42x68 'Iron Horse' Garage/Workshop Build

Onewolf · Jun 6, 2014

42x68 Garage/Workshop Build - Morphed into HO Gauge Layout Build

I figured I would start a build thread for the detached garage/workshop we are having built. We are working out the final details with the builder and we should sign the contract sometime next week. The plan is to break ground by mid July (edit: Ha!).

My basic requirements for the garage/workshop:

• Store 21 ft bay boat (28’ overall on trailer). 12 ft wide garage door for boat. Currently takes up 2 bays in existing (attached garage).
• Full size SUV
• Space for future sporty/weekend car (edit: this went away when garage width was reduced by 7 feet)
• Tool/Woodworking shop area with room to handle 4x8 sheets of plywood without moving vehicles.
• Storage room with space for our current offsite storage junk (edit: this went away when garage width was reduced by 7 feet and woodwork shop was expanded)
• Organized storage space for all the current boating/fishing/diving equipment
• Air conditioned Workshop (for model building and ammunition reloading)
• Air conditioned Train Layout Room (Basically no basements in Central Florida)
• Restroom (toilet/utility sink)
• Storage Trusses (for storing light objects (empty boxes, etc) in the attic)
• Has to fit within Seminole County R1-AAAA zoning setbacks. Our property is 0.7 acre, Wide and shallow.
• We live in a gated HOA community – We have to get HOA approval and it has to match architectural details of the house. HOA board has verbally approved but we are waiting for written document.
• Train room and workshop must be well insulated because they will be air conditioned
• Debated between CBS and 2x6 wood frame construction. CBS won because: Fewer termite issues and better hurricane resistance.
• The only automotive work I perform is oil changes/etc so no need for lift/etc.

I envy the people who can build pole buildings/barns/garages. We basically have to build a 2nd home to the more stringent 2010 Florida Building Code standards. But we plan to stay in this house forever, so what the heck…

Comments/Questions/Suggestions/Critiques are encouraged!

Here is the floorplan/renderings I have done of the garage (note these plans were before the garage was narrowed by 7 feet):

Onewolf · Jun 6, 2014

Re: 75x42 detached garage/workshop build

Here are photos of the area around our house.

Our house is the one on the right. The house on the left is the only other house on our cul-de-sac.

We have a subdivision common area and retention pond to the right of our house.

The garage will go back there.

The two vehicles in the driveway would be inside the detached garage.

If you look close you can see the staked out outline of the garage footprint.

Onewolf · Jun 6, 2014

Re: 75x42 detached garage/workshop build

The 'train room' was designed to contain the train layout I've been designing for several years.

JMcFly · Jun 9, 2014

Re: 75x42 detached garage/workshop build

I never seen that much space between houses in a subdivision before. What is this sorcery?

Onewolf · Jun 10, 2014

Re: 75x42 detached garage/workshop build

joe.gravelle said:
I never seen that much space between houses in a subdivision before. What is this sorcery?

LOL. And to add to the sorcery, we have an HOA with Architectural Guidelines that say 'sheds' must be behind the side lines of the house. Our detached garage has been approved by the HOA. :thumbup:

wedge40 · Jun 10, 2014

Re: 75x42 detached garage/workshop build

I would add a full shower and laundry room someplace. Between woodworking, working the vechicles and the training room you'll be glad you did. Just my 2 cents

Wedge

Onewolf · Jun 10, 2014

Re: 75x42 detached garage/workshop build

wedge40 said:
I would add a full shower and laundry room someplace. Between woodworking, working the vechicles and the training room you'll be glad you did. Just my 2 cents

Wedge

Thanks for the reply/advice. A shower is not outside the realm of possibility. I'm sure my wife would be more glad about that than me.

The 'training' room is a model train layout room. Hopefully not much sweating going on in there (as long as the AC is working).

Brunel · Jun 10, 2014

Re: 75x42 detached garage/workshop build

Onewolf, looks incredible! I just want to chip in on the design.

I noted only a single door (other than the garage doors obviously) to the outside. Some codes may need more for fire escape reasons, especially given the size of the building. It may not matter if you can get out through the windows as it's only single story.

Also on doors, it seemed a bit strange that the only access to the train room is through the workshop. It may have been the only thing that suits your layout, though, but I would have preferred a more direct access.

It's probably not relevant to a project of this scale, but I sometimes suggest having the restroom on an outside wall to make the plumbing easier. As it stands, the drain / sewer line will have to come up in the middle of the slab, and its position may need to be exactly right. But I'm sure your builder is top-notch so it's unlikely to be an issue for you.

You mentioned an attic - can't see a staircase on the plan - will you just be having a hatch and ladder?

I'm sure you've thought of this, but running some cat5 cables to the house for phone/network is always a good idea.

Hope this helps and you get the details sorted. Please do share lots of photos with us once the build starts.

joed2323 · Jun 10, 2014

Re: 75x42 detached garage/workshop build

Glad to see you have started a build thread, it appears you will have one awesome garage when you are finished, keep the updates coming for us please

Onewolf · Jun 10, 2014

Re: 75x42 detached garage/workshop build

Brunel said:
Onewolf, looks incredible! I just want to chip in on the design.

I noted only a single door (other than the garage doors obviously) to the outside. Some codes may need more for fire escape reasons, especially given the size of the building. It may not matter if you can get out through the windows as it's only single story.

Also on doors, it seemed a bit strange that the only access to the train room is through the workshop. It may have been the only thing that suits your layout, though, but I would have preferred a more direct access.

It's probably not relevant to a project of this scale, but I sometimes suggest having the restroom on an outside wall to make the plumbing easier. As it stands, the drain / sewer line will have to come up in the middle of the slab, and its position may need to be exactly right. But I'm sure your builder is top-notch so it's unlikely to be an issue for you.

You mentioned an attic - can't see a staircase on the plan - will you just be having a hatch and ladder?

I'm sure you've thought of this, but running some cat5 cables to the house for phone/network is always a good idea.

Hope this helps and you get the details sorted. Please do share lots of photos with us once the build starts.

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. You raise some good points.

I am not aware of any local building code requirement to have additional doors for egress. I assume my builder/engineer would know that since they've been building here since the mid 80s.

I do know that this detached building/garage cannot be a 'dwelling'. With our property zoning (R1-AAAA) secondary "dwelling" buildings are limited to 35% of the gross square footage of the primary residence (the detached garage is about 65% of the house's gross sq ft). I believe that since we have a bathroom in the design, adding a kitchen facility would turn it into a 'dwelling'. So we don't want to do that.

As far as having to go thru the workshop to get into the train room, I want the workshop to have direct access to the train room and the layout design limits the room to a single door. We did try to basically line up the two doors so it will be easy to move long items in/out of the train room. The workshop layout will be two 'workstations' on either end so hopefully having the path thru the middle won't be too awkward.

I originally located the bathroom on the outside wall but it broke up the one long wall of the woodworking/tool area.

The 'attic' area will be created using storage trusses. We plan to only store very light stuff like empty boxes in the 'attic'. We have specified a 24" wide aluminum pull down ladder for attic access. We are holding off locating the attic ladder until we get the truss plans to see where the best location is for it. BTW, the ceiling in the garage area will be 10'4" nominal.

I have a different message thread related to running cables from the house to the garage: http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=250703

Onewolf · Jun 10, 2014

Re: 75x42 detached garage/workshop build

BTW, I don't know if other people have had this feeling while waiting for a garage build to break ground, but at this stage I kind of feel like Charlie Brown anticipating the football being yanked at the last minute.

Onewolf · Jun 10, 2014

Re: 75x42 detached garage/workshop build

Another note: I would have preferred the 'people' door on front to be aligned with the garage door, however that would have added at least 1 foot to the overall height of the gable roof and we (= my wife) were concerned about the garage gable roof line potentially being as tall or taller than the house gable roof line.

wedge40 · Jun 10, 2014

Re: 75x42 detached garage/workshop build

Onewolf said:
Thanks for the reply/advice. A shower is not outside the realm of possibility. I'm sure my wife would be more glad about that than me. The 'training' room is a model train layout room. Hopefully not much sweating going on in there (as long as the AC is working).

Sorry. I need to slow down when reading. You typed TRAIN room, not TRAINING room. Ya shouldn't work up too much of sweat watching the trains.

Wedge

Onewolf · Jul 24, 2014

Re: 75x42 detached garage/workshop build

Update: I guess it should not be surprising, but the process is proceeding much slower than we had anticipated. We thought we had support from the HOA board but our detached garage request triggered an election for a new HOA board (no one in our 18 home subdivision had attempted/requested to do/build anything nearly as large as we are planning) so we had to get the new HOA board "on board" with our plan. That took a couple of weeks. During that process we made some design design changes (narrowed the building by about 7 feet (wife didn't like how much wider the garage was compared to the house), moved it farther away from the house, added an RV pad on the right side of the garage, and added a shower to the bathroom) which required a couple contract go rounds with the GC.

We signed the contract late last week and put down the 10% deposit so the official architectural/structural plans are being drawn and then we go to the county for permits. We are hoping to break ground by mid Sept.

GC says 12 weeks from breaking ground until completion. I am handling the contracting for the removal of the old driveway and building the new driveway.

Here's renderings of the new design.

NUTTSGT · Jul 25, 2014

Re: 75x42 detached garage/workshop build

Looks like you're going to have a nice place in the very near future. Glad to hear the HOA approved your plans and you have the green light.

ACDNate · Jul 25, 2014

Re: 75x42 detached garage/workshop build

So glad I don't live in a subdivision anymore. Glad you got through it without too many changes.

Onewolf said:
Update: I guess it should not be surprising, but the process is proceeding much slower than we had anticipated. We thought we had support from the HOA board but our detached garage request triggered an election for a new HOA board (no one in our 18 home subdivision had attempted/requested to do/build anything nearly as large as we are planning) so we had to get the new HOA board "on board" with our plan. That took a couple of weeks. During that process we made some design design changes (narrowed the building by about 7 feet (wife didn't like how much wider the garage was compared to the house), moved it farther away from the house, added an RV pad on the right side of the garage, and added a shower to the bathroom) which required a couple contract go rounds with the GC.

We signed the contract late last week and put down the 10% deposit so the official architectural/structural plans are being drawn and then we go to the county for permits. We are hoping to break ground by mid Sept.

GC says 12 weeks from breaking ground until completion. I am handling the contracting for the removal of the old driveway and building the new driveway.

Onewolf · Aug 29, 2014

Re: 75x42 detached garage/workshop build

Well everything seems to be taking 2-3 times longer than I would like, but we now have engineering plans and we will be submitting for permits next week.

Onewolf · Oct 5, 2014

Re: 75x42 detached garage/workshop build

Ever so slowly we are making progress. It seemed to take forever (~3 weeks) to get the truss plans so we could submit for building permits. Once the permit application was submitted there were a couple issues (missing 30' rear property line setback dimension on the site plan document, and the HVAC calculations were done based upon the garage facing South instead of East). But those issues were resolved in 'only' 1 1/2 weeks.

The surveyor has marked the building corners and the finished floor elevations so they are ready to start excavation and construction of the foundation and stem walls.

This link is to my personal website/photo album and it has a lot more pictures and details about the garage build process: http://www.onewolf.org/Album/HomeProjects/Detached Garage/index.html

NUTTSGT · Oct 5, 2014

Re: 75x42 detached garage/workshop build

Congrats on finally getting started.

I'm also going to move this to the Gallery Section.

Be sure to take plenty of pictures as the build progresses.

budmanm3 · Oct 5, 2014

Re: 75x42 detached garage/workshop build

I'll be watching this one. .plans look good

venturesomerite · Oct 6, 2014

Re: 75x42 detached garage/workshop build

So who did you "do" in the HOA to get that approved? lol.

Looks like it should be really nice when done.

Onewolf · Oct 6, 2014

Re: 75x42 detached garage/workshop build

NUTTSGT said:
Congrats on finally getting started.

I'm also going to move this to the Gallery Section.

Be sure to take plenty of pictures as the build progresses.

Thanks for moving the thread to the Gallery, I was going to ask about moving it.

I take lots of photos of all home projects. It helps me remember details later on.

Onewolf · Oct 20, 2014

When our GC saw the actual floor elevations on site for the first time in person he concluded that when needed to lower the garage floor some because the grading around the front was going to be problematical because of the proximity of the neighbor's yard. I agreed with his assessment so we decided to lower the overall floor elevation 24". I confirmed that the 24" drop of the detached garage will still work fine with the driveway to the attached garage.

My wife and I took a 4 day weekend visit to my parents in Pennsylvania and when we returned home we found that they had excavated for the foundation footers and are getting ready to form the footers and stem walls. Hurray! Official ground breaking!

cbacres · Oct 20, 2014

Are you going to have electric and plumbing stubs for the future RV pad? I've seen some with a sewer for draining the RV holding tank.
Nice layout.

NUTTSGT · Oct 20, 2014

Glad to see that you have "broke ground".

It looks a little odd as the foundation isn't deep as it would be up north. :beer:

brblx · Oct 20, 2014

How about a roof that ties the house and shop together. From the drawings(and due to the size) I think it looks like two houses really close. Covered walkway for rainy days? Nevermind, I see the only door on the front. Just a thought and congrats on the very nice spaces.

Onewolf · Oct 21, 2014

NUTTSGT said:
Glad to see that you have "broke ground".

It looks a little odd as the foundation isn't deep as it would be up north.

Not very deep, but still below the "frost" line.

Onewolf · Oct 21, 2014

brblx said:
How about a roof that ties the house and shop together. From the drawings(and due to the size) I think it looks like two houses really close. Covered walkway for rainy days? Nevermind, I see the only door on the front. Just a thought and congrats on the very nice spaces.

There was no practical place to locate a people door on the the existing house and we plan to have a parking spot between the buildings for an RV so a covered walkway was deemed unfeasible.

Crown · Oct 21, 2014

Looks very promising! :thumbup:

Are you going to keep the garage bays in your house, or do these get a new designation?

Onewolf · Oct 21, 2014

Crown said:
Looks very promising! Are you going to keep the garage bays in your house, or do these get a new designation?

The existing attached garage will continue to be a two car garage for our daily driver vehicles. The attached garage is 28' deep and we plan to build an 7' x 9' storage room at the back of the attached garage on the single bay door side. This still provides 21 ft deep parking spot which is plenty for my wife's daily driver (Lexus IS).

Onewolf · Oct 21, 2014

cbacres said:
Are you going to have electric and plumbing stubs for the future RV pad? I've seen some with a sewer for draining the RV holding tank.
Nice layout.

We are not planning to stub in sewer/electric for the potential RV pad. Current HOA regulations limit RVs to two days max at home and I'm not really in favor of changing that rule at this point because all of the other homes in our subdivision have driveways where an RV would basically be sitting in front of the house. Which is ok for a day or two, but I don't want Cousin Eddie living in someone's driveway. :evil:

NUTTSGT · Oct 21, 2014

Cousin Eddie doesn't need a stub for the sewer when the *******'s full.

:lol_hitti

bloomingtonmike · Oct 21, 2014

Going t be one awesome train room. 40X64 polebarn here in the last couple months so I can 'feel' some of the dimensions you have there. Wait till you get walls and a roof!

Onewolf · Oct 21, 2014

They installed the rebar for the foundation footer today. It will be inspected tomorrow and then the foundation will be poured (10yds) on Thursday.

Where the rebar changes from 2 bars to 3 bars is where the stem wall design changes from low to high design.

They clearly marked where they wanted the sand to be delivered, but....

The guy delivering the sand apparently didn't notice or couldn't reach the desired spot.

mwbailey · Oct 21, 2014

Hey, Onewolf, just getting up to speed on your build. It looks great. This is a "day late and a dollar short" but our codes would allow a second structure IF only four of five "activities" were available; seems it was something like cooking, bathing, sleeping, living, and eating. We left out the bed but got the kitchen. That worked with the powers that be. Probably differs in each state/community.

What scale are you working with in your "training" room?! Looks like maybe O (or O27) or something -- bigger than HO. I barely had room for a 4X7' HO layout, so I'm jealous.

Good luck.

Onewolf · Oct 21, 2014

mwbailey said:
Hey, Onewolf, just getting up to speed on your build. It looks great. This is a "day late and a dollar short" but our codes would allow a second structure IF only four of five "activities" were available; seems it was something like cooking, bathing, sleeping, living, and eating. We left out the bed but got the kitchen. That worked with the powers that be. Probably differs in each state/community.

What scale are you working with in your "training" room?! Looks like maybe O (or O27) or something -- bigger than HO. I barely had room for a 4X7' HO layout, so I'm jealous.

Good luck.

I really don't want a 'dwelling' because someone besides me may decide to dwell in my garage.

The layout is HO gauge.

mwbailey · Oct 23, 2014

Surely you are not thinking that a MIL might move in if you had a dwelling. . . .

Can't tell from plans, but either you have a double-decker HO layout or you need more track! Looks like fun, in any case.

Onewolf · Oct 24, 2014

mwbailey said:
Can't tell from plans, but either you have a double-decker HO layout or you need more track! Looks like fun, in any case.

The layout design has three main levels. I created a quick (ugly) video of a 3D walk-thru:

Joe13 · Oct 24, 2014

The garage is awesome and all, but after checking out that video I am excited to see the train room!

Arps · Oct 24, 2014

This is gonna be good

42x68 'Iron Horse' Garage/Workshop Build

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