Exploring garage/shop options - pole barn or not for attached building?

[rbattelle]

My biggest argument for an attached structure is the daily commute and grocery shopping trips. Walking to/from the vehicles, bringing in bags of goodies with the rain/snow flying everywhere is not my cup of tea.

I have 2 words for you: underground tunnel.



Ryan

 

[robertyoke]

I guess it just what you like!

I like wood!



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my shop!

-robert

 

[robertyoke]

Might want to consider a truss system that will accomodate storage too. Load bearing truss? Not sure of the technical term, you get it though.

attic truss





I am building a 24X48 garage with attic trusses for a customer I'll post pictures when it gets farther along, just set trusses thursday and it was too cold to work today!



-robert

 

[CumminsAholic]

If you're going to finish it it's cheaper and better to go stick built. Poles are cheaper if it's unfinished. As for the lift... what about room and attic trusses above part of it and then scissor trusses above another part so you could have the added height? And yeah put the heat in the floor and don't forget a floor drain so you can wash stuff in there when it's cold out like this weekend.

Corey

 

[sdstriper]

Ohhhhoh Robert, my wife would never see me...

 

[HoleshotHolset]

Robert - that's what I'm talkin' about!



Thanks for the advice on the stick VS. pole buildings. What specifically makes stick built cheaper than pole with regard to finishing them? I can see that insulating a building with steel siding and no wall studs could be interesting... and then how do you hang sheetrock?! haha I guess there's my answer. I'd like to have a hybrid of sorts... steel trusses for strength and ease/speed of building and finished on the inside.



One could use the right kind of truss on the whole shebang and then use the 'extra' overhead space above the daily drivers portion for storage. Yeah - I like that idea. But then I can't put heavy stuff up there... hrmmm.



In MA - you can't have floor drains unless you spend HUGE dollars. Out here - you do what you want, when you want. I can wire up and plumb the whole project and it is 100% legal.



One thing is set in concrete - radiant heat is definitely in the plans.



Man - this is gonna get expensive. :-laf



Thanks,



Matt

 

[Ol'TrailDog]

We priced a steel hay barn last year... and then last week. The price has almost doubled. Steel is way way up.

 

[HoleshotHolset]

We priced a steel hay barn last year... and then last week. The price has almost doubled. Steel is way way up.

Ouch!

I ran across this outfit in the back of a Car and Driver magazine: http://www.heritagebuildings.com



Their prices didn't seem too bad, but there are always hidden costs and trips to Menards for stuff that wasn't included.



Thanks,



Matt

 

[TowPro]

Around where I live, if you add an attached garage to your house, your whole house gets re-appraised for taxes (our school districts run on realestate tax).

With detached, they only can add the value of the garage to the land. This saves me around $800. 00 per year in taxes.



I went detached. Plus has others said, work with your land. I live on the side of a hill so I built a 28x28 garage in the ground. From the front its 1 floor, from the back its 2 floors.

The bottom is 12" block with 5 pieces of steel sitting on pilasters built into the wall (pilasters filled with concrete/rebar) No center support for the beams.

It has 10' to the bottom of the steel, the front wall is reinforced with concrete/rabar in 6 different columns inside the 12" block.



The ceiling of the bottom garage is the floor of the top garage. There is corrugated steel sitting on the steel beams with 5" of concrete for the top floor (with heavy wire in concrete). the top garage has 2 - 8' doors plus a 36" walk through door. The top is stick framed with trusses and no center support. (I don't need to pull engines in top garage, plus I use an engine crane if I do pull an engine)

Up top I park 2 cars, mowers, yard tools, 4 wheeler, BMW, (anything with gas in it) and anything that you would put inside a garage.



The bottom has a 36" walk through door and a 10' garage door. I park my truck in the bottom. All my tools are also in the bottom. I have 12 - 4' fluorescent light fixtures with cold start 32w tubes mounted to the steel, more then enough light! Plus a ceiling fan to move around the air. I run a humidifier year round to keep away the dampness.



the top is vinyl siding that matches the house, the bottom is stucco that matches the house. Top has 4 windows.



Heat is a 100,000 btu oil burner sitting up on a platform 36" off the floor. This is ducted into one duct that runs the lenght of the bottom garage. I keep the heat at 35 in the bottom garage, this heats the top floor so Ice don't form when snow melts off the cars. If I want to work in the bottom garage, just crank up the thermostat and I got heat instantly.



Only thing I forgot to do was put vermiculite in the 12" block for insulation. I can get the walls injected with foam, but its around $1000. 00, that buys a lot of oil!

 

[rbattelle]

TowPro - that sounds pretty awesome.



Ryan

 

[Yo Hoot]

I stayed away from heat in my new building. I built a fully insulated 24 x 40 x 12 masonry garage at the last place I lived. With the big garage doors you can't keep it efficiently heated. They were fully insulated doors. Cost me like$ 600-$700 a season to heat. And that wasn't keeping it warm.



This was that garage... sold the place since. .



#ad

 

[HoleshotHolset]

TowPro - that sounds pretty awesome.

Long ago - he posted pics of the buildup - it is indeed very sweet.



Mike: Your new building has no heat? (!!)



I have to investigate the tax rules in my county. Right now - the tax bill on the wife's house (where the shop/garage will be) is separated into the 'improvements' as a whole and the land. My house is the same way.



Having an attached garage would likely drive the value of the house up a bit... but I'm not sure if it would be *that* much more than building a new detached shed. The overall tax bill will undoubtedly go up - when they reassess - which seems to be every 5 years.



I'll keep researching...

 

[TBartlett1]

My 2 cents

I recently put up a 40x60 insulated steel building with 2 12x12 doors and use it for auto/truck repair. I also asked for advice and received plenty. In floor radiant heat was suggested, also a thickened edge floating slab, I did neither!

I put in 4 foot frost walls with drainage and put insulation on the inside of the walls to isolate the floor from the frost, I also put 1 inch of rigid insulation and plastic under the slab to insulate and eliminate moisture. I laid 1/2" rebar on an 18x18 grid with an 8x8 grid where I planned to install my 2 post lifts.

The reason I did not install in floor radiant heating is because it was very expensive and takes days to warm the concrete and I didn't want to pay to heat the building when I didn't plan on working in there. Also you need to plan the building in advance if you are going to install a lift or any other device that needs to be anchored to the floor otherwise you may put an anchor thru the tubing.

The best thing I did was install a 280,000 BTU Clean Burn waste oil heater from the ceiling, this unit will heat the building from 30deg to 60 in less than 30 minutes with an ambient outdoor temp of 10 deg. it burns 2 gallons per hour but it may only run for 2~3 hrs a day and the oil is free!! I get oil from some local garages and contractors and from my own vehicles. I have burned wood, coal and wood pellets you can’t beat turning up a thermostat!!



You can get metal buildings in virtually and size, the reason I went 40x60 is because I previously built a 34x 40 pole barn that was going to end all my storage problems but it filled up very quickly. As others have said go as big as you can afford it looks huge until you put your vehicles and toys in there.

 

[TowPro]

My 2 cents

snip

The reason I did not install in floor radiant heating is because it was very expensive and takes days to warm the concrete and I didn't want to pay to heat the building when I didn't plan on working in there.

Same reason I went with Oil hot air. I started with a 80K propane on a 100 gallon tank. The first tank lasted 2 weeks (10-20F outside). I yanked that heater out and put in an oil heater my neighbor gave me (for a couple hours work). It only had about 6 tanks of oil through it, he got rid of it because it was 2" to high to put an AC coil on top of it :-laf



As I said earlier, I keep the heat on so ice don't form on the top garage floor. The first year my Thermostat only went down to 45, I burned around 100 gallons. For last years heating season I bought a thermostat that goes down to 35, I only burnt 40 gallons.



If I want to work in the shop, I can change the temp from 35 to 65 in around 15 minutes.



I thought about waist oil but the initial investment was to high. I thought about Wood/coal but if I am working in there and have a problem (spill something) I would be in trouble. I mounted the oil burner on a shelf that is 36" off the floor, with an emergency kill switch right next to the exit door with a bright red cover!



Now if my house was hot water heat I would own one of those shed/hot water stoves that you install away from your house. Then I might have gone with hot water heat in the garage.



If I had CNG on the property I might have gone with one of those Hot Dawg heaters. I thought about converting one to propane, but propane is so much lower in BTU its not worth it, plus the sellers charge more if its not for home heating, unless you have a 1000 gallon tank, and there is another expense that puts it out of reach.

 

[daveshoe]

Robert - that's what I'm talkin' about!



Thanks for the advice on the stick VS. pole buildings. What specifically makes stick built cheaper than pole with regard to finishing them? I can see that insulating a building with steel siding and no wall studs could be interesting... and then how do you hang sheetrock?! haha I guess there's my answer. I'd like to have a hybrid of sorts... steel trusses for strength and ease/speed of building and finished on the inside.



One could use the right kind of truss on the whole shebang and then use the 'extra' overhead space above the daily drivers portion for storage. Yeah - I like that idea. But then I can't put heavy stuff up there... hrmmm.



In MA - you can't have floor drains unless you spend HUGE dollars. Out here - you do what you want, when you want. I can wire up and plumb the whole project and it is 100% legal.



One thing is set in concrete - radiant heat is definitely in the plans.



Man - this is gonna get expensive. :-laf



Thanks,



Matt

I built a hybrid pole building /stick

built structure for my use. It has a garage area with concrete floor and an elevated area[tailgate height] wood floor shop over a crawl. The posts are set to a height of about 36'' above grade,and then finished off with stick -built walls with vinyl siding exterior. The secret is using rebar to tie the poles to the concrete floor in the garage area and the raised floor ties itself together in the woodshop area.

The way I figured it then was that stick built walls used the same or less lumber cost than poles,girts,steel siding. When you figure that the stick built is all ready to receive insulation,it is icing on the cake. Vinyl siding with 7/16 OSB under it is the same price as steel siding. When OSB is at a high price due to big storms,this is not the case. Fortunately,OSB is really cheap right now.

If you want a great way to do a concrete mono pour[cheaply] with deep footers,I can write this up as well.

 

[HoleshotHolset]

... If I want to work in the shop, I can change the temp from 35 to 65 in around 15 minutes... I thought about converting one to propane, but propane is so much lower in BTU its not worth it...

That's really impressive! What kind of hydronic heater (in BTU's) would you have to use so that heating a shop would not take days? I guess the big thermal mass of the concrete floor works for AND against you. I love the fact that the floor will be warm long after the boiler shuts down. The temperature swings are a lot less noticeable with hydronic heat as well... and it's whisper quiet.



I'd like to have it setup so that the 'daily driver' portion stays above freezing all night to melt the rigs (and shuts down during the day when we're gone... ) and the rest of the shop would not be heated at all until I need it. This would be easy to accomplish by setting up multiple zones with a simple valved manifold and a programmable thermostat or two.



Someday, I plan on getting an outdoor hydronic corn burner - to heat the house and provide domestic hot water. Right now we use LPG from a 1000 gallon tank and forced hot air - at least the furnace is 90%+ efficient. I'd also like to supplement heat/hot water with an outdoor biodiesel/WVO burner... hydronic would allow easy hookup no matter what the fuel source is. (I have access to ~5 restaurants worth of WVO. )



Since when does propane have fewer BTUs than an equivalent volume of natural gas? When you convert a natural gas appliance to LP, you have to install restrictors/orifices. This reduces things a bit so you don't get 18" flames coming out of your range. The pressures involved are the same, so the only difference is the combustible.



Around here, we spend ~$30/year to rent/lease the 1000-gallon tank. They're about $1200+ to buy. The price of propane shoots up around crop drying time in the Fall, so your best bet is to get a big tank (or two) and buy your year's worth of LP in July when the price bottoms out.

I built a hybrid pole building /stick built structure for my use... Vinyl siding with 7/16 OSB under it is the same price as steel siding...

Do you have any pictures of the construction or the finished product? I kinda get the idea. Wow - there's another case against a traditional pole building with steel siding.



GREAT info, guys. Keep it coming.



Thanks,



Matt

 

[SMorneau]

Footings, slab edges, building codes??? This stuff all comes down to what type of soil you are building on and how long you want the building to last. The treated poles set in my sandy soil will outlast Matt and I by several decades. The in floor heat is very nice and comfortable but does have a slow response time. Don't confuse that with getting cold when you open a door; it will recover almost instantly from that but it responds to changes in the t-stat slowly. This is my first year with the boiler and in floor heat. I would do it again in a second and I may add a water to air heat exchanger to the system to so I can improve the response time making temperature setbacks and some cost savings possible.



Most propane companies allow you to pre-buy while the cost is low in the summer months. Some years that works out better than pipeline gas.



I would not have two levels of floors in my shop. I would rather have the roof height. A lift can be setup in as little as 12 ft, 14 ft is better.



I have 3" thick R24 commercial overhead doors but my walls are only insulated to R19. I am estimating about < $800 to heat this year keeping everything at at nice comfy 60 degree (I'll take a nice heated shop that is always warm over a $800 weekend vacation any day). If you build a pole building you will want to put Tyvek on if. It makes a huge difference in the heating cost. I was given this information by the guy who built mine. He actually removed the tin from his to install it so he had pretty good data to back up his claim. Also if you ever have to replace a piece of steel (say you crashed your mini-bike into it ) your insulation is contained. That would allow you to blow the walls for an R34+ if you like. Also if you do steel do the lower part as a Waincot so you can easily replace the shorter panels. I mixed steel and plywood inside my shop and I am pretty happy with the results.



I also plumbed under the floor for a full bath and an exhaust removal system that works out great when I want to run an engine inside the shop. It will easily vent my small engines and my CTD at an idle.





Matt, it sounds like you may be visiting my shop for a little transmission exchanging in March so you will get a chance to check out what I have done. I would do some things different if I had more money but I am very happy. The comments about it never being big enough are true but I have seen some pretty worthless junk piles in some pretty nice buildings so it's worth thinking about the amount of space you want to pay for and heat and why you want it.



Scott

 

[LesStallings]

I'm really lucky here in middle TN. My 42'x60' shop has three inslulated garage doors and the normal Morton Building insulation package. I have a 5 ton heat pump with backup resistance heat. It cost me about $100/month in the summer and $150/month in the coldest part of the winter to keep the entire building heated and air conditioned 24/7s (in addition to all the normal shop equipment electrical loads). The ceiling goes from 12' on the sides to a peak in the center of 14. 5', with 18" of blown insulation in the attic. Morton makes a decently wrapped and sealed metal building and I believe the "energy package" insulation will pay for itself easily over the years.



It's nice to go into a toasty shop in the winter or a cool one in the summer.

 

[TowPro]

Wonder what type of heat is best? You would need to plug in your own local prices, but here is some information.



What is a BTU?

The heating industry calculates units of energy in British Thermal Units or BTUs.



BTU = the heat required to raise the temperature of one pound of water 1 F°.

BTU = approximately the heat in one wooden match.



Here are some BTU comparisons:

1 cubic foot of natural gas = 1,015 BTU*

1 gallon of #2 fuel oil = 132,000 BTU**

1 gallon of propane = 91,700 BTU

1 kW of electricity = 3,413 BTU

1 cord white birch (1 yr seasoned) = 20. 3 million BTU



* The national average is 1,000 BTU/ft^3. FNG gas has 1,015 BTU/ft^3 because of processes unique to FNG.

** National averages range between 135,000-140,000 BTU/gal. Because of extreme cold temperatures, Fairbanks consumers use a blend of #1 and #2 heating fuels.



What are the Costs of Heating?

Many customers are interested in how natural gas costs compares to other sources of energy such as heating oil, propane or electricity. Listed below are few of the energy sources available in Fairbanks and their associated costs.



Energy Costs in Fairbanks*:

Natural Gas = $1. 297 per hundred cubic feet

(Equivalent cost to #2 Heating Oil is $1. 69 per gallon - calculation below )



#2 Heating Oil = $2. 52 per gallon

Propane = $2. 59 per gallon

Electricity = $0. 0984 per kWH

Wood = $150 per cord



* Natural Gas: FNG tariff states $1. 297 per 100 cubic feet for residential customers - 11/05.

#2 Heating Oil: Average #2 Home Heating Oil for 500 gallon delivery. FNSB Fall Community Research Quarterly - 9/05.

Propane: Based on residential home heating delivered price in 11/05.

Electricity: GVEA residential rate 11/05.

Wood: White birch seasoned 1 year cut, split and delivered 11/05.



How Does Natural Gas Compare to Other Energy Sources?

The energy and fuel delivered to homes and businesses come in differing units, such as cubic feet, gallons or kilowatts. To fairly and more accurately compare them, the units are broken down into comparable units of heat, such as a BTU. To find the cost per BTU of natural gas we simply divide the cost per cubic foot by the BTUs in a cubic foot of gas:



= $0. 01297/cubic foot

1,015 BTU/cubic foot



= $0. 00001278 / BTU

= $12. 78 / million BTU of Natural Gas



Do the same for heating oil and others:

$2. 52/gallon

132,000 BTUs/gallon



= $0. 00001371 / BTU

= $19. 09 / million BTU of Heating Oil



Propane = $28. 24 / million BTU

Electricity = $28. 83 / million BTU

White Birch = $7. 39 / million BTU



Natural gas can now be directly compared to other fuels, such as #2 heating oil. Take the computed cost per BTU of natural gas and multiply this number by the number of BTUs in a gallon of heating oil:



$0. 00001278/BTU x 132,000 BTU/gallon

= $1. 69 per gallon equivalent



WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?



Natural gas costs less when heating oil is greater than $1. 69 per gallon (residential).

 

[robertyoke]

thanks for that write up.

I keep the wood burner fired up for now and keep the ng heaters for backup.



big wood burner + framing contractor = free scrap wood so cost to heat $0



cost for ac in the summer !



-robert