Building a ew northwoods garage..........looking for ideas

shelby369

New member
I'm in the process of roughing in a new 32X36 garage with a room upstairs....has a 9ft ceiling and a 8/12 pitch....

I'm looking for ideas to incorporate during building so I don't do the "Shot I forgot about that, what a great idea" thing...

What would you do for heating ???? I was thinking a Hot Dawg 75,000 btu??

Open for ideas..

THX

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See I forgot already a question..........what are folks doing for garage floors ???

I really don't want the sleds to tear up the new floor??
 

blkhwkbob

Active member
Great question. I'm also doing a garage one of these days and I'm terrified of scraping up the floor from the sleds. I've seen those jigsaw puzzle type floor covers and I think that may be the safest bet. Basically just use them as needed and remove. Looking for ideas, too.
 
C

Cirrus_Driver

Guest
Cost me a lot of $$'s, just 7 years ago to build a new garage. I have concrete, and I never bring my sleds in without being on shop dollies...and they come in EVERY night no matter how tired I am. Big reason I got rid of Yammies.
 

snobuilder

Well-known member
Sheets of cheap 7/16 osb that you throw away or store til next season?
I will most likely have drive through front and back overhead doors in my new garage on the end stall where the sleds will spend the riding season .
 

ddhanna

Active member
Pitched floor with drains. Wish I had 'em now. I have Hot Dawg 60K in 24 X 26 and it is way plenty. Love it.
 

srt20

Active member
I have a 75K BTU (not hot dawg, forgot the brand) in a 30x45 with 9 ft walls and it is more than enough. I have a long skinny center floor drain running the length (45 way). Works great for snow melt off of sleds and vehicles. Or for indoor washing.

Not sure what you plan on using it for. More for storage or for actual working, but you can never have enough electric or outlets. Spend the money on high end overhead doors, and insulation. My shop is way better insulated than my house. But the shop is only 2 years old .
 

paulk

New member
I have a 30X30 shop and I put a center floor drain in it and pitched the floor. Looking at it now I wish I would have put the drain in one stall and pitched that one to the drain and had the other one be flat so I had a level floor on one side. Sometimes its nice to have a level floor depending on what your working on. Lots of outlets on a couple of circuits. I used outlets in the ceiling for lighting. That way I can arrange my lights for best lighting, I have added more since the original plan because of age and not being able to see so good anymore. If there is outlets you can always add or take away lighting.
 

mrbb

Well-known member
I agree with drains in the floor
but have you looked into adding heat to the concrete floor?
lots of buddy's have done that here and there all raving about it?

I use dolly's on things too so not to chew up the floors
if your a tool turner, adding some good air lines thru out, or central Vac is a nice touch too to keep in mind too!
 

shelby369

New member
All excellent ideas..........have the floor drain, 75,000 btu heater, doing outlets air lines and cable tv this weekend........ I have 11 sleds and want to "stack" some of the older ones...has anyone used pallet racks for that??? or ???
 

slimcake

Well-known member
Finally building my dream garage. 1650 sq ft. with vaulted ceilings for car hoist. Spray foam ins. Good doors and windows. Was going to do in floor but decided against it for many reasons. Unless you are going to keep it 60 degrees all winter its not the way to go. With forced air heater or tube heater you can keep it 40* and decided you wanna work on something and just turn it up and in no time its 60*. Try that with in floor. Plus I think in floor is $$$ to run compared to forced air or radiant heat.
 

pez

Member
A lot of LED lights. I saw where a guy bought some rolls of LED lights and put three strips per joist. Looked nice and bright.
 

5_spot

Member
pencegarage1400x767.jpg

Our Up North garage is about 10-11 years old and has held up well. I've always been more worried about what the concrete does to the carbides more than vise versa. There are carbide scratches, but it's a snowmobile garage and they're really not that bad, in my POV at least. We do have a center drain, but if we did it again, I would probably go with a trench drain. In the winter, with all the snow outside, it takes a while to drain. A trench drain would hold a good portion of it and would be easier to clean out, as the sleds do bring in some debris. We have a wall mounted sealed chamber forced air heater which works very well. on the walls, we did treated plywood for the 1st course and OSB on the top course, which has held up very good. the ceiling is drywall. A couple things that have been added you may want to consider now is a ceiling mounted winch and an exhaust fan. Our roof is trusses, so we had the beef up the support for the winch. It wasn't bad doing it thru an access hole, but would have been easier prior to drywall. The exhaust fan is to get rid of the sled start up fumes, it helps, but would be more effective if we ran a duct with a couple openings to cover the whole length of the garage. It works, but at 30x32, I had to put an additional fan on the ceiling to help push it to the thru wall exhaust fan. Adding a wifi thermostat this year so we can fire it up about an hour out. As mentioned previously, lots of lighting. We have 3 8' florescent fixtures and 2 4' ones and could use a little more for working on sleds.
 

snobuilder

Well-known member
Do any of you guys use pallet racks or something similar for stacking sleds two high ???????????
Keep in mind your typical pallet racking is made to fit 2 4'pallets which is too small for a sled .
Main thing is having a set of forks...from there you can build wood racking cheaper than paying for pallet racking.
 

ezra

Well-known member
Great question. I'm also doing a garage one of these days and I'm terrified of scraping up the floor from the sleds. I've seen those jigsaw puzzle type floor covers and I think that may be the safest bet. Basically just use them as needed and remove. Looking for ideas, too.

it is just cement in a garage people. when u sell in 10 or 20 yrs do u really think the home will be worth any less with scratches on the floor.
stamp it with a slate random and u will never notice the scratches if really worried .
 

600_RMK_144

Well-known member
Keep in mind your typical pallet racking is made to fit 2 4'pallets which is too small for a sled .
Main thing is having a set of forks...from there you can build wood racking cheaper than paying for pallet racking.

11' ceilings in the new shop. Really want to do something like this cuz the 155" takes up a lot of floor space in the summer. My problem is getting them up there without a fork lift. Any method without having access to a lift?
 
G

G

Guest
Finally building my dream garage. 1650 sq ft. with vaulted ceilings for car hoist. Spray foam ins. Good doors and windows. Was going to do in floor but decided against it for many reasons. Unless you are going to keep it 60 degrees all winter its not the way to go. With forced air heater or tube heater you can keep it 40* and decided you wanna work on something and just turn it up and in no time its 60*. Try that with in floor. Plus I think in floor is $$$ to run compared to forced air or radiant heat.

In complete agreement with your floor heat analysis. It is a lot more $ to run. I know because I put floor heat (water) in my 40 by 72 with 16' ceilings. I also put two water to air exchangers in for quick warm up when needed. I also put in 3 ceiling fans. I never even bother with the floor heat circuit anymore. As long as the fans are running the floor stays warm and dry. The water to air exchangers run about 1/2 the time the floor heat circuit did. Floor heat warms up sand and concrete as well as the air. Really doesn't matter if cement is 70 degrees from top to bottom. Of course the building is insulated to within an inch of its life and I spent a lot of money on a big wide insulated overhead door. I think I ended up with about 2 feet of blow in insulation in the ceiling. 96 bags anyway. It never gets above 70 degrees in the summer either. Insulation is your friend. Use a boatload.
 
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