Am I asking for trouble

A

Aurelius

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Ok, so I am in the process of clearing out my basement to make room for a lathe. I am looking to get a PM 1127 which is super convenient because I'm in Pittsburgh and PM is just on the other side of town. As this is my first "real" tool, I am likely going to hire a rigging company to pick the machine up, transport it, move in into the basement via the Bilco door, and hoist it onto the stand which I will have decided on and will have waiting for it.

As I mentioned, I am in Pittsburgh and the house is a tad over 110 years old. It is the typical Pittsburgh basement, nice thick foundation but when it rains we get water. Usually not a lot and we are going to have some roof gutter work done in the coming months so the amount should be greatly decreased.

As I said, this is my first real tool and I'm leaning as I go, especially whne it comes to regular maintenance, so I wanted to check, is this going to completely mess things up and rust out the whole machine or am I making mountains out of molehills?
 
The two things that will greatly speed rust is direct contact with water, and condensation. Is the basement temperature controlled? Can you install a dehumidifier , preferably so it has a direct drain rather than a bucket you have to empty? Obviously a wet basement isn’t ideal, but if you can manage the humidity you are greatly ahead of the issues.

Downspout extensions can help make a difference once the gutters are fixed.
 
There is temperature control. In fact, I am going to be set up about 25' from the furnace. There is a duct right there with a vent.

As for a dehumidifier, we actually inherited on when we bought the house. It is situated right next to the furnace and the hose runs right into the same floor drain as the furnace. We have never used it as we have never had a need.

I'm hoping the roof and gutter work will make this much more of a non-issue, but it just popped into my head, so I thought I would ask.
 
I love live in a 110 y.o. house with a limestone/sandstone foundation. The stone as well as the mortar is porous so intrusion by water is a distinct possibility. Over the course of time, we have put a new roof on the house, installed gutters, and graded around the foundation to direct water away,

I happen to have the advantage of gravity drainage and I put a gutter around the perimeter of the foundation's inside wall when we poured a new basement floor. With heavy rains, I will still get some water intrusion but none in the rooms where my machines are.

I run a dehumidifier set a 50% RH essentially nonstop from mid May through October. Along with the central air, I can keep the RH at less than 60%. I do not have a problem with machines rusting.

Of the preventive measures, keeping water away from the foundation is perhaps the most important. A dehumidifier is limited in the amount of water it can remove. Mine pulls around 20 pints a day out of the air. If more than that were seeping in, it would be a losing battle.

One solution would be to excavate around the foundation and lay polyethylene sheet and cover with the excavated soil.

Edited ;)
 
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Actually, we just got the hardscaping done aroudn the house last fall and made sure the concrete was graded away from the house. It helped a lot. The issue now is when we get a lot of rain it is coming in the areas where the current roof dumps too much for the soil to handle. It's not really that bad. When it rains really hard, we will get some water in that will go straight to the drain or, worst case, take about a day to completely dry up.
Like I said, I'm hoping the new roof/gutters will mostly fix it, but it's good to know it can be managed otherwise.
 
First thing is a place. If you have the place - dry, stable, etc. - then you can look at a machine.
No matter how close PM is to you, if the machine isn't in stock, you're looking at a wait.
I've been waiting for over a month and am told it will be two more.
 
At first I thought, a rigger for an 11x27 lathe??
It is 575 LBS.
Riggers are just so much money!
If you can somehow come up with an alternate plan and spend that money on tooling??
Is your basement access outside? Steep narrow steps going down?
Plenty of HM members have slid their Bridgeports down basement steps on skids.. Cherry picker, pallet jack etc.
Just trying to help.

Aurelius​

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