Between 265 & 485 SQ/FT Woody's Works Garage

[drivesitfar]

Woody: i'm happy you are enjoying the ride with your girls and it might have a few big and small humps and bumps along the way and i know you are up for that.

i know you have a back yard OASIS now with your new deck, but if you want to sell your house for more and give it that well deserved street appeal i have an idea. i tried to have my front yard look almost as bad as it could so i let the kids park their cars on the lawn and didn't spend any time on it until they moved. didn't need any more taxes because the tax guy sees we have a view and comes down the street almost annually and i actually have let them inside just recently. anyway now that the kids are not eating me out of house and home i re did the front yard and in the process of redoing the back that was my OASIS 25 years ago. i'd show some before and after pics, but some are on my old failing computer so you'll have to take my word for it that the back yard used to be nicer than my front yard. found a couple pictures of the front yard today and i'm hoping to get a new driveway in soon.

anyway back to your house. with the huge siding improvement on your upper half and you talking about siding or doing something different for the lower how about a roof across the entire front of your house just about where the two meet? then with maybe some good size beams and posts and a deck to just maybe put a few outdoor chairs on or a swinging double chair for you and your bride or the girls and their friends or a date (yes that day will come and probably already has by the looks of the party members).

i don't have any pictures handy to show you what i have in mind, but by the sounds of your last post i bet you and your wife already do.

Enjoy your Father's Day and thanks again for continuing to be a great GJ member and friend.

 

[Denwood]

Drives, what you describe is pretty much where we'd go with the next update. I'd like to close it in (busy street) but I figure that would compromise the aesthetic. I trust you had a great Father's Day with your strapping brood as well

My brother and nephew stopped by for a few beers (for the record, my nephew was consuming water only!) and a quick project to manage a small outboard motor when carrying a boat on his truck racks. I had some T6061 kicking around I'll post up a pic once he's finished the rack beyond the basic cuts we did tonight. Young Lucas drilled most of the holes on the drill press, vacuumed up a storm and generally had a great time hanging with his Dad and Uncle D. The evening pretty much ranks up there with the best of them as I also managed a 15k ride with my 12 yr old right before. Summer is good

 

[Denwood]

On the work front, I snapped this quick pic of our projection room at the office (designed originally as a theatre) that we're re-tasking to make room for some R&D projects. A room painted flat black (our studio is painted the same way, but is twice the size and height) ***** up light like a vacuum. This is the official before pic as one of our team, Marty, works some paint magic. The lights there were pretty random, but the pic turned out rather cool.

 

[drivesitfar]

Woody: anything new? found your thread on page 10 and it needs a new post don't you think?

have you set up that paint booth at work yet??

great picture of you and your brother chilling with your nephew and teaching him a good thing or two.

hope you had a good 4th or do Canadians celebrate our Independence Day?

cheers

 

[Denwood]

Drives, just been very busy between work (3 new products to launch) and family. July 1st is "Canada Day", so celebrated here just like you do July 4th. We spent our long weekend at a lake about 1.5 hrs away. Kayaking, sailing (got the Hobie cat in the water!), campfires and good times with the extended family. It was an awesome weekend.

No paint booth at work yet , however our former matte black projection room is now repainted and officially our R&D space. Many changes there including installation of over 240 4ft T8 LED lamps. I'll be doing a quick review of the 12 watt Philips Instantfit lamps...very impressed with them.

My nephew was positively enthused in the shop. Having a usable workspace continues to pay all sorts of unexpected dividends

Thanks as always for your interest Drives!

 

[drivesitfar]

Woody: great to hear all is going well for you, your company and the family. keep up the positive improvements and i'm sure you have a few planned for us so I'll (we'll) just wait for them as you have time to post them.

cheers (ITFM)

 

[Denwood]

Drives, here are a few pics that will likely be part of an LED bulb review...

These are preliminary results of a retrofit using Philips 12w t8 replacements at the business building..where my target some day is to be a net zero operation. I'll do a better review once I gather a few more bits of data, however early results show a significant power savings, with better brightness. The retrofit required 230 bulbs. Philips TL950 4ft t8 at 5000K and 32 watts (on .88 efficiency ballasts) were replaced by the Philips 12w Instantfit which apparently is DLC listed. The LED bulbs are spec'd at 1650 lumens, 160 degree beam, 5000K, 82 CRI. Can't find the DLC listing though.

Looking at comparables on the DLC database, luminous efficacy should be right around 135 lumens/watt. Our total building power use during peak time of use billing dropped from around 8kwh, to under 4kwh. Quite impressed.

They are definitely brighter than the TL 950. We measured a low of 47 foot candles at 32" above the floor, between fixtures. It's closer to 67 directly below a fixture. The off the cuff description of brightness increase is about 15-20 %.

There is a 5$/bulb rebate in effect here by local hydro, so final cost was $19/bulb CAD, or $14.57 USD.

http://www.usa.philips.com/c-p/046677453886/led-instantfit-tube

 

[laurie71]

Nice upgrade, and impressive savings in power use too!

Laurie

 

[1/2 Cup]

Dennis, that is a fantastic result.

Our management is starting to get on board with energy efficiency, thank you for the link I might see what is available out here.

Regards

 

[dlcwent]

Woody, it sounds like last weekend was a good time and a lot of fun. It's very important to enjoy a slice of life when you can. We all work way too much. Family grows and is gone before we get a chance to realize what has happened.(Ask me how I know) I'm glad you are not all work,work, work.

 

[Denwood]

Laurie, thanks for the words of encouragement!

1/2, your management might take some motivation from the usage data below, particularly if power is expensive there. I know you already have the ultimate solution at home with rooftop panels...would like to get there someday. The LED lights in terms of ROI, have a payback of 2 yrs in our case, so much better buzz for the buck vs panels. That said, one needs to do the the efficiency sweep first, which would then require less money on panels to go net zero.

DLC, that is my one "fear" if you will as a parent..making sure I find a good balance. I did a 15km mountain bike ride with my 13 yr old daughter yesterday..a victory there unto itself. She actually got muddy!

The database that stores "smartmeter" data has been down for a few days, but it's back..so I can post these up. The first is power use during a 24C sunny day, the next is power use on Thursday with the LED lighting, and very little AC as we used night pre-cooling, and convective cooling during the day. The power use profile on July 7th (a few days ago) is easily the lowest usage ever since we moved into the retrofit building.

The savings attributed to the LED lights reflect mainly on the 1st floor lights pictured, as they're on a lot during the day. Looking at the data, we're saving about 2kwh (all day) due to just the first floor lights. All lights in the building are on ceiling sensors..so if it's sunny, some light banks do not come on at all, and in other cases, they are only on when people are present. We're taking an already very efficient work space, and taking it up yet another notch. It's simply staggering how much energy a typical business here wastes.

The difference in total kwh on these two days is 93.81 kwh vs 57 kwh, a 40% drop.

 

[drivesitfar]

Woody: one of these days i'm going to need some of your wisdom you are sharing with all the electronic gadgets you post, but in the meantime wanted to thank you for posting them so i'll know which thread to check first.

your work areas always look like they are ready to make something cool and hopefully one day my garage and shop will look that way.

hoping you are enjoying the warm weather and the family outings this summer.

cheers (ITFM)

 

[Denwood]

Drives, so far a gorgeous summer here. Yesterday managed to sneak out for 20k on the mountain bike..arrived back at home coated with a few pounds of mud...and tonight crewing/racing on an IMX38 in 30 knots of wind. Hard to believe there will be snow drifts here in 5 months or less.

 

[Koje]

Woody i have only just started my own garage thread after many months debating it. Your garage has given me tons of ideas and going from where you did to where you are now was a good inspiration. Keep the updates coming

 

[Denwood]

Thanks K Hopefully there are some useful ideas here that will save you some time, or inspire, as so many have done for me. It seems these days I'm working more in the shop, rather than on it. This is a good thing! Other than periodic clean up, it's been a very useful workspace. Did some MIG welding yesterday out there to help out my father in law. Setup was all of 2 minutes.

 

[Irongrave]

Dennis you have a great shop and I really like the recently LED information. It might be something I work on for my work shop here soon. It needs some new lights and might as well lower the power bill while I am at it.

 

[Denwood]

Drew, the 12 watt InstantFit I used are the first I've seen so far (that are CSA approved) with a luminous efficacy in the 135 lumens/watt range, making them likely brighter, or as bright as most 32 watt T8 flouro tubes. They are rated at 1650 lumens, but the light is far more directional than a typical T8...so the net result is pretty bright space. They're an excellent choice for a garage retrofit, however if you're starting from new, you'd likely want a direct wire LED lamp. The ballasts in our fixtures cost us about 3 watts each.

Here is the loading bay at the business building..snapped a pic during the swap. I've dropped the exposure a lot (made the picture darker) so you could see the tubes. A surprising amount of dust gather's inside the fixture lens, so we cleaned them all during the retrofit. The LED lens in the pic below on the left is cleaned, the one on the right, not.

Here's a daily plot of power use at the Cinevate building, with temperature (blue line) shown. You can see the effect of the LED lights (it's a 9000 sq/ft business space, with tenants) and passive cooing, when we're able to stay off AC.

 

[JohnnieMo]

Re: Woody's Works Garage - rebirth!

Woody,

When you direct wire is it as easy as excluding the ballast and wiring to the holders direct? If so that's dead easy.

Sent from my BlackBerry Priv

 

[Denwood]

Yes, direct wire is generally that simple. Doing a retrofit (with a rebate from local hydro), CSA certification is required for the rebate. That's why we went with Philips Instantfit. They are a drop in..the ballast stays in place. The ballasts use 2-3 watts, however the power factor to the lamps is less (.88) in this case, so the lamps use a bit less power, and have a much longer life rating.

 

[JohnnieMo]

Yes, direct wire is generally that simple. Doing a retrofit (with a rebate from local hydro) CSA certification is a big deal. That's why we went with Philips Instantfit. They are a drop in..the ballast stays in place. The ballasts use 2-3 watts, however the power factor to the lamps is less (.88) in this case, so the lamps use a bit less, and have a much longer life rating because of this.

Ahhh, so the new Phillips bulb require a ballast? Or do they work either way? I have no problem keeping ballasts around so long as they don't fail a lot. I'm going to stick with the TL950 for the foreseeable future. I only have 20 of them as opposed to the 230 you have. And I only run them a couple hours a day.

BTW - what is your plan for getting rid of 230 T8 bulbs!!?? Can you sell them, or donate them somewhere?

 

[Denwood]

Johnnie, the newer electronic ballasts like the Philips Advance I see in the work fixtures have had a zero fail rate over 5 years installed in approximately 130 fixtures. The InstantFit bulbs do require a ballast..no direct wire option. For a new build, I'd go direct wire for sure.

In my shop at home, the TL-950s will remain as well...relatively low use there. I really do value the 98 CRI rating of the TL-950s when it comes to painting etc.

One requirement of the 5$/bulb rebate here is that the flouro tubes must be recycled...so the old bulbs are gone! The 5$ bulb is pretty much a 20% offset of the LED cost, so it was worth jumping through a few hoops.

 

[sublime68charger]

Great work as always denwood!

 

[Denwood]

Thanks Sub..swapping bulbs is a lot easier than pulling stumps down there in Michigan

 

[sublime68charger]

Denwood I don't know about Michigan stump removal policy's,

But in Wisconsin. We use camp fires and cold beer!

It's a win win solution! Though it make take a campfire or 10 to get the desired results!
Beer intake varies by campfire as well!

 

[Denwood]

Ah, so at least I listed a valid US state...Wisconsin, duly noted.

 

[sublime68charger]

No problem Denwood, if you had said Minnesota I'd have been insulted big time!
It's my Green Bay packer fan in me that dislike Minnesota and there Vikings football team.

It's a great state overall and very scenic like Wisconsin for the parts I've been through.

 

[Denwood]

It's been a busy summer..but found some time to work on the porch fix.

Here was the house last summer:

HardyBoard and paint, but still some work on the porch to do as of a month or so ago.

Stairs blasted with a pressure washer, dried and repainted to match the HardyBoard "Harris Creme" factory finish. I also sprayed the rocking chair on the porch with black stain to match the refinished front door. The Wagner 590 gun made that job unbelievably quick at about 10 minutes.

I originally figured these windows would all need to be replaced as there were multiple areas of rot on the lower frames. Previous painters had done some really poor patch jobs with putty that more or less disintegrated.

After some research, decided to use this two part epoxy putty. It was a lot cheaper from Amazon. Highly recommended as it's waterproof, structural, and integrates wood fiber to make sanding, drilling etc manageable. You mix part A and B in equal quantities. It applies like stiff body filler but like most epoxy is virtually odorless. Highly recommended. The product name is slightly ironic I figure

 

[1/2 Cup]

Dennis, wow you have been busy and the pictures speak a thousand words.

Well done, looks a treat.

Regards

 

[Lyndon]

Dennis

I second what Steve said ^^^^^^.

You're still putting me to shame , but it is a very nice winters day here, so some QST is actually happening.

Oh, and it involves some spray paint - (yippee!!!) I like spray painting much more than the other type.

Lyndon
Now getting back to the garage.

 

[Denwood]

1/2, thanks as always for the encouragment

Lyndon, I forget as many of us do that your winter and our summer seasons are swapped! Sounds like it's still a lot, lot warmer there than here in winter I completely agree on the spray thing. I was not looking forward to painting the rocking chair black, as it's a slider/rocker design...so a lot of parts. It was propped it up on two saw horses in the back lane, then sprayed with about a quart of Benjamin Moore water base solid stain. It would have taken hours by brush, but spraying, I only needed about 10 minutes. The same finish gun setup in the kit was used to spray the front door after stripping it.

 

[drivesitfar]

WOODY: WELL DONE SIR!!!

great thinking and follow through and i agree your wood patch product's name sounded like a perfect match. you are making you 100 year old house a very nice home and i bet your wife and family is very happy and feeling fortunate that you are the guy in charge of making it happen.

you still have a few more months before you go in the DEEP FREEZE so hopefully you'll get in a few more runs, bike rides and trips on the lake before then.

cheers

PS: i just posted the sign at our favorite ice cream place in the weight loss thread showing what they put in their ice cream and the flavors in case you might have a place near you that does the same.

 

[Lyndon]

Lyndon, I forget as many of us do that your winter and our summer seasons are swapped! Sounds like it's still a lot, lot warmer there than here in winter I completely agree on the spray thing. I was not looking forward to painting the rocking chair black, as it's a slider/rocker design...so a lot of parts. It was propped it up on two saw horses in the back lane, then sprayed with about a quart of Benjamin Moore water base solid stain. It would have taken hours by brush, but spraying, I only needed about 10 minutes. The same finish gun setup in the kit was used to spray the front door after stripping it.

Dennis

Um, yep, our winters are a lot less traumatic than yours....... (End of commercial now). We still get cold, but only by our standards, not yours. Oh, and yes, at the opposite end of the calenders to your seasons.

And I'm interested in your spray equipment. What I was referring to was a spray can, but the items you show appear to be electric, not air, powered. And I'm interested. Also note that you say you set it up in the back lane. That's another problem I have here - no-where to spray anything. I don't want over spray going onto cars and things so I get as far away as I can, which is on the top lawn, for anything I do (which requires a still, nice weather day). I'm already planning a separate room at the next place that will be the wood work shop, and with some drop down plastic curtains, the spray shop. But I'm intrigued by the electric rather than air based spray system you showed.... Am I correct there, and if so, what sort of system is it?

Lyndon
Still interested

 

[Denwood]

Drives, yep only a few months left of the warm weather. We've been doing lots of biking and hanging out at the lake. On the weight loss thing, all the biking is having at least some effect

Lyndon, the spray "kit" is called the Wagner Flexio 590. It comes with two heads, one for thinner paint, and the other for unthinned latex. It's basically an inexpensive HVLP system...so the motorized part is a a small air turbine. It slightly pressurizes the paint container to assist with material feed, while atomizing paint at the spray tip very similar to any HVLP gun. Using the finer finish head, I was able to get a nice flat finish on the exterior door as well spray the porch rocking bench with stain. Parts on these kits are mostly plastic, so they would not fare well in a commercial setting. That said, the kit works well for home use and is a huge time saver for some projects. I do have a mid level Devilbiss HVLP gun for automotive work, but these guns generally work best for thinner finishes.

Overspray on the Flexio system with water base paints is not so bad, so just keeping a drop sheet in place to protect surroundings from direct spray would be fine. It was faster for me to just spray outside the shop..no complaints.

 

[drivesitfar]

Woody: happy to hear you are getting some time to do something other than work on your home. i'm stuck in ORGANIZING MODE and i'm almost ready to sell everything that i don't or won't use. ALMOST, but probably not going to happen.

anyway as far as the Weight loss or good health my SWEET TOOTH has always been an issue with my eating choices and of course having good food around the house either to grab quick or eating one of my bride's delicious meals doesn't always look good on the scale. it's a battle that i'm trying to win so i can live healthier and maybe a few years longer.

in case you want to see what i ate for 21 days (it's a modified 21 day fix diet that i didn't follow exactly) it might help you because at least i maintained my weight below 220 and i posted up all the meals on post #7. also in case you might want to try this pour yourself a big glass of ice water daily and add 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar in it to drink before breakfast. i'm starting to add gravenstein flavored balsamic vinegar which tastes a LOT better. Google the benefits of apple cider vinegar if you want to know why or just DO IT as NIKE says.

http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=298568&page=193

cheers and is the entertainment room in the basement on the books yet as your next adventure or maybe the kitchen?

 

[Denwood]

Drives, likely the kitchen is next up. Business has sucked up a lot of time over the last two months so for now..just little projects. The porch window "repair" is nearing completion.

 

[dlcwent]

Woody, just stopped by to see what you've been up to. How do you find time to get all the things done that you do and still enjoy some family time. Good for you.

I did have to laugh at this one............"The product name is slightly ironic I figure "

 

[Denwood]

D, thanks for your post It's been a pretty amazing summer with respect to weather so we've tried to maximise our time while it's nice!

My brother and I managed a pretty intense mountain bike ride for the first time in about 10 yrs with no kids in tow. My hat's off to the folks at the Black Sheep MTB club who've been very busy since I last rode in the Shuniah Mines trail network. This "Grand Chasm" trial maybe my favourite ever:

I also managed a much easier 15K ride with my daughter last night, who at 13 is just easing into single track and longer rides. This old beast has clocked a lot of kms!

and just in case anyone figured I was being lazy on the porch project, here's the inside after the first coat of oil based primer. After the final coat of PPG Break-Through white satin, it should look great. The outside epoxy putty work is done, with sanding/shaping and priming to do today.

This is what it looked like a few days ago:

 

[Denwood]

Been mighty busy at work, but managed to squeeze in some time to demo the porch floor in preparation for leveling and reframing with pressure treated lumber. There were 2 layers of plywood and two more of tongue and groove in nasty shape to pull up. The old fir planks left over are in excellent shape, so I just ran a few GRK screws into the concrete foundation to ensure good stability as I move onwards with reframing. The Rigid hammer drill and impact driver worked perfectly for this application...the masonry and torx bits are included in each anchor kit.

 

[1/2 Cup]

Dennis,

The maintenance to a home never stops and I guess that's one of the joys of owning a home..

I use similar fasteners to your GRK screws and have found them fantastic.

They are a Ramset product.

http://www.ramset.com.au/Product/Section/21/Medium-Duty-Anchors

Looking good..

Regards

 

[drivesitfar]

Woody: you are a brave man to open that porch up like that just before Winter shows up. happy to see you didn't have any major issues that sometimes happens on old 100+ year old porches. i love your JUST DO IT attitude and putting your name with LAZY in the same sentence i think would be an OXYMORON so that ain't happening anytime soon.

it actually looks like you could lose a few pounds riding that bike 15 miles so keep up the good work having your FUN so to speak.

cheers