Technical So, if you could build the dream shop what would you incorporate

Right now I have a paint/prep area, a welding room and an office that I just finished tiling this week finally. I have storage above the welding room and the paint booth.

 

I have a buddy with a 40 x 90 roughly. He had an office. When I first met him. I said why. 10 years later he tore it out. He was surprised by how much more room he has now. It was a catch all for crap and was always dusty. Buy good quality pallet racks. Line the complete back wall. Get the crap up off the floor and on shelving. The space in most shops are under utilized from the waist up. I even put pallet racks in my rented storage units.

 

My dream , here in Oklahoma, is to have a one car garage in my 40x70 shop, that is heavily insulated and then air condition it, so I could keep it about 60 degrees in the Summer! I can take the cold, but anymore the heat just takes it out of me. I now work at my house in an unheated detached garage at 35/40 degrees. I start out with my jacket on, with in a half hour I’m down to my shirt, sweating! My detached garage is air conditioned, but is not insulated and the A/C just can’t keep up with our Summers!




Bones

 

Maybe you should add on to the building enough to have your dirty work space that would be separated by the current wall, all you would need to do is add a door passing thru to connect the 2 areas.

 

My off site 12 minutes from the house dream garage.
Bathroom, heat, two huge overhead doors with openers, 4 post Wildfire lift with air over hydraulic chassis lift, and we own it.
24' wide, 57' deep on a secured property.
KK

 

Yea, with strong backs and the ability to weld.

 

I am guilty of this.....my wife calls it my paper dolls.

 

Dude, if you don't install the fireman's pole, we will pull your man card.

 

Having been in my dream shop for 15 years now I really would not change a thing. A hoist would be nice but not necessary. Mine is cluttered beyond any hope of working right now but that is only because of construction materials and Lavins things that we have not unpacked yet after her moving in. Storage is the biggest thing. I think many of us are guilty of buying too much. An extra engine here, and extra set of wheels there etc.. And if you do not find a home for them right away the clutter starts. I am at that phase where I need to gut the place and do a good organize job on the next nice day.

 

A few comments....

One, if it's a wood structure, put up drywall. Drywall is a fire stop and may save your shop at some point. Personally, I used 1/2" OSB to sheet then covered that with 1/2" rock, little worries about punching holes in it that way. Smooth finish and gloss paint is easy to clean and will reflect light better.

Two, most guys tend to 'overwire' their shop. Unless you're configuring it for a multi-person crew, you don't need a ton of separate circuits for duplex receptacles; how many power tools can you run at once?

Three, buy quality receptacles. At a minimum I'd use 'spec grade' (commercial) and if you want the best, step up to 'hospital grade'. I've seen fires at residential grade outlets as they're not designed for heavy use. In either case, buy the ones with nylon faces as they don't break, same for the cover plates unless you want to step up to metal. For a workbench area, take a look at plugmold. Available in multiple configurations, it can eliminate 'cord nests' as the plugs will be more spread out.

 

Regarding plug mold: mount some on the front of your bench(es). It's really nice to NOT have cords flopping around on your bench while you're trying to work as happens with cords plugged into the wall behind your bench.

 

Thats implying you can find the top of your workbench!?!?!

 

One last thing about shop electrical; keep all outlets/boxes above 18" from the floor. Lower than that it can be considered as a 'classified area' and requires special boxes/outlets (expensive, very...). If you did have a problem, this might be a point of contention with your insurance company.

 

And take pictures of the tube layout before concrete. Good pictures and lots, with scale references. Like mentioned further back, you may want to drill for bolting something down, and having the pictures with some dimensions will help you NOT drill a tube.

 

A still


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Have you seen Tim's(aka anothercarguy) 1938 Ford Deluxe Club Cabriolet Build Thread? Now that is the ultimate dream garage.

 

I’m going to have to disagree with you Steve. In my 40x70 Shop on the ranch we ran an electrical box on every post. One every eight feet. All the way around the shop. Four plex in the front areas. Too much? Maybe, but in the total cost of the shop, wasn’t much increase. Now a 25 foot extension cord will reach anywhere in the shop. 120v everywhere and 220 in the front and back. Works for us.
But I did have an electrician friend that owed me a favor back then! ( 1985).

We did run the best lights at the time , two rows front to back and added a drop cord in the middle in front.






Bones

 

I think Jeff Norwell has pretty much nailed it... Only thing I´d add is the fireman´s pole and a beer tab. That should be mandatory in any self respecting man cave. The fireman´s pole coule be dual purpose...

 

You misunderstood me; I'm not saying that lots of outlets are bad, just that you don't need separate circuits on all of them which a lot of guys tend to do. Unless you have a multi-person crew, you can only use at most a couple at any one time. Certain things will need dedicated circuits, but generally speaking a single 120V/20 amp circuit can easily support from 7 to 10 'general use' duplex receptacles as long as you 'stagger' the circuits around. Too many unneeded circuits eat up panel space, sometimes making it difficult to add stuff later. Believe it or not, the code would only require four general-use 20 amp circuits (including lighting) for that square footage.

 

Ok, got you! Yes , I can’t remember how many circuits we put in the shop.I don’t get down there very much anymore.






Bones

 

Speaking of extra circuits...I'm wiring up my shop right now. I may have gone a bit overboard but on the "equipment" side I will have 3 separate 20A 110 outlet circuits, and 3 separate 30A 220 outlets all spaced around 32" apart. Plus another circuit or two of 110 elsewhere, as well as a dedicated 220 air compressor plug. I figure it only cost me another $100 in materials for the extra stuff, so why not just do it. Years of chasing down one outlet / extension cord have worn on me.

 

On the subject of electrical outlets, if you intend to do any heavy welding you want as much amperage as you can afford in your 220 outlet. My shop only has 30 amp breakers for my welder plug and when trying to Tig weld aluminum it’s not enough. Had to add a 50 amp breaker and an external extension cord to get the old Miller 300 DialArc enough juice.

 

My MIG only needs 20 amps 220v, but my (older) TIG takes 60, and it's not even big enough to weld reasonably thick aluminum.

 

His garage. This guy is a genius...

 

You forgot the cash cannon.

 

I have 2 old tigs from the 70's, they both require a 100 amp breaker to weld heavy aluminum, but I only do that with 1 machine. I have 50 amp breakers at 3 other locations, to weld steel, both machines are on wheels.

 

I have a 30x50x12'-high pole barn plus a 2-car garage at the house for the daily drivers. The barn (no concrete floor yet, and still procrastinating after 12+ years) currently is a mess - it's crammed full with 4 cars in varying states of progress, garden tractor/trailer, small work bench, another with another work bench I have piled up with junk, cheap storage shelving along walls and in the middle of the floor, my inlaw's old refrigerator, a single-bottle Coke vending machine that I found on the property after I got settled in, and over 40 years' worth of car parts, tools and related stuff. And I still need to get a small tractor in there along with develop space to work on things. I'm convinced I need to get ahold of some pallet or storage racks 6-8 feet long x 24" deep x at least 6-feet high to place bulky or heavy parts. Long-term plan has always been to build a 12'x30' mezzanine with shelves/racks for small stuff about 7-feet off the floor to free up floor space. I need to use the wall space and go vertical, but want to insulate before I do. Longer-term plan is an enclosed lean-to with bathroom and area for woodworking or bump out for car/parts storage and isolate the air compressor from the shop. I wish it was 40x60 - adding a 10-foot wide x 50-foot long lean-to would help, but pushing the end wall out another 10-feet would make it easier to hold 2 or 3 more cars and separate them from the 'dirty' area and have space to work in. Then again, I wish I had the ambition, time and money to finish the silly thing out without having to sell everything just for a garage mahal.

 

I agree with Steve, but on mine I put dual duplex outlets every 4 feet, with each side on a separate circuit. This allows me to use both sides of the closest outlet with out effecting the other one, and if
I put something in the way of an outlet there is another not very far away. If you have support poles
in the shop be sure to put outlets there, centrally mounted outlets are very handy.

 

Beautiful shop Jeff. I have dreams of "fixing up" my shop, but I keep dragging projects in that, a., take all my time, and b, make such huge mess it's pointless to try. Right now, everything in shop, even vertical surfaces, are covered with a thick layer of paint and Bondo dust, even the drawers in my tool chest (which was supposed to be the start of my organization and clean up project, but only became part of the problem, especially when I tipped it over moving it). My "clean-up" so far has been periodically opening all the doors, putting a box fan in each overhead door blowing out, firing up the leaf blower and just blasting everything out the door.

I don't know how you keep the place clean, I certainly couldn't. I do find my new scissor hoist to be the best investment I've ever maid for the shop. It truly is a lifesaver. And it's covered with a thick layer of body filler and paint dust too...

The tarp is an attempt to keep dust out of the back half of the shop, where my Diamond T is slumbering for winter, and the T'bird once again abandoned in favor of the two new favorite projects.