Hey All, Silver Spring Maryland here! I have been poking around on the site here from time to time for a while. Now of course I have been sinking tons of time into the site... there are so many good garage build threads, lift threads, home built work benches, etc etc to read.
Background:
When house shopping we were trying to find a good balance between location for work, location for a good school, house cost and my 1 stipulation... a garage. We had to bend on a couple house requirements with the exception of the 1 that we broke - no garage! My wife and I bought our house about 4 years ago now and NOW it's time for a project I really care about!
I have been doing some 24 hours of Lemons racing for a few years. I am now to the point where I might start doing some of the other endurance series and I also want to improve as a driver on the track more. So my goal is to probably start to get involved with some NASA stuff, possibly SCCA and BMWCCA when I am not doing endurance racing. But first things first, I need to stop the driveway mechanic stuff and get a shop setup.
What am I building?:
Growing up we had a barn, a 3 car garage and a 2 bay 2 deep space to work in. I was originally thinking of building a traditional garage but the time and cost just don't seem worth it here in the area. My dad has been building houses/garage/etc for 40 years but I just can't take that much time off him to come a few states away to build this thing. Possibly I could do a lot of it myself fairly quickly but I am terrible @ finish work... granted I may not fully finish the inside anyway so maybe not a big deal.
So what I decided on was to go with a pole barn style building. Right now I have been having most of my conversations with Graber ( http://www.polebarn.com/ ). Montgomery County code says I need to be under 50% of my house footprint and a mean 15' building height. So I think I am going to end up at 24x30x12' ceilings.
What do I want from the building?:
Right now I am not going to worry about heating/cooling too much, I just want to see how it is after it's up temp wise inside. I may close it all up down the road. I want to get a lift installed for ease of working on cars. I will 90% of the time just have a single car in there. I want to make sure I have enough power for the welder, air compressor, lights, etc.. nothing too crazy. I want to make sure I have lots of storage for spares I may get from pick and pulls, etc. I will probably get my house security system extended to the garage and/or get a CCTV system setup for when I am not out there.
Challenges:
This is the first time I have done permits myself; My dad has always done them in the past on projects and I just do grunt work and build what he points me towards. I need to have 4 80' pines taken down in/near the slab space so I need to make sure that all gets cleaned up well. I haven't been getting many good bids on site prep after the trees come down and/or cement. My dad did say he would come down to help me with the cement since we can do that in a weekend after the building is in so that's good, but that doesn't help with site prep/leveling. I have gotten all the prices on 13 yards of cement, wire mesh, etc for the slab and stone for the base. I may bring in a bit more (8-10 yards) of fill w/o organic material for under the base. (site prep and concrete are my biggest stress points ATM).
Where is the project so far?:
Currently Graber is working on the design of the building for me with the height revision. I had a prelim visit with zoning to verify what and where I can build. That actually seemed to go pretty well; I just had to pull the height of the building down to 15' mean and I am moving it around on the property. The move on my property is actually better and I get to shove it back into the corner how I wanted. I just need to move the garage door to the side vs the end of the building. Hopefully this week I will have an engineer stamped plan from Graber, I am waiting on a call from permits just to verify what the slab needs to be and then I will go by permitting. Once I get my permit in hand I guess that will be official that the build has started and I will start up a build thread under the garage gallery.
Background:
When house shopping we were trying to find a good balance between location for work, location for a good school, house cost and my 1 stipulation... a garage. We had to bend on a couple house requirements with the exception of the 1 that we broke - no garage! My wife and I bought our house about 4 years ago now and NOW it's time for a project I really care about!
I have been doing some 24 hours of Lemons racing for a few years. I am now to the point where I might start doing some of the other endurance series and I also want to improve as a driver on the track more. So my goal is to probably start to get involved with some NASA stuff, possibly SCCA and BMWCCA when I am not doing endurance racing. But first things first, I need to stop the driveway mechanic stuff and get a shop setup.
What am I building?:
Growing up we had a barn, a 3 car garage and a 2 bay 2 deep space to work in. I was originally thinking of building a traditional garage but the time and cost just don't seem worth it here in the area. My dad has been building houses/garage/etc for 40 years but I just can't take that much time off him to come a few states away to build this thing. Possibly I could do a lot of it myself fairly quickly but I am terrible @ finish work... granted I may not fully finish the inside anyway so maybe not a big deal.
So what I decided on was to go with a pole barn style building. Right now I have been having most of my conversations with Graber ( http://www.polebarn.com/ ). Montgomery County code says I need to be under 50% of my house footprint and a mean 15' building height. So I think I am going to end up at 24x30x12' ceilings.
What do I want from the building?:
Right now I am not going to worry about heating/cooling too much, I just want to see how it is after it's up temp wise inside. I may close it all up down the road. I want to get a lift installed for ease of working on cars. I will 90% of the time just have a single car in there. I want to make sure I have enough power for the welder, air compressor, lights, etc.. nothing too crazy. I want to make sure I have lots of storage for spares I may get from pick and pulls, etc. I will probably get my house security system extended to the garage and/or get a CCTV system setup for when I am not out there.
Challenges:
This is the first time I have done permits myself; My dad has always done them in the past on projects and I just do grunt work and build what he points me towards. I need to have 4 80' pines taken down in/near the slab space so I need to make sure that all gets cleaned up well. I haven't been getting many good bids on site prep after the trees come down and/or cement. My dad did say he would come down to help me with the cement since we can do that in a weekend after the building is in so that's good, but that doesn't help with site prep/leveling. I have gotten all the prices on 13 yards of cement, wire mesh, etc for the slab and stone for the base. I may bring in a bit more (8-10 yards) of fill w/o organic material for under the base. (site prep and concrete are my biggest stress points ATM).
Where is the project so far?:
Currently Graber is working on the design of the building for me with the height revision. I had a prelim visit with zoning to verify what and where I can build. That actually seemed to go pretty well; I just had to pull the height of the building down to 15' mean and I am moving it around on the property. The move on my property is actually better and I get to shove it back into the corner how I wanted. I just need to move the garage door to the side vs the end of the building. Hopefully this week I will have an engineer stamped plan from Graber, I am waiting on a call from permits just to verify what the slab needs to be and then I will go by permitting. Once I get my permit in hand I guess that will be official that the build has started and I will start up a build thread under the garage gallery.
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