Gettin ready to move into a new place. The garage was built in the 40's i belive. Dirt floor, this is gonna drive me nuts.. Is there anything i could put down short of pouring concrete to make it a little easier to deal with. any ideas?
Theres a company called "Race Deck" that sells modular flooring, snaps together. Comes in several colors and patterns, diamond plate, checkerboard etc. Hope this helps
are you looking for permanent flooring or just something temporary to keep you off the dirt until you can afford cement?...just throw down some cheap ass plywood...most lumber yards even have blemished pieces with broken corners they sell for dirt cheap...no pun intended...
Concrete as soon as you move in should be a priority. Once you start filling up the garage with all sorts of stuff it will only go on the backburner. Then it will take ages before you get the garage empty again.
You'll be glad you did to go ahead and get a concrete floor installed right away, anything less will be a let-down. Good Luck!
with like 1" inch to the dirtfloor i wouldnt really trust lifting up a car to work under... get concrete... start digging!
You could price out 3/4" tongue & groove plywood. Around here it's like $40 a sheet. Not cheap but you can use a jack on it. I did this in my Cover-It tent garage. I put it on top of a plastic tarp and kept it from moving with big spikes driven into the ground. They also sell a 3/4" OSB with a treated surface. It's called Advantech. It's supposed to be water resistant. But it's not concrete....
We are just renting this place, so i dunno if i wanna put the money into pouring concrete. Althought i know i cant deal with a dirt floor. The landlord is paying for supplies to fix up stuff around the house, i just dunno if they would be down to foot the cost of concrete.
In that case just get some second hand cement garden or pavement tiles. Over here they are about 12 sq inches and 1 1/2 inch thick. Lay them down in about 4 inches of fresh sand using a big rubber mallet.
i was looking at that race deck stuff, pretty neat. its like 3.50 for a 12 inch tile, i wonder how many it would take to do a 1 car garage, ill know next week when i move in. So im thinking, get some fill dirt to get the floor as level as possible, then lay some kinda tarp down then that race deck stuff. whatta ya guys think? wes
How much square footage are you working with? You could probably get a 1 car garage poured and finished for just a little more.
Givin your circumstances, I think thats a pretty good idea. Hey, it sure beats dirt and dust. It may not be the safest for jacking up your car ect. but you can use your driveway or even the side of your street (very dangerous).
Get yourself a big cardboard box. One like bicycles or washing machines come in. Remove all the staples, flatten it and slide it under the car when you have to work under. It worked for me a while back. Ya gotta do what ya gotta do and there's no use spending money on a temporary fix for a rental. How much time you gonna spend on the floor anyway? Keep in mind that cardboard burns, so do some thinking before you start welding on the exhaust system or whatever.
I used 7/16 OSB over gravel for a temporary floor in my barn - it was still pretty good when I pulled it up 18 months later. I would strongly encourage you to put down a few layers of plastic if you are going to lay plywood. The dirt gets real dry and dusty - you won't want to be in there if it gets dusty and everything gets filthy. Concrete should run you around $2 a foot - materials and labor.
Im gonna run the concrete idea by the landlord, i also talked to a buddy who said he wet down the dirt floor in his until it was muddy, then he packed pea gravel into it, said it leveled it pretty well. Maybe that with some plastic and some kinda runbber mat over it would work.
Hey Wes, have you thought of crushed aggregate? It's basically a mixture of stone and concrete remnants all ground up into pea gravel sized pieces. It's super cheap, doesn't need a base, and can be leveled and compacted very easily. The best thing is once the stuff is leveled, you can compact it way tighter than gravel and it ends up being very similar to a rough concrete foundation. I used it as a sub base under a portion of my yard that trucks drive over. It's solid. And cheap.
hey that sounds pretty cool, could i get it leveled enough to put somthing down over that? where can i get it from?
I didn't know it was a rental, yeah stick with this suggestion. Dude landlords suck, all of them. Fuck rentals. You maintain it, you don't put any money in it or you'll always lose in the end.
Yeah definitely. I wouldn't build a house on the stuff, but it sounds perfect for what you're trying to do. I compacted mine with a big roller(you can rent one for 20 bucks at any equipment rental place). Call around to some supply yards that sell gravel, rock, brick, dirt, etc. They should have crushed/recycled aggregate. I did 250 square feet for about 200 bucks, delivery and everything. Took about an hour to spread, level, and compact. I drove over it immediately. Way better than gravel. Way cheaper than concrete.
I had a small garage before I built my shop that I knew I was going to tear down. I put down cardboard then a pice of used low pile carpet. It wasn't bad. It worked better than I thought it would.
i think ive decided to till up the dirt in the garage, mix in some redimix concrete, and wet it and pack it down as best i can, then maybe lay down some plastic and then some 3/4 inch plywood, thanks for all the ideas guys
Wes, I hate to spend your $$$$$$ for you, but 34 Gaz is right. make that landlord "roll over". Tell him you'll sign for an extra 6 months.. good luck
The Jalopy Journal
