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Most of my garage has a few inches of loose insulation in the attic, but when a past owner added a bay to the garage, the addition was not insulated. Of course, the new part is the far end of the garage, lots of crawling is likely to be required. I laid down a plywood "sidewalk" to make it...

As a lot of people found after hurricanes, there is no substitute for flood insurance. Your regular house insurance does not cover flooding. Even if you are not in the 100 year floodplain, you can still be flooded by bigger events, or because the flood plain map is inaccurate. Lots of people...

In the spirit of having a shop of maximum flexibility, I am thinking of plugging a cord into a ceiling outlet, and then hanging the cord wherever suits me at the moment. Maybe there would be a series of hooks. The idea would be that the cord would be hanging down to 6.5 feet, easily reached...

Thanks to all for your comments. I wonder if I might not get away with a seasonal switch, putting the paint in the crawl space in December, and pulling it out mid-february. I agree that it does not seem to be as cold in the garage as outside. I may buy a recording thermometer and look at...

I am moving into my new garage/studio, and have a concern about things freezing. In my old house/garage, I just put things that I did not want to freeze in the basement. This would be things like latex paint or certain glues. But my new place does not have a basement, just a crawl space...

Living in a humid environment, you will get more water out of the air than I do in Colorado. 50 feet of black iron is usually considered adequate, so 50 feet of copper should be more than adequate. As others have mentioned, you would need a special filter for spray painting. Actually, a...

The compressor is on it's own 50 amp circuit. The wire is in metal conduit. Good point in terms of using the welder's own cable as a starting place in terms of sizing the wire. All outlets are within 10 feet of the subpanel, so not much voltage loss there. Thanks to all for your comments.

In my new shop, I had them pull in a 100 amp 240V subpanel, as well as wire two 240V outlets, 8 ga wire, on 50 amp breakers. (one circuit for the compressor, one for the welder). As I read the code, I could have gone to a 55 amp breaker, but the contractor would not go bigger on the breaker...

For some reason I had missed that there were GFIs that were weather resistant, so that is good to know. I am familiar with in use covers. I will try to run the wires above the rafters, and then drop down using rain tight EMT. I would not try to use conduit above the rafters. I am still...

I have a loafing shed, open on the south side. I would like to add an outlet inside the shed. Do I need to use waterproof outlet boxes? (GFI for sure.) Sort of a related question: What is the easiest way to install outlets on both sides of the loafing shed? It is post and beam...

As far as 100 meters, no, it is not a magic number, but the equipment is not rated for more than that. Depending on the equipment, you might be OK, or maybe it will be OK until it rains hard, or maybe it will not work at all. In engineering, we talk about design margins. If your setup does...

My recollection is that joining three wires of size 6 or 8 is painful. I recall a copper device with a nut that tightened, and then needed to be wrapped in two different kinds of electrical tape. I don't think that you can get a wire nut big enough for this task. As others have said, you will...

One more item: The 100 year floodplain map may not be accurate. Extreme weather can and does cause flooding outside the 100 year floodplain area. The 100 year floodplain map is statistical, and makes certain assumptions, which may or may not be valid. In some places, property outside the...

https://pilotonline.com/business/flood-insurance-rates-up-tips-to-keep-you-afloat/article_5f6229da-89ee-5455-a039-73c0c516d5b7.html - Flood vents. Lots of good ideas in this article, such as raising any critical equipment, such as furnaces or air conditioning.

When I was in plant engineering, we did just what you are going, start with the scaled drawing, and then scaled "paper dolls" of the benches and equipment. Put it on a cork board, and just pin the equipment in various places until the arrangement starts to make sense. You can measure...

In Florida, the standard solution is to build the building on stilts. Would it be too expensive to build a building on stilts that would be strong enough to support a car? Maybe. If you put in enough piers, it may not be crazy expensive to have a raised garage. I saw one reference that...

Look at this part number. DVWCL-153PH-WH. It says that it will work for three way switches. Put a dimmer at one end of the circuit, a regular 3 way switch (maybe with dimmer) at the other end, and a four way switch in the middle. You don't need all four way switches to make this work...

My new/old shop has several 8 foot two tube fixtures. I will want to add some additional lighting. I have been told that the 8 foot tube fixtures are kind of obsolete, partly because the tubes are so expensive. However, I have some spare tubes that came with the shop. It looks like T12...

Thanks to all for their comments. The garage is attached.

In my new/old shop, they did not bother to put in an electrical box for each fluorescent light fixture. The fixtures are flush with the drywall ceiling. The wire nuts are out in the open, in the attic. I am trying not to go crazy fixing every possible problem on a 50 year old house. Do I...