The Silver Buick wants a garage.

[milner351]

Re: The Silver Buick wants a garage.

Propane - eeck, that could be a really expensive way to heat a big outbuilding.

Don't you have super low electric rates? Electric heat supplimented by solar maybe a good solution for you.

There's a guy on the garagejournal that build a solar collector on the south wall of his shop and is supplimenting his heat with that and is having pretty good luck with it:

http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/s...t=40482&page=4

[TheSilverBuick]

Re: The Silver Buick wants a garage.

WHAT?!?!?!? No, not heat the shop with propane, I need to move the house's propane tank because it's sitting right where I'm putting my driveway ramp in.

I just got back from sitting with the engineer doing my cut's and fills, and he showed me a few tricks so I should be able to do them by myself now.

We got the driveway ramp grade set at 10%, which isn't horrible (our haul roads here are designed around 10% grades). A 40x60 shop takes up a lot of space! May have to go to a 30x60 or re-evaluate the internal lay out of a 40x60. Right now though I'm just working on getting a level surface with a usable ramp grade, with minimal fill needing to be brought in, then will work on the shop layout from there.

We ran a quick and dirty scenerio with a 6ft drop from the house level, that's going to require 483 cu. yds of fill :o but that was a waaaay quick and dirty design that filled areas that don't need fill and had a very generous angle of repose on the dirt that may be significantly shortened up with a 3ft retaining wall. So more scenerios will be ran trimming the fills and/or adjusting the start/end points of the ramp and/or steepening the ramp as a last resort. All in all, still playing with the variables

[SuperBuickGuy]

Re: The Silver Buick wants a garage.

I think this was mentioned before, even if it was, it's important. When you use fill, you have to have your footings at bottom of the fill - which adds substantially to the cost. It's why my building is so low compared to the house level... it would have cost at least 20k to bring the level up to the driveway; and that was without the cost of engineering and permitting.

[TheSilverBuick]

Re: The Silver Buick wants a garage.

I'm looking at places where I over dumped the lot by a bit into the county owned area behind my house as an angle of repose, or small footing. I know the lower the lot goes the less the footing load becomes. I had one design made where I had an excess 30 cubic yards of dirt, but I think I was missing something in the calculations, so since I hadn't verified it I didn't post it. I'm ok with a low building as long as I can make a suitable ramp grade for it.


**I'll post pictures this weekend of what I'm looking at.

[SuperBuickGuy]

Re: The Silver Buick wants a garage.

I'm looking at places where I over dumped the lot by a bit into the county owned area behind my house as an angle of repose, or small footing. I know the lower the lot goes the less the footing load becomes. I had one design made where I had an excess 30 cubic yards of dirt, but I think I was missing something in the calculations, so since I hadn't verified it I didn't post it. I'm ok with a low building as long as I can make a suitable ramp grade for it.


**I'll post pictures this weekend of what I'm looking at.

or do what is in my long-term plans - an elevator. ;) you're welcome

[milner351]

Re: The Silver Buick wants a garage.

Randal - my shop is 30 deep, 50 wide, with the drive in doors on the 50ft side....

you already have several cars - and I can see you having an occasion to want to park them "nose to tail" inside.

You'll need more than 30ft to do that.

Honestly - I think you'd be better making the building less wide, not less deep from the drive in side.

With the down hill grade you'll be dealing with - please plan on putting a drain across in front of the garage doors and make it the lowest point in the approach... if you don't you'll end up with what I have - in heavy rains - the water just comes into the shop under the doors.

[TheSilverBuick]

Re: The Silver Buick wants a garage.

Oh drainage is accounted for. Even the lowest perimeter of my lot is about 2 feet above the bottom of the valley, which after the fill will be higher.

As for parking, I'm looking at a couple options after looking how a 40x60 and a 30x60 building fits with a ramp. I only "want" four cars stored in there. Skylark, Centurion, Thunderbird and Firebird. After that I don't really want any other cars, the current three are enough trouble to drive regularly through the year and maintain! I was thinking if I can get a 40x60 I would park four cars side by side at one end of the building, giving them a shade under ten foot parking width. Which should be sufficient for how narrow the Skylark and Firebird are. Then have a wide open area inside for working and washing the cars. Then have an area for storage/engine clean room.

A 30x60 like shop I'll have to re-evaluate how I organize the inside. Despite the look of my basement, I'm not a complete hoarder and packrat, I just have a very small place :P

Current priority order is; build a flat spot and ramp, then fit a shop on it, then figure out how I'll organize inside what I have.

[milner351]

Re: The Silver Buick wants a garage.

Any restriction on building height? If not - go as tall as you can afford and plan on an office/mezanine/storage loft where the hoist isn't. ;D

[STINEY]

Re: The Silver Buick wants a garage.

I think this was mentioned before, even if it was, it's important. When you use fill, you have to have your footings at bottom of the fill - which adds substantially to the cost. It's why my building is so low compared to the house level... it would have cost at least 20k to bring the level up to the driveway; and that was without the cost of engineering and permitting.

Not to muddle the issue, BUT.....

How long does fill have to be in place before it is no longer considered fill? Months, years, decades, millenia?

A couple of years ago I witnessed quite the fill process in a river bottom here in town. Clean fill (cement, dirt, rocks, etc) was brought in over a 24 month period. Built up a 2 acre area approximately 25' over the whole 2 acres. Then built a 100'x 80' building on it and opened a business. Was quite the neat thing to see that worthless property being reclaimed like that, and I guarentee there was no 30' footer involved....

[BBR]

Re: The Silver Buick wants a garage.

We want more pictures! haha



From looking at this image, I'd really think hard about cutting back into the slope and making 1 wall of the shop a retaining wall. Then use the excavated material as fill for the access road. Then again it's tough to envision stuff without any sort of scale associated with it.

Just looking at this makes me want to have all your data and start throwing building pads in there to see what fits and works. lol

[milner351]

Re: The Silver Buick wants a garage.

^^^

Great idea! Having one wall mostly against dirt, and the two perpendicular walls partially underground can go a long way to helping regulate the temperature of the building - I would imagine it would help a lot with keeping it a bit cooler inside in the summer - and you'd have no worries about air infiltration on those walls during the windy winters!

That would require poured or block walls for those areas - but the savings in excavating / fill may more than offset that cost.

[SuperBuickGuy]

Re: The Silver Buick wants a garage.

I think this was mentioned before, even if it was, it's important. When you use fill, you have to have your footings at bottom of the fill - which adds substantially to the cost. It's why my building is so low compared to the house level... it would have cost at least 20k to bring the level up to the driveway; and that was without the cost of engineering and permitting.

Not to muddle the issue, BUT.....

How long does fill have to be in place before it is no longer considered fill? Months, years, decades, millenia?

A couple of years ago I witnessed quite the fill process in a river bottom here in town. Clean fill (cement, dirt, rocks, etc) was brought in over a 24 month period. Built up a 2 acre area approximately 25' over the whole 2 acres. Then built a 100'x 80' building on it and opened a business. Was quite the neat thing to see that worthless property being reclaimed like that, and I guarentee there was no 30' footer involved....

there was a Home Depot built in Oregon City, Oregon that is over the top of a former dump. They spent months driving in piles 60' down to bedrock so that they could build the building - I guess the biggest issue (especially on the West coast) is liquifaction (sp?) where the soil turns into a liquid in an earthquake....

when you're locking a building to the side of a hill, it'd be very bad to have the such a soil issue. In Ohio, you only have the Madrid fault, so how bad could it be? (oh yeah, I'm joking).

however, how long depends on your jurisdiction - and that's when you call in a geologist .... wonder if Randal can find a competent one? ;D

[TheSilverBuick]

Re: The Silver Buick wants a garage.

Competent geologist? Pft, no such thing! :D The base of my hill (lowest point of my property) only has a foot or two of sediment on it, then it's bed rock limestone. At some point going up my slope I "may" run into the original hill slope. That is a concern of mine, as I've only dug four feet or so down at the fence line and still was running into construction trash, like broken bricks, etc. My house and most my back yard is on fill material, as when they built on this hill the builders simply dozed the lot flat on the hill by pushing the material into the "valley" that is my backyard.

I am looking at designs that put the building right up against the slope/dirt wall.

[SuperBuickGuy]

Re: The Silver Buick wants a garage.

relative pricing - build low $50k, build high (2 stories) $120k. However, the build into the bank did bring up a couple interesting ideas - the guy who was in the competition to build the shop proposed building a L shaped wall with the back of the L against the bank, then building a 2 story shop - that gives you a great workspace and a basement to store your stuff... If money were no object, I'd have done it that way... in your case, I wonder if concrete might be cheap enough for you to actually pull it off - especially if the area is all fill to begin with.... any ideas what the seismic requirements are for your area?

[TheSilverBuick]

Re: The Silver Buick wants a garage.

Concrete costs can very well be the limiting factor. I haven't called for any quotes, but it's not sounding pretty :'( No seismic requirements that I'm aware of. Some people have suggested floors only 4 inches thick with the exception of the footings. Not sure how comfortable I am with concrete that thin, or even if it's legal here. I'm not going to stress about the cost of a building until I have a flat spot to put one on.