jyabs7
Member
Hey everyone, as with most things i'm learning as I go here. As I find problems, i dig into them and figure out how they work and how they're supposed to work, and go from there. I work in law enforcement but have small electrical experience, and worked with my hands most of my life so i like tinkering. This will be a long winded story, but worth it imo if anyone is bored.
SO, my house has an attached garage that was built in the 1890's. For some reason the previous owners thought it was a city relic and kept it, but built a brand new living structure attached to it about 11 years ago. The garage has it's recent structural upgrades, and is pretty solid wood wise. I had a new roof put on it this past fall but one of my major issues was heating.
I have a 220v cieling mounted garage heater that just ran and ran and ran. Even with the built in thermostat it couldn't keep up. I finally had enough and started moving in to insulate the structure. The attic and walls are great, with fairly new insulation that's in good shape. Two days ago I wired a thermostat to the heater via relay which seems to be working as it's supposed to so far, but the main thing will be to seal the cold air out.
So you go through my garage through the overhead door and you have one car space that's a concrete slab, with an oil change pit in the middle (whole slab is 10ftx19ft i believe). There's some decent cracks forming, and it's unlevel towards the back, but the pit doesn't have any yet. Regardless, I wanted to have it replaced, hoping to keep the pit. Someone quoted me $4,000 to replace the slab and keep the pit untouched. That seems insane to me, but i'm not an expert. Either way, I turned them down for now until i get a few more quotes in.
The rest of my garage is a wide wood plank floor. We've had problems with mice this past summer, and that floor is always ice cold. I decided i needed to dig into it and see what I could do to insulate it better so i could start saving money on heating costs, without the heater on high, literally anything in there would freeze, any car cleaning chemicals etc would have to be replaced every year.
Turns out, the floor is literally just wood planks laying on dirt. The planks are full length (14ft x 8" x 2"). They had two headers, and three joists. Laying directly on the dirt, and not connected to anything else. I'm guessing just the amount of years of walking on them, and and the rot helped keep them in place. The headers were basically turning to mush, and you can see all the holes throughout the garage where the rodents were digging and making a highway.
I decided to pull up all the boards, and will soon be framing out a new subfloor. I've never done this before, but my plan would be as such:
digging out to required depth, with cement blocks (found them in the dirt, they're in great shape might as well use them) to support the headers at each corner, and in the center
poly across the whole area, then frame it out with 2x6s anchored to the foundation. I figure a joist every 16", then inbetween each joist foam board insulation, then 3/4" plywood over the top. stain it, and be happy.
If that project goes well, I'll be painting the whole thing, and adding some cabinets to the back wall, and waiting on an electrician to come give me some more outlets for my hobby of mining bitcoin.
It's all a learning process, and i've come across this site numerous times while googling questions, and figured it's finally time to join and see what else I can learn. I hope to pick up quite a bit of information from everyone here over the years to come.
SO, my house has an attached garage that was built in the 1890's. For some reason the previous owners thought it was a city relic and kept it, but built a brand new living structure attached to it about 11 years ago. The garage has it's recent structural upgrades, and is pretty solid wood wise. I had a new roof put on it this past fall but one of my major issues was heating.
I have a 220v cieling mounted garage heater that just ran and ran and ran. Even with the built in thermostat it couldn't keep up. I finally had enough and started moving in to insulate the structure. The attic and walls are great, with fairly new insulation that's in good shape. Two days ago I wired a thermostat to the heater via relay which seems to be working as it's supposed to so far, but the main thing will be to seal the cold air out.
So you go through my garage through the overhead door and you have one car space that's a concrete slab, with an oil change pit in the middle (whole slab is 10ftx19ft i believe). There's some decent cracks forming, and it's unlevel towards the back, but the pit doesn't have any yet. Regardless, I wanted to have it replaced, hoping to keep the pit. Someone quoted me $4,000 to replace the slab and keep the pit untouched. That seems insane to me, but i'm not an expert. Either way, I turned them down for now until i get a few more quotes in.
The rest of my garage is a wide wood plank floor. We've had problems with mice this past summer, and that floor is always ice cold. I decided i needed to dig into it and see what I could do to insulate it better so i could start saving money on heating costs, without the heater on high, literally anything in there would freeze, any car cleaning chemicals etc would have to be replaced every year.
Turns out, the floor is literally just wood planks laying on dirt. The planks are full length (14ft x 8" x 2"). They had two headers, and three joists. Laying directly on the dirt, and not connected to anything else. I'm guessing just the amount of years of walking on them, and and the rot helped keep them in place. The headers were basically turning to mush, and you can see all the holes throughout the garage where the rodents were digging and making a highway.
I decided to pull up all the boards, and will soon be framing out a new subfloor. I've never done this before, but my plan would be as such:
digging out to required depth, with cement blocks (found them in the dirt, they're in great shape might as well use them) to support the headers at each corner, and in the center
poly across the whole area, then frame it out with 2x6s anchored to the foundation. I figure a joist every 16", then inbetween each joist foam board insulation, then 3/4" plywood over the top. stain it, and be happy.
If that project goes well, I'll be painting the whole thing, and adding some cabinets to the back wall, and waiting on an electrician to come give me some more outlets for my hobby of mining bitcoin.
It's all a learning process, and i've come across this site numerous times while googling questions, and figured it's finally time to join and see what else I can learn. I hope to pick up quite a bit of information from everyone here over the years to come.
. You will find in future that will be of great help to you.