Interior walls of shop

[Mitch]

The garage is finally cleared out and SWMBO agreed (or gave
permission) to let me setup my new shop. Previous owners installed what looks like 1/2" particle board on the walls
instead of sheetrock. My question: is this stuff safe for a shop, or would it be worthwhile dismantling and hanging new
sheetrock?

After reading some recent posts on shop fires, that peaked my
paranoia and want to setup shop the "right" way.


TIA,
Mitch

[Douglas Scott]

Sheetrock would provide a better margin of safety as far as fire is concerned, if is an attached garage the common wall requires 5/8 fire rated sheetrock, the other walls may be OK depending on local code requirements. Another consideration is if it is not insulated or if you want more electrical outlets, can't seem to have too many of those. You may want to pull off the wood to take care of those matters, in which case I would put sheetrock back up.

[Lou_williams]

Doug's reply is right on the money.

I would put in lots of electrical outlets both 110 and 220 about every 3 to 4 foot of wall. Mark in another post suggested thay you keep them at 50 inch above the floor so that sheet good don't cover them.

If you have a one man shop is is hard to really use more than one major power tool at the same time. Thus you don't need that many different circuits. Or atleast you don't need that much raw power to a new sub pannel for all your shop power. i would run the 110 circuit on a GFI breaker. Much safer than normal.

One thing you could do is run a 30 amp 220 breaker and line to a new box. 30 amp is only #10 wire so it is easy to get at Home Depot ect.

You can then run 5 to 10 circuits off that incoming line as your shop power. Having more circuits might allow you to set up the automatic blast gate devices and auto Saw dust power in the future. Nice to have.

Just some random thoughts on How I would do it again. By the way I am an BSEE Electical Engineer.