Am getting back into the hobby after a number of years off. I will be building my layout in my garage and I live in central Florida. I am assuming that I will have to use A/C to control temperature and humidity. However I would appreciate feedback from modelers with garage layouts as to what they are doing, or not doing, to control the room. If no A/C is used what materials are used to control expansion and contraction, and how serious are these condition. thanks for your help.
What kind of benchwork are you planning? I ask because of humidity and the potential for wood expansion/contraction.
Lynda
I haven’t made any decisions on type of benchwork or materials. I am gathering information so I can make those decisions. I am open to any and all ideas. My layout will be about 20x8 {single car garage}
a few ideas:
http://home.earthlink.net/~mrsvc/id42.html
It sounds like your temperature will be similar to what I have to deal with in my garage, but our humidity problems are opposite. What you would think of as extremely low humidity would probably be higher than anything I’ll ever see here in the desert.
To control temperature, insulation is key. I was amazed what a difference it made to insulate my east-facing metal rollup garage door. By all means, install an air conditioner, but take some of the load off it by insulating the space first.
My solution to the warpability of wood products (which don’t take kindly to changes in humidity) is to build my main benchwork structure from steel studs. So far, expansion hasn’t been a significant problem - I just leave a little extra gap at the end of each section of flex track. (I don’t solder rail joiners, but I do install jumpers around them.)
Happy layout building (and watch out for hurricanes)
Chuck (who lives in one seismically active area, and models another)
A garage in Florida. Well we know that heat and humidity are going to be your main concern. As others have already mentioned, and I am sure that many more will echo the same, INSULATION will buy you the biggest bang for the buck. My garage ( central Ma, 97%Rh right now outside) is fully insulated on the walls and ceiling, and has wallboard ( also called sheetrock or plasterboard in some parts of the country ) on all walls and ceiling. I also have a thin coat of plaster over the wallboard, and the walls are painted to prevent any absorbtion of moisture, or mold. The garage door is insulated panels with heavy rubber boot on the bottom for excellent weather seal. It stays remarkably cool even with direct sunlight for most of the day in mid summer heat. You “may” need AC, however, in Florida, I suspect you will. One of the things that you can do for insulation, is to use heavy ceiling insulation with metallic foil facing upward towards the rafters. This will reflect the heat from the roof back upwards. And, a gable end exhaust fan works great to keep the attic cool which in turn will greatly reduce the heat load on the AC on the ground floor. Good luck,
There was a discussion a while back in which somebody mentioned their reasonably-scientific investigation of expansion and contraction of track due to temperature change. The result was that it is relatively insignificant. What is a problem, though, is plywood’s reaction to changes in humidity. It would seem that the best material to use is 2-inch pink or blue insulation foam. Great stuff. I use it for my layout in Massachusetts, where I have the advantage of a nice interior space with good temperature control. I don’t worry about the expansion and contraction problems, but I still find it a terrific material to work with.
The problem, of course, is getting insulation foam in Florida. You might be able to special-order it from Home Depot.
Mr B!!! What are you doing up so Late???You have to go to work tomorrow !!
Despite all the dire warnings, the length change in nickel silver flex track over a straight line distance of twenty (20) feet, through a 100 degree temperature change, will be less than 0.002". That’s two (2) thousandths of an inch. In laymans’ terms, that’s “not much at all”.
The humidity and the wood are your biggest concerns. I lived in coastal North Carolina - probably every bit as bad as Florida. I found that a good coating with enamel exterior paints sealed the wood very well, to the point I did not experience any problems after doing that. My construction was flex track, on cork, on 7/16" Homasote, on 1/2"plywood, over 1" x 3" and 1" x 4" framing
Viginian is correct to say paint the surfaces and ends of the plywood…this causes more expansion than many people believe. Wood absorbs moisture. High humidity means …a lot of available moisture…wood = sponge, hence, swelling. Tracks are tacked or glued down to wood, so what happens to the tracks? You got it !!! Troubles !!! Painting is a very cheap fix, and well worth the price of a gallon of paint.
Tuesday is hockey night. I relax after the game with a responsible number of my favorite beverages, but I’m really wound up and I typically can’t get to sleep until 1 or 2 in the morning. (I’m a goalie, and there’s nothing like hockey pucks flying by to get your attention and keep it.) Not good when I get up at 6 for work.
I got my 2" foamboard from the Home Depot in Macon, Georgia. Why they had it in stock, I have no idea, but they had a BUNCH. Maybe you can luck out in Florida, too.
He has some ok designs, but he’s no design genius by a long shot. Look at how many of his plans have limited or no access to corners and other areas. That’s a big pet peeve of mine. If you can’t reach it, how are you gonna work on it?
One thing that would help, if you don’t want to try steel studding, get the multi-ply cabinet grade plywood and rip it to sizes needed for benchwork. It is much more dimensionally stable than sawn lumber. Also, if going with the steel framing, make sure it is well grounded, and have grounded frame power tools, because sweat is a great conductor, eh? jc5729
I’m using a 1x4 frame with 2" foam on top, can get it 2’x4’ size which is perfect for modular construction. The foam is just the basic white stuff but it is more of a base than anything else. Biggest problem most have with a garage layout is accually the dust ect. as it is low to the ground and in many cases near a roadway or even your own car.
Oops. I forgot. I have not used any yet for model RR’ing, but exterior grade oriented strandboard is VERY dimensionally stable thru humidity changes.
I have a florida garage layout also, i took over the whole garage cause to me wasting space to park the car in the house when the driveway out front works just fine is dumb. So i told the other half the garage was mine. Anyway i installed an AC unit in one of the windows and put it on a timer, it comes on a around 2pm when it starts to get really warm and shuts off at 1:00 in the morning that way its not running 24 hrs when im only in there a couple of them but it keeps it cool enough (around 75) so that i can be out there comfortably. I have no issues with track warp and i have my track on a straight plywood table with no foam. I do have some fans out there also incase i want to be out there at 2 or earlier cause it is a tad to warm out there then, winter is coming though! (a florida joke 
)
Permit me to disagree with the above: the coefficient of expansion of nickel-silver is between 16 and 17.1 x 10^-6 per degree C, or almost exactly 0.2" in the above scenario. It is significant!
My experience on my 6’ x 8’ layout is that my rail joints open up in winter, and close in summer - with a change of about 25 degrees C maximum (= 45 degrees F). The biggest problem is that the rails tend to creep, so winter often means some gaps stay closed, while others take all the shrinkage, leading to occasional large gaps!
Tony.
Thank you Tony, I thought I may have become a bit touched in the head as my garage layout has many expansion gaps that close in the summer. I had a spot in a siding 4 feet long ( n-scale ) that expanded enough to buckle and become unglued from the roadbed. Now, it did get to 114 here and even with an attick fan the garage was not tolerable.
I do have a question about wood expansion in the humidity. If the wood expands, wouldn’t the gaps expand as the layout gets bigger the tracks would expand along with it. Maybe i’m just a bit crazy but I could never understand the wood expansion theory. I know it can cause problems but it does not seem to jive.
Hey FloridaFlyer - one problem nobody has mentioned that you’ll have in central Florida, as I had in Houston, is bugs. Flies, ants, moths, spiders, roaches, every kind of beetle imaginable, little gnatty flying things that wind up dead on the benchwork by the hundreds. I had to curtail the use of Sculptamold - I would find craters where roaches had feasted on it.