Keeping your Grind Bucket from Freezin

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unky_gumbi

Joined
Aug 28, 2009
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A while back I was going to move my grinder and such into a storage area in the house. I have since decided against it because the area acts like a sound chamber and amplifies every little sound. The room is too small to do any sort of sound deadening in so I am just going to use it for finish work and hand sanding for the winter.

Right now I am working in an uninsulated garage, it keeps me out of the weather and wind, but it does get cold in there. I will be adding a forced air heater to keep myself warm while working, but it wont be enough to keep the grind bucket from freezing up. A quick and time consuming solution would be to just dump the bucket every day after I am done, but to be honest I am a little too lazy for that. The only other things I can think of is adding some sort of antifreeze to the bucket, or getting one of those livestock water heaters to keep the water from freezing.

The heater idea has one big negative that I can see, and that is the constant power draw yet the water will never go below freezing. With the antifreeze I don't know if it will cause problems because of the chemical make up, and what happens when a hot knife (from grinding) gets dipped into the below freezing water?

Any suggestions would be appreciated here. I am trying to keep operating cost as low as possible and that includes the possibility of ruining a piece of steel because water temps or belts because of chemicals.
 
has anyone tried rv antifreeze, its not like the car suff. you could drink it and still live.
 
That is another thing I never thought of the potential hazards of having a bucket with antifreeze in it, it is looking like a heated water bucket is taking the lead even with the cost of having it plugged in all the time.
 
A 1.5 of cheap vodka? I think if you keep it 80 proof or lower it shouldn't flame, when you bugger up a grind just dip a shot glass in it!
 
unky_gumbi said:
That is another thing I never thought of the potential hazards of having a bucket with antifreeze in it, it is looking like a heated water bucket is taking the lead even with the cost of having it plugged in all the time.
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I'm not sure on the voltage of the element etc, but I can't see it burning much more power then say a cell phone charger or at best a lap top charger.. I don't think you'd ever notice a change in your bill...
 
Modern PGW based antifreeze is non-toxic and safe for the environment(For once the tree-huggers are helpful). Shouldn't be a problem. It's easy to tell apart since it's orange instead of bright-green.
 
How about, bring a small bucket of hot water when you go out and dump it in the frozen bucket. When you're done for the day, fill the small bucket back up from the slack bucket and dump it outside. At least this way you're only fooling around with a small bucket rather than a large (heavy) bucket.

... just a thought from here in North Carolina, where it seldom gets very cold...
 
That's basically what I do, Nathan. I actually use a container my housemate gets pickles in and we have a number of them floating around. I just dump my dunk bucket each time and when I'm headed out I fill up my "clean" one from the tap. It's a bit more of a pain but easier than fiddling with other options for me.

As for a fish tank heater, it depends on how cold it gets, you very easily COULD burn through a lot of juice or find it can't keep it unfrozen other than right around the heater. They're basically designed to heat up a tank from room temp, not keep water from freezing when it's 0f out. Obviously it depends on your location and how cold your shop gets. Mine's in an uninsulated garage that is routinely in the single digits for several months of the year.
 
Nathan the Machinist said:
How about, bring a small bucket of hot water when you go out and dump it in the frozen bucket. When you're done for the day, fill the small bucket back up from the slack bucket and dump it outside. At least this way you're only fooling around with a small bucket rather than a large (heavy) bucket.

... just a thought from here in North Carolina, where it seldom gets very cold...
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Agreed, Nathan. What is this "Ice" substance they speak of? lol I think the most ice I've had in my slag bucket was about 1/2 inch. Just break through it and go.
 
Nathan the Machinist said:
How about, bring a small bucket of hot water when you go out and dump it in the frozen bucket.

... just a thought from here in North Carolina, where it seldom gets very cold...
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A frozen bucket is a broken bucket.

Plastic buckets get brittle and split at the bottoms.
Steel buckets pimple out the bottoms and either leak, or won't sit flat.




I think a fresh bucket each day is the cheapest

Methanol and water 50-50 but Home depot alcohol is still $10 per gallon.
Salt water, but then it will help rust everything- no problames if it's just a catch bucket

If you can get free used car antifreeze you could use that as a catch bucket under the grinder,
but I wouldn't want to dip into it and touch it or breath the smoke off grinding it.

Heater - TSC has temperature controlled water heaters $30 ish for outdoor animal watering
But when you consider that price plus the power, I'd rather use that to heat the room instead.



How about a combo of Nathan's suggestion - big catch bucket with salt water, or whatever

and a small bottle or bucket of fresh for dipping each day.
 
I am leaning towards a heated bucket, this one in particular, it has a 150w rating. I will have to go and look at it in person before I buy it. In January and early Febuary it gets quite cold, read well below freezing, so I don't think that a fish tank heater will even come close. For the last couple of days it has been hovering right at freezing and I have been waking up to 1/4" of ice in the bucket.
 
rwn2000 said:
Agreed, Nathan. What is this "Ice" substance they speak of? lol I think the most ice I've had in my slag bucket was about 1/2 inch. Just break through it and go.
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Don't get me wrong I am not complaining, if I was still in Winnipeg I would have a solid chunk of ice in a few hours during the winter, being here in Eastern Ontario will be like going down south for the winter. The only time it will get to be a problem ins for about a month or two in January/February.
 
Why not just put an oil-filled radiator heater in the space, and leave it on? And, you could insulate the garage.
 
Bill DeShivs said:
Why not just put an oil-filled radiator heater in the space, and leave it on? And, you could insulate the garage.
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Constantly having a space heater on would get really expensive, and the way that the garage was built, with interlocking tin inner wall coverings, it would be almost impossible to do with out damaging the wall coverings. :(

With a forced air heater, I can turn it on and heat the area I am working in fairly quickly and easily, so the only real problem is the water bucket
 
Bill DeShivs said:
Why not just put an oil-filled radiator heater in the space, and leave it on?
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I have one of those, it's cheap to run and will keep you reasonably comfortable within a couple feet of it. Not enough to stand there nekkid :eek:, but it helps.

Insulating helps too, to an extent. My 16x32 shop is insulated with R11 and sheathed with OSB. It basically extends the season a couple months each way. January and February are still pretty dang cold even with the IR heater above the main bench and the oil one next to it. I've toyed with the idea of partitioning off the main bench area and insulating that in the meantime... but that would involve a fair amount of work and $$ for not that much benefit. One day I hope to put another layer of insulation up, buy a small furnace and just have natural gas ran out to the shop.

Honestly I've never put too much thought into heating my slack bucket; the house with hot running water is only 15 feet away, it's easier to bring fresh water to the shop daily than to fool around heating it out there.
 
If I could get the tin off the walls without damaging it I would insulate and be done with it. I have tried before to get the tin down and it is, from what I can tell, impossible. If I could insulate the garage it would be easy to keep at a reasonable temp year round. the oddest thing about this little garage is that the doors are insulated even though the walls and roof aren't.
 
Just use spray-on insulation on top of the tin, or glue styrofoam insulation to it. Polyurethane foam all the cracks, too. Once you get the insulated space warm, it doesn't take much energy to maintain the temperature.
I don't see how you guys can work in the cold!
 
Bill DeShivs said:
Just use spray-on insulation on top of the tin, or glue styrofoam insulation to it. Polyurethane foam all the cracks, too. Once you get the insulated space warm, it doesn't take much energy to maintain the temperature.
I don't see how you guys can work in the cold!
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Thing is it isn't my garage and the tin walls are actually nice looking. As to working in the cold I guess it is all what you are use to. I can remember the first time I went to Florida and saw all the people wearing jackets while I was thinking it was shorts and t shirt weather.

12345678910 said:
No such thing as cheap booze here, it's Govt. controlled.
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I haven't drank in over 20 years, so I see it all as expensive now. I went into the LCBO about a month ago to pick up bottle for my brother and I couldn't believe how expensive it had gotten.
 
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