Between 705 & 1200 SQ/FT 25x30 New Shop Build

[Gangly]

I have been wanting a larger garage/shop for a while, as my current garage is a two car, attached garage that gets filled with everything imaginable between the kids and wife. I do a bit of mechanic work as a "side hustle", and its to the point where I need the extra room for tool storage, vehicle lift, etc. With the addition of a new to me bass boat, the wife told me that I needed to get on with the steel building project and make it happen. So, it finally happened and I'm excited about it. I'm doing the electrical on the weekends, but its taking me a while since the weekends are devoted to kid's sports. Here's the building from start, to current, but I'll add additional images as the buildout progresses.

Initial Dirt Work


More Dirt Work and Rough Grade


25x30 Concrete Slab


This is finish of day one of construction, with the steel frame erected. The guys doing the construction got the frame and siding up in roughly two days which was nice.

My wife, in her infinite wisdom, said I needed a rear bay door as well, and I couldn't be happier that she suggested it. In this Houston heat, the double bay doors allow for a decent breeze to blow through, as well as allowing me to dump my trailer dirt/sod/rock/etc. at the back of the building instead of having to carry it around shovel by shovel.

With two dogs and a decent rainy season, the entire inside of the house was getting covered in red clay. It was to the point where if I didnt do something, the dogs and I would be sleeping outside permanently so the dogs and I did a little erosion control around the building. The sod place was closed, but I hope to get a pallet of sod this weekend to finish off the erosion control measures.

 

[Gangly]

I've had some time to work on the electrical lately, and its coming along, albeit slowly. I installed a 100 amp sub panel in the shop, fed by a 2 pole 60 amp breaker in my main panel. I wanted the extra breaker slots so I went with a larger panel than I needed, but I would rather have excess slots instead of having to swap out panels in the future.

The new shop is about 10-15 feet from the house, so I ran UF 6 (R, B, W, G) underground from the main panel to the interior shop sub panel. I didn't want to tear up the rock pathway so I used a pressure washer and PVC to "surgically" bore under the walkway.


I ran the UF conductors inside of the buried PVC conduit that ran underground, and then up along the side of the shop. I picked up an 8' ground rod from Home Depot and hammered it into the ground within close proximity to the PVC conduit, then attached a 6 AWG copper stranded conductor from the ground rod to the panel. I didn't want to cut another hole in the building for the grounding conductor running to the grounding rod, so I drilled a hole in the PVC conduit box, ran the conductor through the hole, and caulked the opening with clear 100% GE Silicon, as well as caulking the opening in the shop siding for the PVC electrical service entrance into the structure. Although the gounding conductor is attached to the grounding rod and panel, I haven't secured the grounding conductor to the conduit or building yet. I'm not sure if code will require me to secure the conductor cable to the shop siding, or if it will be OK to secure the conductor to the PVC pipe, so I'll have to check and see.


Inside the shop, I got the panel mounted and installed on a piece of 4x4 plywood sheathing. I installed a grounding bus bar, which I can already tell has too few slots for grounding conductors so I'll wind up eventually having to install a second, or larger grounding bus bar in the near future. I used a flap disc to remove paint from the wall girt immediately below the panel, attached a 6 AWG copper stranded conductor to the wall girt, and ran it to the ground bus bar in the panel, which now bonds the panel and steel building together and grounds them to the grounding rod. I picked up some red primer to match the red oxide paint on the wall girder, and painted the attachment location.


I decided that I want to try and keep the electrical runs looking as clean as possible, so I picked up 100' of EMT conduit and a conduit bender. Yes, I know the cut out in the plywood panel looks janky, but it is what it is and I still want the electrical runs to look as clean as possible with EMT conduit. I sacrificed a piece of conduit last night to practice with, and I will readily admit that its a heckuva lot harder than the pros on YouTube make it look. I might wind up sacrificing a few more pieces for the sake of knowledge and training, but this might be an expensive endeavor with all the mistakes I'll like make while learning how to do it properly. I'll take more pictures once I start running the conduit, as I am sure everybody would love a good laugh, but it could be a couple days, or even weeks before I can get to it.

Until then...

 

[Gangly]

I had a few hours this past saturday to try and run some emt conduit. I believe it probably took me an hour to run the first section with a bend in it and have it actually line up correctly. Bending pipe and having it fit right, flow correctly, and actually look as intended, is an art and Im am lucky to color with crayons. A gazillion YouTube videos later, many words my mother would not be proud of, and several pipe pieces later, I finally kinda, sorta, maybe, got the hang of it. I was able to run one full length across the roof line to where Ill be mounting quad receptacles on the other side of the bay door, and one partial run from the panel, to the light switch, and up to the roof line before running out of time. Hopefully I'll get some more time this coming weekend to work on it.

 

[Gangly]

I finished bending and running all of the EMT conduit throughout the shop, and hung the lights. I didn't have time to fish all of the electrical, but I hope to tonight. A couple of the conduit sections had funky bends to them because I had no real clue what I was doing when I first started, so I decided to replace some of the conduit sections that I installed on Day 1 because they were ugly/janky. I don't believe that the replaced sections are functionally better, its just that my OCD kicked in so I replaced portions that didn't "look" right, like the horizontal EMT piping running from the panel to the light switch in the picture in the above post.

Anyways, here's the installed LED ceiling lights (18K lumens each). They aren't exactly sitting pretty or straight right now, but I'll square and level everything out after I finish the electrical connections.

 

[Gangly]

I got a few free hours tonight and finished running the electrical for the lights which consisted of fishing electrical conductors, and making connections. In the process of doing that, I have learned that WAGO's are awesome, and soooooo woth it.

The temperature gauge in the building read 119 degrees, and the roof area felt every bit of what the temperature gauge reported. I haven't worked without a shirt on in 15 years, but I sure as heck did today.

I ran the electrical to all of my receptacle boxes as well, but I havent tied into the receptacles yet. Hopefully by this weekend Ill have all of the elcteical completed.


Oh yeah, I have lights now!

 

[Gangly]

This weekend was mostly spent moving large items out of the house garage and into the new shop: tool boxes, work bench, car, boat, etc. I still have to put in a couple metal cabinets and shelving units along the wall, but its finally starting to look how I imagined it would look, and it has more room than I anticipated.





The best part is that I no longer have to play twister to access my tools drawers and accessories. My second favorite part is a dedicated area for me and my son's fishing tackle, although it's mostly his.


I think a work light over my work bench, a large fan, and a good sized flat screen TV are the next items on the to-do list.

 

[hmbemis]

Are all those paw prints from a shop cat looking for mice, or do you have a raccoon issue??

...the shop is looking good!

Always jealous of folks who have the space and means to build one like that, I keep thinking one day I'll get there, but at 46 I've got more energetic years behind than ahead, so I'm getting worried

 

[Gangly]

Are all those paw prints from a shop cat looking for mice, or do you have a raccoon issue??

...the shop is looking good!

Always jealous of folks who have the space and means to build one like that, I keep thinking one day I'll get there, but at 46 I've got more energetic years behind than ahead, so I'm getting worried

My wife likes to feed stray cats, and they would sometimes stay in the attached garage after she left for work, unbeknownst to her and I. Those paw prints were initially a very unwelcome sight, but shortly after the paw prints appeared, the cats started dropping off snakes and unwelcome guests they had graciously dispatched for my wife, so I'm not quite as irritated as before .

I'd been dreaming of having a shop for the past 21 years that I have lived here, and I finally got the go ahead so I jumped all over getting it done. With you being 46, we are darn near the same age, so our best years are ahead .

Thank you for the kind words regarding the shop, I appreciate it.

 

[Gangly]

I forgot my updates. Of the three tasks that I wanted to complete next, I've only managed to accomplish two of them: install a suitable wall mount fan, and install an overhead (somewhat) light above my work bench.

I picked up a 30" wall mount fan from the orange box store, and mounted the fan close to the sub panel in the corner of the building. While the fan is sufficiently strong enough to circulate air throught the entirety of the building, it's fairly loud. I prefer a fairly quite environment, other than some good music, so I might install two smaller, quieter units and see how the air moves with just the smaller two fans.



The overhead work bench light came straight from the attached garage, and was the overhead light I used when working at the work bench the last few years. Although the pictures don't really show it, the light does a great job of illuminating the bench top surface.




If it's not obvious, I'm an unrepentant Texans fan. I am no longer a season ticket holder, but that's a flag they gave us when we were.