Finally!! New house, new shop and new tools!

I've been waiting for this mention for a long time now. Finally convinced my wife that it was time for us to move. This lead to the construction of our new home, fast forward 6 months and I now have a 1500 sq. ft. basement for a workshop instead of a 2 car garage.

During the construction period, I had to give up my fathers day, birthday AND Christmas gift. But.... The wife did promise she'd make it up by letting me buy tools once we close on the house and moved in. She made good on her promise and I ended up with a brand new 15" Powermatic planer with the spiral cutter head along with a Fuji Q5 HVLP spray gun. Oh, I also somehow brought home a 2017 BMW X5 :eek:, still not sure how that happened. I swear it just followed me home.

Anyhow, I thought I'd share some pictures of my new shop. It's still a work in progress since we've only moved in 3 weeks ago. I've only had 2 or 3 days to work on the shop, the rest of the time the wife was cracking her whip pressing me to unpack the house so we didn't live in boxes.

The builders put in a lot of walls in the basement, most of which aren't even load bearing walls so I do plan to take them down later on. For now they'll have to stay since my wife already has a list of things for me to build. Getting the shop up and running is priority now. I just pulled a permit for all the electrical work yesterday and plan to start running all the wires this weekend. The idea is to have (30) 20 amp outlets throughout the shop plus (3) 20 amp 240v and (1) 30 amp 240v outlets for the bigger toys. I have a friend coming to help this weekend so I'm hoping all the electrical work will be done and inspected by next week.

Duct work is nearly complete, just missing a few fittings which comes in today so I should be done with it by this weekend.

I'm open to advise on any improvement I can make so if you have them, I'm all ears.

Thanks

Hoang

Congratulations on a new shop Hoang!

Congratulations! And with 1500 sq ft, if shouldn't take more than another 3-4 days to get cramped.;)

Hoang, you're doing something right!

Huoang,
The shop looks awesome!
Quick question - what is the duct material for your DC? I see it's steel but is it Nordfab-type quick connect? I probably should be able to identify from the pics but I'm just now dipping my toes into the DC/ducting planning on my shop and still a newbee on this front.

Thanks all for the comments.

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Originally Posted by Malcolm McLeod

Congratulations! And with 1500 sq ft, if shouldn't take more than another 3-4 days to get cramped.;)

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As you can see, I'm already a little cramped. I'm hoping to get things more organized within the next few days by putting things where they belong. I'm still trying to find a home for everything as I unbox things.

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Originally Posted by Matt Putnam

Huoang,
The shop looks awesome!
Quick question - what is the duct material for your DC? I see it's steel but is it Nordfab-type quick connect? I probably should be able to identify from the pics but I'm just now dipping my toes into the DC/ducting planning on my shop and still a newbee on this front.

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Matt, the pipes are spiral pipes, not Nordfab. I had thought about Nordfab for the longest time and even priced it out. It came to about 3 or 4 times higher cost than what I have now and I felt it wasn't worth it. For that price, I could use the savings on more tools to fill the shop. I don't mind hacking up a few pipes if I need to change up the duct work if that means I can save myself a grand or so. I'm also fortunate enough to have a metal supplier about 30 miles from me that carry spiral pipes and all the fittings. Their prices are a good bit lower than most online vendors I've found and I don't have to pay hundreds in shipping the pipes. In all, I have maybe $400 invested in my duct work, all spiral pipes and fittings.

Congrats!!!!!!

That's a serious amount you've accomplished in just a few days! I too used spiral steel duct & long sweep elbows for my DC. It was a fraction of the cost of Nordfab.

Fantastic! I love to hear such shop stories! Gives a man hope! :D :D ;)

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Originally Posted by Hoang N Nguyen

Thanks all for the comments.

Matt, the pipes are spiral pipes, not Nordfab. I had thought about Nordfab for the longest time and even priced it out. It came to about 3 or 4 times higher cost than what I have now and I felt it wasn't worth it. For that price, I could use the savings on more tools to fill the shop. I don't mind hacking up a few pipes if I need to change up the duct work if that means I can save myself a grand or so. I'm also fortunate enough to have a metal supplier about 30 miles from me that carry spiral pipes and all the fittings. Their prices are a good bit lower than most online vendors I've found and I don't have to pay hundreds in shipping the pipes. In all, I have maybe $400 invested in my duct work, all spiral pipes and fittings.

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Got it. I will look into a similar supplier in my area. What is the material name of the spiral pipes - or it just "spiral pipes"? Is there a specific gauge? I've seen the term "crush" - no idea what that is.
Lastly - could you share your supplier's info (maybe by PM here if needed). I'm in Greenville, SC and get to ATL often enough to make a run if I can't source it locally.

Wow..very nice...I am jealous

Congrats!!

And wow...you got a LOT of shop assembly work done in only a few days...wow

Looks beautiful, congrats!

Congrats, very exciting, looks like a great work space! I see lots of familiar tools.......:)

Enjoy and good luck!

Len

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Originally Posted by Matt Putnam

Got it. I will look into a similar supplier in my area. What is the material name of the spiral pipes - or it just "spiral pipes"? Is there a specific gauge? I've seen the term "crush" - no idea what that is.
Lastly - could you share your supplier's info (maybe by PM here if needed). I'm in Greenville, SC and get to ATL often enough to make a run if I can't source it locally.

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They have a location in Greenville, SC so you don't have to drive far. http://www.conklinmetal.com/our-locations/
The people at the ATL location are very nice people and easy to work with. Prices are very fair, I believe I paid $10 for 6" 45* elbows, $15 for 90* and about $2 per ft. for the spiral pipes. The pipes I got from them are just galvanized spiral pipes and I believe they are 26ga. It's more than enough for what I need and the spiral makes them much stronger than snap lock pipes. The "crush" you read about can be caused by many things. Too thin of material for the pipes, powerful DC plus all blast gates closed may crush the pipes. I've left all my blast gates closed with these pipes a few times and they held up fine. I'm sure some of the more experienced members can help clear it up better for you than I can. I'm still learning as I go along.

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Originally Posted by Jim Becker

Congrats!!

And wow...you got a LOT of shop assembly work done in only a few days...wow

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This is a bad habit of mine, when I start on something I work non-stop until I'm done or my wife drags me away from it. I've gotten heat stroke 3 times last summer in the old shop from working without food or water for nearly 12 hours straight in 90* heat. Once, my wife had to take me to the ER so they can stick me with an IV because I couldn't keep down any food or water. My wife gets on me all the time about staying hydrated but I just don't think about it when I'm in my zone. I'm hoping it'll be less of an issue with this shop since the basement stays much cooler than a garage. Plus the basement has it's own AC unit.

Plus, I kind of cheated with the shop. I had 6 months to plan for it while the house was being built. I had the builders send me plans of the basement and used it to plan the shop layout along with all the duct work. That allowed me a great deal of time to think about the layout and revise as needed. So when it came to go time, everything just fell into place.