Just joining from NW Illinois

[Lockjz]

Hope to get some good insight here on building a new garage/shop. We lost our garage about a month ago to what I believe was an electrical fire. Everything inside was lost including our garage cat. All my tools supplies and brand new UTV. Not here to get sympathy just looking for some ideas on building a new shop for myself this summer. Our old garage was 24x30 fully insulated and heated. I never had room to park any vehicles in it as i had so many supplies for working on the house so this time i will be going as big as i can. Thanks for any advice and looking forward to seeing some cool ideas!

 

[nadogail]

Welcome Aboard from Southwestern California.

 

[Busted_Knuckles]

Greetings, from Northwest Illinois !

What kind of " electrical " mishap is speculated that you had. Its always good to know !

 

[Lockjz]

Thanks, really not sure what started it i can only speculate. It was so frozen over from the fire dept. water spray when they did the fire investigation it didnt lead to many answers. I had a battery charger going on a 40 amp charge for a few hours on my skid steer which was parked just outside the garage. Also had two block heaters plugged into the garage. Was in there 20-30 min before we smelled smoke in the house. Just glad everyone made it out safe.

 

[Toolfool]

Welcome to GJ. Hold onto your wallet.

 

[Bill Bowman]

Welcome

 

[loganb]

Welcome to GJ. Hold onto your wallet.

Welcome to the group! And Toolfool has some sage advice....but half of us are secretly here just to find new things to spend our money on anyway!

Sent from The Garage Journal mobile app

 

[ambenz]

....Our old garage was 24x30 ....I never had room to park any vehicles in it as i had so many supplies for working on the house .....

Welcome to the GJ neighbor, sounds like your house needs a lot of work! Managing supplies has to be a factor in scheduling jobs/materials, and controlling the space in a garage...so no matter how big you built it, you may never be able to park and cars of you can't even manage over 700 squares!
I imagine most questions are how big is the lot and do you want a warehouse or a couple more bays? What can you afford, size wise?
It's a crazy expensive world right now as far as building materials are concerned. Can you speculate and wait or will prices of building products keep rising? Today, you need a crystal ball...but I forsee us in a depression or civil war in the next 2 years...you might be too late.

 

[Lockjz]

Ambenz, my plan for storage of materials in the future is two 20ft shipping containers. I have 5acres of land alot of which is timber so as long as i clear trees i can go whatever size i need. Also since lumber is insane right now i was leaning toward an I beam framed building i believe they call them rigid frame? I havent done too much homework yet so not sure what steel prices look like.