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Building a woodturning shop

My memory may not be serving me correctly this morning but the electrician said something about an 80% load on the breaker panel and had a calculation worksheet to make that determination. There are online calculators that do that same thing. I don't know if its an NEC requirement or recommendation but the electrician said the when permitting they will be looking at the 80% rule.

My goal is to have an electrician run wire to the shop either from the garage or from the house. At least from the garage it gets me started. I did get to thinking, from the garage would be ideal. Its closer to the house and would be easier to increase the feeder wire from the house than running a new one all the way out to the shop. For permit reasons the electrician would install the panel, one light and one outlet. After that I have no problems wiring, I was an electrician in the Navy and wires never scared me.

I agree with the comments that resale value would be higher with a bigger more versatile shop. But I have to keep it heated all winter so I'm building it to the size that works for me, not for what someone else in the future would want. Since I'm retired I'm confident that this will be the last house I live in, I don't care what the resale value is for whomever inherits the house. As a 100% disabled veteran I have a property tax exemption on the house and the taxable value of the house is frozen. If I build a shop that makes a significant change in value of the property I the taxable value increases and I lose my property tax exemption for one year, and then after reapplying my 60% exemption will be off the new value, in the end it costs me more money and being on a fixed income that is never a good thing. So there are many reasons for keep it appropriately sized for me.

Tim, I've planned for good cross ventilation and where the shop would be located there is always a breeze. I did put feelers out to get another estimate but I think I'm going to proceed with the 16x24. I just have to muster up the courage to spend the money :-)
 
If you can build a shop with a small foot print with a high ceiling, you could always use pallet racking for shelves and they offer a mezzanine system that you could use as a 2nd floor. This would not be calculated into your square footage in your shop but could greatly increase your usable work area.
 
That's a great idea Mike. I believe the garage/shop comes with 8' walls (1' higher than I already have) and I'll ask the cost to go higher. The county here calculates lofts and second floors into overall square footage. All permanent flat storage space, such as lofts, are counted. Temporary such as shelves are not. Of course if a loft is added later after the build..... But I'm not too worried about an abundance of storage. I have several racks in the garage with wood that will be moved to the old shop, I have a dedicated 8x12 wood shed with a lean to (filled with more wood of course), and a small greenhouse fill with, well, you know :-) All of my hand tools and finishing and embellishing stuff already fits in my small shop so I should be good to go. I do plan on a lot of shelves and hanging space but even in a 16x24 I should be set. One thought is not matter how big a shop is I could probably find something to put into it. If I keep the size just right for me then I may not be tempted to buy things I probably really don't need anyway.
 
I have two 4x 7-1/2 ft doors ( 8 feet wide open) on one end of my shop. They are framed up just like the walls, insulated, with painted 1/4" plywood and inset in the wall. Strong, quick to make, look nice.

Leave some of those other big tools in the shed and use them there.
John
 
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