# Winter, shop temperature economics, inks



## deadbat (Nov 5, 2009)

I'm moving my print business from my backyard, uninsulated shop (600 sq ft) into a commercial space (3200 sq ft, much bigger than I needed but the lease price was right). 

Up to now, my strategy for printing in the winter has been to turn my conveyor oven on (15 ft Lawson Concord, about 30 yrs old that I got used) about 2 hours before I needed to print to heat up the shop, and to keep my inks (plastisols) inside overnight the starting the day before I needed to print. I would also use my flash unit to pre-warm all the print pallets so they don't chill down the screens when they come in contact with them. It works well enough to almost always avoid the issues that come from cold inks. But now I'm going to have this very large, insulated space which has a heater (gas) that is able to actually keep the temperature up overnight, and I'm worried in the other direciton--that is, not about the ability to keep the inks warm enough, but rather worrying too much about the temperature and wasting a lot of money running the heater more than I need to. 

For people who have commercial spaces, what's the minimum temp that I can leave the shop overnight if I want to be able to print within an hour of opening the next day? The heater seems to be able to move the space from 50(f) up to 60 in about an hour when the outdoor temp is about 30. When dealing with a space that large (the ceilings are also 30' high), is it more economical to keep inks in some kind of temperature controlled cabinet and let the shop itself drop down further? I asked the site manager what kind of monthly bills they saw from running the heat but I think he underestimated. I'm in VA, so we only get consistently cold weather 2-3 months of the year where this will be a big issue, but still.


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