Greetings from Germany

Thanks, Hans!

The hoisting frame was made from construction timber that I used to shore up the stairs to my basement so they could take the load of the equipment and three or four people at the same time.  The architect who designed the house told me each tread was rated at 400KG, but he couldn't remember what the maximum limit for the stairway was.  I didn't want to take any chances, so I made a T-brace for each of the 12 treads that helped transfer the load to the floor.  I also made a set of three graduated risers so a 1.5 square meter sheet of 19mm plywood could cover four treads at a time and make a large platform to rest the equipment while the chain hoist was repositioned during each move down the stairs.  The chain hoist was attached to the upper level stair treads and didn't need any additional bracing.

I don't have any images of the bracing, but this is an image of the graduated risers with a smaller piece of plywood.  The larger plywood covered four treads and made a stable platform to take the weight of any piece of equipment.

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I used clamps and hinged bracing on each riser to minimize the risk of racking.  It worked well, and while testing it without the plywood cover, I could not make the risers move no matter how jiggy I got with it.  The bottoms of the risers have non-skid rubber sheets glued to them, so once in place, they do not slide around.

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My immediate projects are mostly for my shop.  These include finishing up the miter saw workstation (parts on order), building a router table (already in progress and parts on order), installing a Belfast sink in another room of the basement as part of my sharpening station, and making holders for my chisels, planes, saws, and other woodworking hand tools.  I have some of the tools on the wall-mounted OSB, but have since bought more and need to redo the layout.
 
This is what the shop portion of the finished basement looked like before the renovation and fit out.  When I took this image, the main chassis of the SC2 was still in the garage. 

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This is my concept plan in SketchUp prior to the drywall construction.

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I suck at drywall, so I contracted that portion out after I moved all of the equipment to the basement.  The new drywall is at the bottom of the sketch and includes the dust collection closet and the main shop door.  I did the rest of the work myself.  So far, I've remained true to the original design.  I added a mobile router table to the collection, but it will be stored outside the shop in the corner by the dust collection closet and the main door when not being used.

Since all new residential houses in Germany are wired with 3-phase power, I installed a separate 3-phase distribution panel in the shop.  There are two sets of digital meters monitoring the panel.  The smaller ammeter at the top cycles between each of the phases and displays the current to the shop.  The three digital meters below that display the continuous voltage and current for each phase of the dust collection blower.  The top row of circuit breakers are three-phase and the bottom row are single phase.

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Hey Mike

That's quite a bit of effort and ingenuity just getting all the tools down the stairs.  Looks great.

And I like the tile floor.
 
Very impressive shop indeed. Thank you for the update. Props on the rigging and machinery moving.
 
[member=70363]MikeGE[/member] - you don't know how to do anything haphazard, do you [wink]

The riser set up for the stairs are really something. Talk about an engineered solution! - Wow.
I remember my humble woodworking efforts in the basement of our apartment in Vienna years ago. When we built our last house and home workshop we designed the basement with 10 ft ceilings clear. My wife did not want another Minnesota style "walkout" basement so I designed the basement with a secondary access by building a pit in the garage to house a 4 ft wide straight, stout staircase. A recycled 4 ft steel fire door opened into the basement. All equipment moved into and out of the basement traveling on platforms raised or lowered by attaching chain to the trailer hitch of my car. To lower or bring up I just moved the car as needed - in minutes. The stair pit was covered in normal use  while a conventional interior stair served the everyday needs.

No problems moving cast iron machinery or full size antique airplanes (disassembled) in and out.

Your solution is tailormade for European circumstances. My hat's off to you!

Hans

 
Hans, I would love to have a workshop with 10-foot ceilings! 

When my wife and I discussed how to divide up the larger 5x10 meter section of the basement, she told me she wanted half for her hobbies, so I contracted the drywall company to divide the space in half and double up on the GWB and use denser insulation to improve the acoustic attenuation.
Months later, after she saw how much equipment I had in the room, she told me I could have had more of the space if I wanted it, as she just wanted a little area for reading.  I called the drywall guys for an estimate to demo the new wall and put up another wall to create a larger space, but the cost was over triple the first wall, and they wouldn't be able to get to it for six months.  Business was very good at that time for all drywall installers, so I abandoned that idea.
 
Hans, I don't want to detract from Mike's shop thread, but how about a little bit of info on the airplanes in the basement comment !  [scared] [eek] [big grin]

TSO_Products said:
[member=70363]MikeGE[/member] -

No problems moving cast iron machinery or full size antique airplanes (disassembled) in and out.

Hans
 
Rob Z said:
Hans, I don't want to detract from Mike's shop thread, but how about a little bit of info on the airplanes in the basement comment !  [scared] [eek] [big grin]

I'm curious as well!
 
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