically done most of the hard work and i want to give you some tips as i have dealt with water issues successfully.
You need to concrete the ground to stop the moisture, it will destroy your tools. Dig out as much as you can or is necessary. You need to run a pvc pipe outside of the room to drain the water. Don't have open drains as the space is not ventilated to handle the water/ moisture. Base of the slab, put down geomat everywhere under the house. Run agg lines to a drain, however you see fit. 2 sizes of blue metal 10-25mm about 30-50mm deep the entire underhouse, 2 sizes helps with compaction without affecting drainage. Builders plastic the entire ground including further under the house where there is no slab. Put down some mesh and poor the slab, Done! You will have very little issues with water and you'll be surprised how easy it actually is when you take a deep breath :)
Looking great! If you want to lessen the floors flex add some paving sanding to fill the voids.
(It generally clumps & sticks together which would help with movement but still allow drainage)
I personally would have got some black/grey shadecloth and used some spray adhesive to attach it to the plastic flooring just to give a more "indoor" finished type look...just an idea i would have done that may appeal to you 🤷♂️
Wow! Looks awesome! I hope you keep us updated with the humidity management, I'm really interested in that!
Humidity is also high in here. I always buy good hand tools. After I use them I always put Spray Grease oil on them. As they do for the house, maybe it's better to make a room inside room. One more thing is 24h air ventilation. That will reduce it. Also, for your cnc, put some spray grease oil on each axises long rods. Good luck man.
As others mention, the damp will corrode your machine tools. Adequate ventilation of this space will be crucial. You may find that you cannot properly ventilate it naturally and may have to mechanically ventilate it.
Making this type of space habitable is a huge undertaking. Read about how basements are retro-built under houses. It mostly involves excavating, piling and casting a concrete bin around the walls and floor with an integral membrane and a sump somewhere in the floor to collect water. This sump needs a pump, running, as and when, under control, to remove the water.
I'd ask you if the space smelled damp before you started. If it did, I wouldn't have tried to reclaim it.
I wish you the best of luck.
A couple ideas for you -
- Look into french cleat locks. It's relatively easy to pull something down by accident, and if it's one of those small parts racks you're going to be pulling up the floor soon enough. Locks to prevent accidental release are easily made/printed..
- Easy method of finding small parts that fall through your floor - stick a nylon stocking over the end of your vacuum nozzle and suck it up.
- Covering the slotted floor with puzzle-edge anti-fatigue mats would also help here, and they're generally pretty cheap.
Brilliant! I wish I lived in an area where I was able to do something like this. Finding working space is the bane of my existence.
I think you'll eventually need to "encapsulate" the area so things don't rust up real bad. You're close to being incapsulated now so it's not too much more.
Fascinating Video, you truly made the most out of the Space you got down there.
Maybe in the future we get a second part where the Space is completely finished.
I put down old carpet off cuts or the office carpet tiles to help with keeping your feet warmer and stopping screws from falling into the gaps of the rubber matting.
Fantastic effort, you should be proud. That's a neat and unique cozy space.
I would highly recommend a roll of linoleum for covering over the floor. Its cheap, easy to lay, clean, and especially to replace. would take away the annoyances of those holes but still keep things modular.
I just noticed that the weed matting on the sides and the back wall by the welding table is not flame retardant. Make sure you add a flame retardant curtain or such over the flammable plastic
Have you considered laying down some "protection" layer over the grid, to keep parts from falling through (and not having to disassemble the floor sections)? Those Ikea floor protector have a decent size-to-price ratio, they're rather thick, and have one side with a rugged surface. There's also surfacing you can buy by the metre, like linoleum, pvc flooring, or even short-pile carpet.
I'm glad you found something that works for you. However, I'm concerned for multiple reasons. The first being humidity. I like that you took precautions to combat it and if this set up was going to be temporary I dont think it would be too bad but that humidity over time will absolute destroy your tools and electronics. Second, that space is a major fire hazard. All that water, plus electric is one source. Your welding bench right next to your dust collection is another. I would highly recommend getting multiple fire extinguishers, and it looks like there's quite a few other comments that recommend this as well.
If you're dead set on using this space, it would be a good idea to paint everything a bright color such as white. It'll help bounce the light and brighten up the room, plus brighter colors give the illusion of more space.
You may also want to get a quote from a contractor to see if a proper workshop can be built, rather than a make shift one. Proper flooring, drainage, electrical, etc.
Creating a new shop is so exciting with all the future possibilities, and you've done a great job. Congrats! I highly recommend using a pedistal mounted oscillating fan to keep constant air movement. Place off to the side, turn it on low, and leave it on 24/7. It is inexpensive to run, and will reduce mold, condensation, and spider webs.
Michael and colinfurze collab!!
Total Recall (2012 film) - ends with the destruction of 'the fall'
- so we can't have them meet ;ø)
Ventilation will be your key for keeping humidity down. That's not too challenging hopefully! I also use an old offcuts of carpet in my workshop. Low pile cheapy stuff. But it makes life nicer, easier, warmer, quieter and I can easily find screws I drop.
Good luck!
If you want a higher powered dehumidifier use a smaller window unit ac mounted on a standing frame with a hole CAREFULLY drilled in the bottom of the unit and piped into a sealed 5 gallon bucket (or even outside). If you want to use the ac as a window unit later just 3d print a plug for the bottom. It won't cool the space off more actually it might warm it up a little it will use roughly 500 watts (one side heating and the other cooling at the same time). It's basically what a dehumidifier does only on a larger scale and more cost effective. Also if a 500 watt one isn't enough you can upscale to maybe even a 1200 watt. If you build one your equipment WON'T suffer from the humidity.
Ever since I was a kid and we moved into a place with a space under the house like this I always wanted to do something like you did with one when I was older. I find your project really cool and I hope that you can figure out any potential issues you might run into (like run-off with really heavy rainfall). We had a family friend who used his space under his house for storage of computer stuff and general knickknacks but he lost a fair bit of it to a storm which flooded the underhouse area - a simple preventative fix would be to ensure that you don't have anything that cannot get wet sitting on the floor but rather use something like shipping pallets to keep it up a few inches.
A shortcut to getting better flooring is to mix in about 2 inches of your dirt in the back of premixed concrete for every 2 to 6 ft. I don’t know what that is a metric it basically works out 2 to times bigger than the bag of concrete takes up. It will take about 2 inches of dirt play mix concrete down dry do you wanna take a garden rake get level and Get a grass tamp Tamp down really good. Then you can lightly mist it with water enough to get it wet, but not runoff the top layer will harden up to about a half inch of concrete in 24 hours and the rest will turn into concrete from the moisture eventually giving you about 2 to 4 inches of solid flooring. What you’re making is something similar to a product called crush run. It also has a good quick repair for a dirt driveway that has holes to get it and keep it level.
Bear in mind that when the area is first dug open that the flow of water will be more than long after it's not disturbed any more after it's finished as it is and it settles down. As for the floor dust, you can put a surface over the material of the floor that is solid, not a rug which will hold moisture but perhaps some flat sheet material like they put under office chairs which is not too large and removable for cleaning. Also having smaller space is better since hoarding and clutter is not possible without inhibiting & choking the workspace itself, rendering the entire area not usable.
That amount of humidity is scarry. Also, it's in the walls like at 1:18 those white "fur"s are caused by water in those walls
The humidity is basically never below 80% in Ireland where I live. Is 70% really that bad?
@@aidansing For a guy doing technical stuff indoors, are you kidding?
Not to mention [toxic] mold, etc?
Just wow.
The white "fur" is called efflorescence.
@@kitbuilt3845 the more I know now, thanks!
You could have possibly dug down a bit more and used slightly longer legs on the front of your workbenches with the rear legs sitting on the concrete footings, but as long as there is enough headroom, it's probably better to keep the floor even or above the footing.
Everybody puts their dust extraction ducting overhead, but I don't see a big reason why it can't go underground. You would have to use stronger pipe and make sure that it is watertight, but it would be interesting to have vacuum, compressed air, and power coming up from the floor.
You can always dig further and make the shop wider, but you may need to get an engineer to do some load calcs. The house may be relying partially on the under house slope to hold it in place.
Nice! Was wondering why Michael's previous video had footage that looked like he was in a cave. Because he was, a literal man cave of his own making. Look forward to cave updates. Inspire and teach us to make shoveling great again!
Excellent job, that was a lot of work too. My only suggestion would have been to rent a thing called a tamper, it has a large flat head on that vibrates against the floor and packs it all down to get a nice compact floor surface to build on because over time dirt will shift. The only other thing I would suggest would be to get some indoor/outdoor carpeting to lay down over the floor to cover the slots. Also, I wouldn't even bother vacuuming those holes out in fact, it fill them up
I would like to see a curtained welding cubicle like they have at welding schools to prevent those embers from finding anything flammable. Those little lava balls can fly, bounce, and roll like nobodies' business! I have some Kevlar blankets that I use when I have to weld in close quarters, a fireproof blanket fort. That being said, you have done a lot with a little and it has a lot of great features already.
As you said by the end of your video, humidity can be a really problem for your machinery. Having that dehumifier running 24x7 will be expensive, but probably the safest day, mainly during winter.
Love the efficient usage of that great space :)
Wow, that builder built that house with so much massive space under it and couldn't be bothered to excavate it. Crazy
Nice work mate! A couple of tips: change the T-Connectors for the dust extraction, to two 45 degrees a bit apart, so the airflow isn´t choked. And take a look at the YT channel "A Glimpse inside", he has a lot of ideas and tips for the French cleat system! Keep the good work going!
I can see cleaning will maybe be a big issue with this floor.
It can't be swept easily, so it will have to be vacuumed. Vacuuming will be tedious as the tool on the vac will not be able to seal properly because the floor is full of holes.
If you drop organic food waste accidentally in it, it will be a hands and knees scraping and washing job to clean it. I'd make a rule of no food down there.
It's a good job you put some sort of membrane down, but I'm not sure which way up for a semipermeable one would be best if it is directional.
That flooring is designed to lay outdoors and have adequate drainage under it and deal with the movement of organic material through it from both sides.
Good luck with doing it this way.
Fantastic work! I love it! My recommendation is to look into an Oneida Super Dust Deputy! I have designed several dust collection systems in small workshops with them, and you current dust collector. I 3d print some custom fittings, and it’s amazing suction, and easy to unload a blue plastic drum with your sawdust!
Dehumidifier with a drainage hose will help so you do not have to empty it. Mine empties into a floor drain but you may need to add a pump with a float.
Great job man! Glad you are making it work for you wherever you go. Kaizen life!
I'd put some of those square locking foam pads on top of your floor, they're nice to walk on and if you drop things on them they don't bounce much and they're easy to find. They make them pretty thin also so it won't take much height from your workspace.
Yeah worry would also be about rust with that limestone putting water in there constantly. Steel will rust insanely fast at 80% humidity and iron rusts at 50%. Ideally you are going to want to get the humidity down to 50% if you can but really below 60% is fine. Another thing that can cause rust is the temperature change from day to night as that caused slight condensation on the metal with the temperature change. It might never be enough to look wet but it is enough to rust. You might seriously look at adding a heater to keep the room at a consistent temperature.
Looks great! I have my own workshop in a self build wooden shed in my garden. I had a lot of problems withe the humidity. But now i isolated the roof and walls and made the floor watertight with epdm plastic (used for roofs mostly), and i installed an electric heater with an external thermostate from Ali. Since that i have no more humidty problems. Try to keep the temperature above the dewpoint. (here that is about 12 to 15 degrees i think)
Maybe this epdm foil is an option for you too, to close the floor and the wet rock wall?
Keep up the good work! Greetings from Holland
Timm
That’s a good looking space, after you’ve done a TON of work! Keep us updated on how it is going!
Love it. All I have is a crawl space under my house and I've always dreamed about turning into a real basement, but I know it's totally impractical to do since I'd have to dig 3 to 4' just to make it tall enough to stand up in there. Good job on the project - few things better than a good workspace.
I think the humidity control with a dehumidifier will be losing battle , i spent 10 yrs using a workshop dug out under my mum's house that had a dirt floor and if i learned one thing it was if i didn't want something to rust - oil it . I can recommend two products for stopping rust - Lanotec and Mako oil , the first is lanolin based and the latter is fish oil based and i have been using these for a long time to protect my machinery in my 1950's era fibro garage that suffers the worst condensation problems i have ever seen . So bad in fact that each machine has to live under either a waterproof cover or ply cover with its own dedicated microcontroller controlled dehumidifier and a coating of either Lanotec or Mako oil . Under the house condensation won't be such a problem as the temperature will remain fairly constant where as in my case the garage fluctuates greatly , it gets cold quickly at night then heats up quickly when the sun hits the side ( it is north / south oriented ) but the machines have had all night to cool down but take a long time to heat up so condensation forms on them easily . The only other thing that i would be concerned with is the plastic bag on the dust collector being right next to the welding bench as spatter might burn holes in it - a piece of ply or MDF set up as a divider or guard would solve that problem .
How is the rust situation some months later? I built a workshop in a similar environment (in the French Pyrenees) What I did was construct leca block room surrounded by insulation and a vapor barrier on a insulated slab poured over a gravel bed with perforated drainage pipes underneath. It was a big expensive project but works perfectly and is cheap to heat and cool with a mini-split heat-pump. You were lucky to have mostly dirt, I got to spend weeks with a jackhammer to remove cubic meters of solid stone :)
Love the work, that's a dream space! Try using a layer of shade cloth on top of your flooring to help mitigate screw loss! Still porous enough for liquid and sand but will stop you from losing the things you don't want to lose.
Michael - a couple of things:
1. It might be a good idea to look into finding a way to provide some grounding to deal with static build up in you dust extraction system. Loads of dust swirling through a plastic tube might cause a static build up, & that combined with a dust/air mixture could create the potential for unintended consequences. 💣 🔥
2. Given the reputation for your part of the world, have you done anything to mitigate the chances of critter intrusion?
Well done! I really like your motiviation!
Great video, and great work on turning that space into a workshop, and really good use of space!
I'd say try a low speed through the wall fan to move air in or out, that would probably be a way to manage humidity and run more cheaply than the dehumi and silica gel. My half a tiny bedroom workspace has a 120mm 12V computer fan that I can run 24/7 and all it does is drag air out in winter and I flip it around for summer use, that way it manages humidity and temperature. Doesn't seem to be doing much at any instant but the effect over a few days is definitely noticeable. And if I had a bigger space I'd just use an array of them, they're cheap, quiet, designed to run continuously unlike bathroom and kitchen extractors, and you can power a 2x2 or even 3x3 grid of them with a middlingly hefty plugpack. Make insect screens and external louvres to keep rain out. (I only have the one so I used a vent outlet from Bunnings outside and printed an adaptor for the fan inside.)
Man that's a really admirable job!
It might have made some sense to talk with some experts who deal with digging out basements under existing houses to figure out what they have to deal with. From what I've seen, there's a LOT of labor and materials that go into sealing the foundation walls, and floors from moisture. That said, I hope you are able to control the moisture level well enough.
I love the french cleat system you latched onto, and now you've got me thinking about using that in either my garage or a room I plan to convert into a little workspace. It seems like a flexible and safe solution, especially where I live... we are expecting a massive earthquake/tsunami any day / year / decade now.
Awesome effort digging out the workshop area.
Unfortunately you will have issues with rust on your mild steel machines, so keep up the maintenance, you are most likely looking at doing a weekly treatment to keep it from forming surface rust.
I have a workshop up in Brisbane, even without your water/humidity issues I have to keep up with maintenance.
Pretty much anything valuable with steel (router bits, drill bits eta) I put in drawers to reduce corrosion, lucky you know a thing about 3d printing inserts :)
Just be mindful when MIG welding that dust collector will be a serious fire risk
Keep up the great content
Excited for how this develops and the content from it.
You should be able to handle the humidity with a dehumidifier that has a drainage hose that you can feed right into the gravel. You can set the humidity you want and let it go. It may take a while to catch up but should be fine.
I wish you the best but I had a space similar to that once, but with less water issues (water was seeping up through concrete, not flowing through sandstone) and it was a CONSTANT war against rust and mould until I lost and surrendered the space back to firewood and garden tool storage and built a new shed. You may have better luck with ventilation vs dehumidification with that much moisture in there.
Solid-looking setup! I recommend Zach Freedman's Gridfinity system for your CNC/router bits, as well as just about any other small odds and ends like fasteners, drill bits, etc.
Also, I know you're all set up and are gonna hate hearing it, but I think you're much better off pouring a concrete floor with a built in drain trough. It's expensive, but it's a long term solution.
Finally, I think the humidity will be fine. I live in Florida where the humidity rarely gets as low as 70% during the summer and I keep my mechanic and power tools in an uninsulated, non-climate controlled garage. I imagine your tools will be fine, but hanging some thick plastic sheeting on the left side can cut down on the volume your dehumidifier has to work with. Just try not to make it look like a scene out of Dextor 😂
I was also going to suggest the Gridfinity system for any small parts storage such as CNC/router bits. I've built my own in the past, but having the community behind the Gridfinity system there is a lot out there such as OpenSCAD models to make it easy to get the size of bins you need and then 3D print them.
That looks like a nice workshop, I'd keep the humidity lower than 70%, but I think you will be happy with the, and I'm looking forward to see what you are doing in that space!
Man I love that bevel system. May have to do something similar in my tiny workshop
Well done Michael!
But sanding , especially from 240 to 1500 is when you see that timber show it’s true beauty, and gets to you the most satisfying part of your furniture build, applying the finish. See what you can do to get the dusty outside into its own shed, it’ll save a lot of dust collecting in your underground ‘shed’
will probably need a dehumidifier rated for crawl spaces. There are more suitable means to finish a space like that too including a properly poured floor with french drains under it and a sump pump.
Really well done and great ideas
That was fantastic Michael. An awesome result. Sadly, apartment living doesn't allow me to dig below ( my downstairs neighbours would be somewhat annoyed ). I use RackIT shelves for my setups too. Cheers, JAYTEE