Will storing my power tools in a cold garage hurt them any until spring?

We are about 2 hours north of Toronto Ontario. Not far from Owensound area.
Cold winters, good amount of snow, freezing rain at times with January, February thaws. Can get really damp and cool here in spring and fall. Summers can be humid and sticky.
Its never easy to plan or prepare for at times when we get hit hard at times as well.
We will have to take all weather patterns into account when building the shed for a small woodworking shop.
A dehumidifier sounds like a good item to have during these times. We are defiantly going insulate in order to have A/C for summer. Heat for early spring, winter, and fall months.
So many decisions to make but we will get it figured everything out eventually.
Learning what is needed is part of the fun and excitement.
The floor in our tiny 1 car garage is usually wet most of the winter since we park our vehicle inside. Although, I do squeegee the floor often, it does feel damp and cold at most times throughout spring, summer and fall . I can't afford to take the chance on having these tools rust so we made some space inside the house for these tools until spring.

Woodenhearted said:

We are about 2 hours north of Toronto Ontario. Not far from Owensound area.
Cold winters, good amount of snow, freezing rain at times with January, February thaws. Can get really damp and cool here in spring and fall. Summers can be humid and sticky.
Its never easy to plan or prepare for at times when we get hit hard at times as well.
We will have to take all weather patterns into account when building the shed for a small woodworking shop.
A dehumidifier sounds like a good item to have during these times. We are defiantly going insulate in order to have A/C for summer. Heat for early spring, winter, and fall months.
So many decisions to make but we will get it figured everything out eventually.
Learning what is needed is part of the fun and excitement.
The floor in our tiny 1 car garage is usually wet most of the winter since we park our vehicle inside. Although, I do squeegee the floor often, it does feel damp and cold at most times throughout spring, summer and fall . I can't afford to take the chance on having these tools rust so we made some space inside the house for these tools until spring.

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Woodenhearted , With a garage like that why don't you turn it into a swimming pool ? All kidding aside, pay close attention to the surrounding dampness. It does a lousy job on tools. Will you be doing any of your work in the basement ? The worst part in a basement is dust control. A decent dehumidifier and good dust control can usually keep things in order. You don't need it desert-dry but you do need to keep the humidity down. With dust under control in the basement the only other thing you need be concerned with is noise but with Mrs. on-side you're way ahead of the game. Is your property in a low area ?
You don't need a tremendous amount of dedicated space to have a shop in the basement but I would say you need to have as many pieces on wheels as you can have. What kind of work do you intend to do ?

thomas1389 said:

Woodenhearted , With a garage like that why don't you turn it into a swimming pool ? All kidding aside, pay close attention to the surrounding dampness. It does a lousy job on tools. Will you be doing any of your work in the basement ? The worst part in a basement is dust control. A decent dehumidifier and good dust control can usually keep things in order. You don't need it desert-dry but you do need to keep the humidity down. With dust under control in the basement the only other thing you need be concerned with is noise but with Mrs. on-side you're way ahead of the game. Is your property in a low area ?
You don't need a tremendous amount of dedicated space to have a shop in the basement but I would say you need to have as many pieces on wheels as you can have. What kind of work do you intend to do ?

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Hello Thomas,
We were planning on putting these tools in the basement, setting up a proper dust control unit etc. That was our plan until plans changed.
Our daughter needed to move back home with the 2 kiddies last spring. This has altered our plans since she will need to stay for a couple more years yet.
My garage is terrible really, I have a slanted driveway with a drain in front of the garage door in which I have to use a submersible pump to get the water out prior to coming into the garage. Therefor the spring melting and heavy downpours of rain usually floods our garage.
We have been planning to fix this for a couple years now lol. Other things just seem to come up, well, along with the renovated basement apartment that we finished last spring.
We have a contractor coming to look at it next week to see if they can fix it up properly.

As for the type of work we would like to do,
We are just going into this as a hobby, making a few signs, some pine corner shelving, and possibly a new wall unit for our daughter.
I do feel quite lucky that my wife is very supportive of this adventure and has no issues when it comes time to purchasing the tools necessary. We stay on track together and communicate prior to any purchases, this stays in line with our monthly budget for this hobby.

We are looking forward to getting started in the coming weeks and sharing things that we are learning and trying to do as we go along.