What temp do you keep your shop? / avg op cost per s.f.?

[ZooCity]

Running and overnight? 

I keep the stat at:

51˚F overnight/weekends
 
56˚F when working in the shop.  When printing, the dryers put off enough to bump the actual temp up to the 60s. 

I found that if I go colder that the temp change will occasionally pop screens that are out so that's kind of the limiting factor for me.  Curious to see what others do.   

Our bills seem high to me- $400-500 for 1722 sf M-F typically sometimes more/less.  We could benefit from an air exchanger as I have to crack a window to ensure there's make up air when running the big dryer which has it's own exhaust and the exhaust fan that exhausts the whole shop.  I'm just not sure there would be a justifiable ROI on it.   Maybe I'm just a cheap ass and those bills aren't high though, we are in MT and the avg temp ain't exactly balmy this time of year. 

[blue moon]

we are at high 60's over night and 72 or so during the day. We'll go up to 78 or so during the summer, but are generally in the mid 70's year round.

Normal electric for 5K sq feet is about $600/month (electric dryer and flash use most of the juice). Air conditioning adds about $250-$300 per month in the summer time.

pierre


 

[Gilligan]

Chris,

If you get a bit of time, you could build a nice cheap solar air heater and get "free" heat anytime the sun is shining (that might not make this applicable to you though).

http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/SpaceHeating/DownSpout/DownSpout.htm

Though, you might look at doing at least something like this for the air intake that you use for your making up the air that the dryer exhaust.  At least it would be warm air coming back in vs that crack in the window.

[ZooCity]

Those can or downspout collectors are rad, thx Kevin.  Not sure if they would be useful enough in Winter, probably 50/50- we get lots of sun at times but also suffer some gnarly inversions in the valley every couple of years where there is no sun at all for an extended period of time.  I'm way into the idea of doing it with beer cans.

It would be sick to rig a big one of these up for year round use where it feeds the dryer itself with warm air, reducing the energy needed to heat the dryer and then use a heat exchanger on the outtake of the dryer to warm the shop as needed.

Any super big shops want to chime in?  I'm curious what you do with 10k sf +.  I imagine a lot of spot heating where it's needed.

[GraphicDisorder]

6300 sqft warehouse and we keep it in the high 40s in winter when not printing and its hit enough to open bay door when printing in the dead of winter.  Our gas bill is 200-300-400 and the other 1700 sqft is gas heat as well so it's not all the boomerange sucking it down.  We have 2 gas 220k btu heaters as well.  We keep em at 50 though when not printing so it actually is in the 40s down at the floor. 

[Gilligan]

I've looked into doing something for an air exchanger... I haven't figured out what I would really want to do.  Mostly I'm thinking about making it a water heater though and put a radiator in a box and pass the air through it so it heats up a tank of water for the washout booth.