Simple Screen Room Build - Advice?

[mimosatexas]

I am in the process of expanding into a new 300ish sq ft space on the side of my shop and want to make it into a dedicated screen room.  It is laid out with basically a door dead center on either of the short walls, so it naturally has two 8ish foot wide halves. 

On one side, I was thinking of building an insulated room on for screen storage/drying, film storage, and my FPU.  This side would have a lower ceiling and a door of some kind and would be temp and humidity controlled.  The final room would be somewhere around 7x12 and I should be able to store around 50-100 screens of all sizes in there with room to move around and for the other equipment.

On the other side, it will have a "clean" washout booth, post exposure dip tank, drying racks in one corner, and my exposure unit in the other.

This is not going to be fancy, but I want to make the right choices when it comes to layout and material choices etc.

Any advice on what I should use for sheathing the inside of the screen room?  Greenboard or is normal drywall fine because of the dehumidifiers?  Any advice on how to drain the dehumidifiers through the wall in some way so they can just be constantly on without worrying about emptying them?  Any advice on layout based on what I described or any equipment I may want to add in down the line that I should plan around (DTS is not in the cards for a while, but other stuff maybe)?

If anyone has photos of their screen rooms, drying rooms, exposure rooms, whatever...it would be helpful.  Thanks!

[Zelko-4-EVA]

i installed a condensate pump on our dehumidifier:

 http://www.little-giantpump.com/554530_new.htm

it pumps the water into the handwashing sink - never have to empty the dehumidifier again.

[ebscreen]

A layout in your favorite graphics program is worth a thousand words, particularly if to scale.

I will say this, screen drying and screen developing in the same room is going to make for a roller
coaster of humidity on your screens.

Our layout luckily allows our dehumidifier to drain into our develop sink. A pump would work as well.

Lastly, get the biggest cfm exhaust fan you can. It's worked wonders in our cleaning/developing room.

[mimosatexas]

I have it mostly mocked up in Illustrator.  I always try to mock up build outs in Illy first   I've attached the mockup as an image and the ai file with grouped components.  Some stuff is still missing like my expo unit.

The black walls are existing and cannot be changed.  The gray represents existing doors and those also cannot be changed (unfortunately).  The red represents the dry room I was thinking of building.  The ceiling is 10' in the room now, but I was going to stud out an 8 foot ceiling on the dry room to make the volume of the room smaller so the humidity and temp are easier to control.  The wall on the right is the wet wall and the washout booth will need to be on the right side of the room for drainage. It is kind of an awkward space honestly, but I needed to expand to make room in my main shop and this was the only option without moving locations.

I was thinking of putting the expo unit in the top right corner.  I have also though about putting the washout booth and dip tank along the bottom wall (turned 90 degrees from the mockup) and building a wall coming out from the right wall to half enclose it, then putting the drying racks along the other side of that wall.  It would sort of make a third area and control spray/mist better, but would be a little less efficient for putting the screens in the drying rack after finishing washout.  The washout booth and dip tank in this room will only be used for post exposure washout, no chemicals of any kind (with one rare exception, this booth will fit larger screens as I am starting to do all over prints, and my current booth is a pain in the ass to work with on large screens.).  I have another booth currently being used for everything, but I want to turn that into strictly a reclaim/dirty booth. 

Thanks for the tip on that pump, I will look into that.  Any other advice on layout or materials to build out would be great!

[ABuffington]

I agree on the location of your wash out sinks.  Keep them outside of this room, the humidity, especially ion rainy days will be an issue.
You could put an exhaust hood over your sink to pull as much humidity out as possible and keep the drying room sealed off with weather stripping. But I highly recommend not to develop and reclaim in the same room as your coated screens.

Do not dry wet reclaimed screens with coated screens.  The dry coated screens absorb the humidity like a sponge and then getting them dry is a wait process that only a moisture meter can tell if they are dry enough to shoot.  Re-plumbing the sinks may not be an option, but if you can put them on the outside of this room it will be better for your coated screens and give you room to build a sealed drying oven in your room that you can build with 2x4's and wall mount heaters with a thermostat.   You can also put the de-humidifier high enough on a shelf that the drain tube can be angled down to drain into the sink, or use PVC pipe to catch the drips and send them to the sink.  Emptying the dehumidifier is never done often enough.  I can't tell you how many times I have gone into a screen room and find it on, but not working due to the tank getting filled up, often fills up in 3-4 hours in humid conditions.

Also the smaller the drying room, the longer it takes to cure.  Just a matter of the dry air volume.  Small rooms spike in humidity, whereas the whole room you are showing would dry screens faster with a 35% humidity and more dry air volume. Put some oscillating fans on the walls in the corners to move the dry air around.  On the floor they just pick up dust.

Definitely green board and showerboard over the wall behind your sinks wherever they are located.

Key temps:  Less than 80 degrees for any emulsion with diazo added. (Most waterbase and discharge emulsions)  Up to 100 degrees for pure photopolymers for plastisol.  Dehumidifier 35%.  It is possible in the winter or on very dry days to have the air too dry.  This shows up as cracking along the edge of the image on the screen.

Al

[mimosatexas]

Thanks for the tips.  I'll definitely add in the corner fans and what not. 

[easyscore]

Get a hydrometer. It measures the temp and humidity in the room. Usually they will give you the current reading and high and low of the course of the day.

[mimosatexas]

Any suggestions on brand or where to buy one?

[ABuffington]

I have purchased some inexpensive hydrometer/thermometers at Radio Shack.

[abchung]

Get one that can be calibrated.

http://www.wikihow.com/Test-a-Hygrometer

[mk162]

meh, I wouldn't worry about being that accurate.  if you are off a little it's not a matter of life or death.

Also, we have 2 in the room, different places will read differently...and usually a dehumidifier will have one as well...so between 2 or 3 of them, you get a pretty decent idea.

walmart sells one for around $7.

[Printficient]

Give me a call and I can explain how to make non intrusive screen racks out of 2x4s.  Very inexpensive and you get quite a few racks out of a single 10' board.
404-895-1796

[tonypep]

Personally I don't like a lot of wood in the screen room. I make rails for racks with 1-1/2 pvc tubing. Be sure to bench grind the ends.

[mimosatexas]

My mobile racks for drying screens fresh from reclaim or post exposure washout are all pvc.  I'll take a picture of them and post it in DIY sometimes this week.  My storage racks for dirty screens or upcoming jobs (basically dry racks) are all metal rails with treated wood framed.  In the actual drying room, I am using2x2's tacked to the corners so they can hold any size of screen.  Since the only moisture on those screens will be in the emulsion, I figured wood was not an issue there.

Thanks for the tip on the hydrometer.  I'll grab one today.

[Gilligan]

My mobile racks for drying screens fresh from reclaim or post exposure washout are all pvc.  I'll take a picture of them and post it in DIY sometimes this week.  My storage racks for dirty screens or upcoming jobs (basically dry racks) are all metal rails with treated wood framed.  In the actual drying room, I am using2x2's tacked to the corners so they can hold any size of screen.  Since the only moisture on those screens will be in the emulsion, I figured wood was not an issue there.

Thanks for the tip on the hydrometer.  I'll grab one today.

I'd be interested in some DIY mobile racks.  We have one now that we love... but we just bought some Retens that aren't typical sized and are JUST a hair too big... so we might need to build something.  I could modify our job carts to hold them but I'm not sure how I feel about that yet and it wouldn't be enough technically.