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I was curious as to what you'all heat your shop with? I use to use propane but at nearly $3 gallon I have decided to look at other options. My shop is about 600 sq feet. And I'm in southeast Tenn. and it doesn't get to cold around here for long peroids of time. I'm thinking of going with a woodheater which was given to me.

One more thing that I'm curious about is what did guitar builders do 100 + years ago about controlling the humidity in there shops?

Your thoughts please....
Jeff

My shop is 28' X 28' with a high ceiling- I need to use propane or wood up here!

There was no way to control humidity in the old shops!
But they stored their woods in an area that had warm dry air in the winter!
Which is easy!
But the humid summers of the east make it impossible to glue up ;without some trouble when the pieces dry out!
They usually went by the seat of their pants -so to say!

In the hot humid days make sure your wood is stickered and do not glue up anything important!

Get a Hygrometer -a good one-to accurely measure your moisture in the air and keep your woods stickered and as dry as you can !!
Glue woods when the humidity is less than 50% for at least 4 days!

mike

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Mike Collins

I read somewhere that the more astute builders learned what time of day had the best humidity in their shops to perform certain critical tasks.

A woodstove is great, and wood heat is the best, but will dry up the air considerably. A large pan filled with water on the stove should balance things out.
Builders used to schedule their builds and hurry to close up soundboxes when the weather was just right. 2 small, thin pieces of spruce glued end grain to long grain when the humidity is right will warp one way when it's too humid, the other way when too dry.

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

Do you mean that heat produced by burning wood dries up the air more than heat from other sources, and if so, how so?

The problem with a wood stove, or any heat source that comes on only when you are in your shop, is that the relative humidity will change (get lower) as soon as the temperature rises, and vice versa when it falls, and it might become difficult or at least tiresome to control.

In the old days, I'm pretty sure they used this phenomena to help manipulate the RH to their advantage as much as they could, along with the other things that have been mentioned.

I have a furnace in the house and radiators in the shop (as soon as I remount them them that is, electric oil filled radiators substitute them for the time being ), and the temperature and RH stays the same pretty much year round. Turning the heat up and down got old. Your mileage may vary, of course.

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

I have two electric baseboard heaters hooked to a thermostat so I don't have to worry about the temperature changing in my shop when I'm not there. As Arnt said, any change in temperature will change the humidity one way or another so controlling the temperature all the time is a good idea (IMO).

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My post crashed, but maybe this one will deliver.

I have a gas space heater that draws combustion air from outside and returns the exhaust gas outside, thus minimizing the extra water that I need to compensate for heating.

I think that a wood stove drafts more air than a properly adjusted gas or propane heater, thus requiring more water to compensate for moist air blown up the stack.

I've got hot water floor heat and it's great. Fairly easy to control humidity in winter.
Terry

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Oh, the other thing with electric baseboard heaters is that they are 100% efficient. All the power turns into heat, nothing goes out a vent port, no flames to light anything on fire, no gas to leak. It's a great source for heat.

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"There's really no wrong way, as long as the results are what's desired." Charles Fox

"We have to constantly remind ourselves what we're doing....No Luthier is putting a man on the moon!" Harry Fleishman

"Generosity is always different in the eye of the person who didn't receive anything, but who wanted some." Waddy Thomson

Terry,

If I may, what is your shop (basement, garage, outbuilding, etc.) and what is your heating unit? TIA

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DES - Farwell, MI

A woodstove is radiant heat, very different from pushed air. It really dries the air up, but is also more "comfortable". 68º with wood feels much warmer than 68º with pushed air, or baseboard heaters. The closest in feel is radiant floors, a pretty efficient way to heat as well.
A good woodstove is really easy to control once you get the hang of it. I load mine maybe twice a day and heat is constant in house and shop, so is humidity.

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

Here’s how this works: Heat is heat, how it is produced does not determine how much water the air will hold at a specific temperature.

If cold, dry outside air is permitted to enter and mix with the inside air, it will cause the relative humidity will drop . Some air will, and should enter, but leaky ductwork with forced air systems, as well as a “leaky house” construction makes this a bigger problem than necessary . The best remedy for a dry air in a house is to figure out where the big leaks are and seal them up, and to test whether the heating system is balanced or the ducts are leaky, and fix those things.

FWIW, I do agree that hot water floor heat feels great (I have that in most of my basement, which I had it in my shop as well), and I love my wood stove. I’d have to feed it a lot more than twice a day if it was my only heat source, though.

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

I live in a house where there's an oil furnace (pushed air), and that's what we used the 1st winter here in Northern N-E. The house is well insulated and pretty tight. It sucked and is expensive, forget about now in 2008…
Second winter I installed 2 woodstoves in the house and that's the only heat source we've been using since. It's been 6 years…
My experience is given the same ambient temp., say between 60º and 70º F, humidity level with pushed air is higher than with the woodstove, maybe 10%. Same house, same location, same seasons… It seems the mass of the stove really sucks the moisture out, and pretty quickly.
Granted this is New-England and there are wide swings in temp. and humidity. Pretty hard to stay on top of things around here.

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

I've got natural gas feeding an overhead radiant heater. Its one of those big long tube things with the reflector over it. It works really well.

I had to retrofit an older frame built garage into a wood shop. Radiant floor heat would have been preferred, but difficult and expensive to retrofit. Wood heat was too inconsistent for me, someone would always have to feed it.

This heater I can leave a a steady temp, which is good for the materials, adhesive curing, and paint/varnish drying. I can easily raise the temp a set amount when needed. As its overhead, I can actually feel comfortable with a lower set thermostat, its usually set somewhere around 17-18C. Added bonus, and most important to me, combustible air is drawn in from outside, and is exhausted outside. No exposed flame for dust or fumes. My peace of mind regarding safety is pretty high, and that's a good thing.

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Yikes! Make that "Here's my understanding of how this works...", that was probably Adolf Rian, my evil brother, chiming in...

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

Radiant for me as well. I had it in my larger Auto Body Shop building and it was great. No air movement, no filters, no exposed flame, all contained. That system was over 20 years old and all we ever did was replace the first pipe near the burner. The radiant tube heats all the objects in the room, floor, walls, benches, tools. makes it so comfortable. I have a small humidifier that I have to fill every few days. The only catch is the floor to ceiling clearance. You have to have 10 feet or more I think. Here are a couple shots.

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jw ( o)===:::

IMO, here is what is happening ....

at a give temp, air can hold so much water - the colder the air, the less water it can hold, hence, why it is usually cold and dry .. that said, it can still feel moist outside when its cold, but that just means that the air has as much water as it can hold at that temp, which still isnt very much as compared to much warmer air.

So, no matter what heat you have, in winter, the air inside your house/shop comes in every time you open a window or door, or unless you possibly have an airtight house (almost impossible, and if you did, you would require an air exchanger to compensate), leaks thru windows and doors. So in the winter, you let in cold dry air, which then gets warmed up, and the relative humidity of that air DROPS .... a lot (especially here in Canada). I am not sure of the exact numbers, but if its 10 degrees F outside, and 50 %, then at 70 degrees that air likely has about 20% or less in it - bad for guitars and building. I was in a gutiar shop in Ottawa in the winter a few years .. and even with 2 humidifiers running full blast, the RH was only at 35% according to the hygro .. the store's door opening/closing was letting all the moister warmer air out, and colder drier air in.

If you are heating with any combustable, it needs air from somewhere to burn - so even if your doors are shut, its pulling it thru leaks in the house, again, dropping the relative humidity in winter. (obviously, in the east in summer, the reverse is true - warmer moister air comes in, and even as you air conditioner cools it, the humidity still doesnt drop that low, but its lower than the air that originally came in.

So what is happening when you heat your cold shop up to go and work in it, is that the air warms up fast with your heater, but your table saw and jointer table stays colder longer, and the humidity condenses on these surfaces, just like a cold drink glass in summer. The only way to get this to stop, is to keep it warm(er) all the time.

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Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

Regardless fo how it came out Arnt ...you have it right as far as I know as well.

Heating a space (and the air currently within that space) makes the relative humidity lower...relative...meaning that the warm air COULD now hold more water, so it ends up "feeling" dry...REGARDLESS of your heat source (I'm not going to argue about whether a fire stove dries the air out MORE than other heating sources or not ).

This link has some good stuff on humidity and air quality and this data from a psychometric chart:

"If the outside air temperature in winter is 0°F and the relative humidity is 75 percent, that same air inside your 70°F home will have a four percent relative humidity!" ...

Joe

Darin,
To answer your question my system is a "Thermolec" brand put in by a friend in the heating and cooling business. It's a free standing garage sized outbuilding. The only thing you have to worry about is putting floor anchors in the concrete for compressors, buffers etc. You only have about 2" before you hit the pipes. I've had it for 4 years and it's been great so far. I know concrete retains moisture and takes a long time to fully dry. I always wondered if the floor heat released some of that moisture for a few years. I'm in west central MN so there are MAJOR temp and humidity swings here.
Terry

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

argumentum ad ignorantiam

Tony's explanation makes sense, plus the fact that a building can hold and release quite a bit of moisture (wood, concrete etc.).
Everybody around where I live knows a woodstove will dry things out considerably, compared to other heat sources. Sometimes theories are nice, but reality, being more complex, collides…

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

The argument from ignorance. What are you referring to, Laurent?

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

"If the outside air temperature in winter is 0°F and the relative humidity is 75 percent, that same air inside your 70°F home will have a four percent relative humidity!"

Theoretically correct (perhaps) but never happens…

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

This is true but, how heat is produced also determines what its products of combustion are.

e.g. If you burn pure hydrogen with pure oxygen, you get pure water as the only byproduct.

e.g. # 2, If you burn pure carbon with pure oxygen, you get pure CO2 as the only byproduct.

More water in the air increases RH. More CO2 does not.

There are ventless heating systems, usually propane or natural gas powered that are quite popular. Using one of these would would have a different effect on RH compared to an electric or outside venting system for the same increase in temp (though I admit I have no idea of the magnitude of difference).

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I see your point Andy .. but where are those by products going ??? .. up the flue, as steam is my guess - its not like the water will come streaming out of a pipe on the floor. I dont know of any commercial or residential heater that without some kind of add-on, like say a pot of water on top of a wood stove, or a furnace humidifier, that can actually raise the rooms ambient RH.

Anywhere where the outside RH is lower than the inside (like northern places in winter), when you have combustion of some sort for heat inside, the RH is going down, it wont matter what you burn - because the combustion will use air in the building, the byproducts of which now goes up the flue, and that inside air gets replaced by what - air from outside, which is lower RH. Even an air tight stove isnt perfectly airtight, and even if it draws thru an outside source, the RH is still going down ambiently.

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Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

My new house has the 6" vent pipe that connects to a passive, open dryer type vent on the back side of the house and empties in the basement right between the gas hot water heater and furnace. It's purpose is to supply outside air to support combustion to the hot water heater and furnace.

Because of this pipe I was able to close off this area as a utility room and be OK with local building codes and seal it as well as possible from the rest of the house.

I am finding that this house humidifies and heats very well and is not drafty since the furnace and hot water heater draw air directly from outside and are closed off in their own room.

My first inclination when I found this pipe and discovered where it went was to close it off - good thing I investigated further and determined it's benefits.