humidity in the game room: detached vs. garage vs. basement
As many probably know, we're selling our house with plans of buying a house/property where I can have a big game room. I was talking about detached shops with a fellow wrencher last night, and he was talking about a co-worker with a shop. Oregon of course gets somewhat cold in the winter (highs in the low 40's typically) but quite humid. So this guy would heat up his shop to do some work, and then when done it would cool down and cause condensation. As a result he had a pretty big problem with tools rusting and whatnot.
Obviously that was quite a red flag to me because in order to broaden our purchase options, we're considering basements or detached shops (whether pre-built or we build ourselves). Garage would be a consideration too, but since I want 3 bays strictly for cars/motorcycle/wrenching it would have to be quite a garage to have enough room for a big game room as well.
So for those of you in cold/humid climates, what insight can you provide regarding dealing with humidity in each of the game room locations I mentioned? Initially it freaked me out a bit, thinking we'd have to eliminate detached shops from consideration because it seems like it would mean full time climate control, though as I thought about it I'm not sure. If you've got 2500 sq ft house + 1000 sq ft basement, the basement is climate controlled full time anyway (at least that's probably what I'd do), so is it that much different than a 2500 sq ft house + 1000 sq ft shop climate controlled full time?
I did a little searching here and it seems that some people use one or more dehumidifiers full time in their game rooms. I'd be curious to hear about how effective, and how cheap to run, those are - I know zilch about dehumidifiers. I imagine that regardless of what kind of location I use for a game room, I'd end up wanting to heat and dehumidify in the winter, and cool and dehumidify in the summer. My hope would obviously be to keep the cost of climate control down as much as possible, but I don't have a good feel for how hard that'll hit my wallet.
As many probably know, we're selling our house with plans of buying a house/property where I can have a big game room. I was talking about detached shops with a fellow wrencher last night, and he was talking about a co-worker with a shop. Oregon of course gets somewhat cold in the winter (highs in the low 40's typically) but quite humid. So this guy would heat up his shop to do some work, and then when done it would cool down and cause condensation. As a result he had a pretty big problem with tools rusting and whatnot.
Obviously that was quite a red flag to me because in order to broaden our purchase options, we're considering basements or detached shops (whether pre-built or we build ourselves). Garage would be a consideration too, but since I want 3 bays strictly for cars/motorcycle/wrenching it would have to be quite a garage to have enough room for a big game room as well.
So for those of you in cold/humid climates, what insight can you provide regarding dealing with humidity in each of the game room locations I mentioned? Initially it freaked me out a bit, thinking we'd have to eliminate detached shops from consideration because it seems like it would mean full time climate control, though as I thought about it I'm not sure. If you've got 2500 sq ft house + 1000 sq ft basement, the basement is climate controlled full time anyway (at least that's probably what I'd do), so is it that much different than a 2500 sq ft house + 1000 sq ft shop climate controlled full time?
I did a little searching here and it seems that some people use one or more dehumidifiers full time in their game rooms. I'd be curious to hear about how effective, and how cheap to run, those are - I know zilch about dehumidifiers. I imagine that regardless of what kind of location I use for a game room, I'd end up wanting to heat and dehumidify in the winter, and cool and dehumidify in the summer. My hope would obviously be to keep the cost of climate control down as much as possible, but I don't have a good feel for how hard that'll hit my wallet.


