New 64'x36' Garage/Shop

[CarFire]

After about a year of delays we are finally ready to build our garage and shop. We kicked around all sorts of different places to put it and ultimately decided for convenience and cost to put it 90 degrees from the existing garage so it can share the same pad.

We decided to do an attic truss that will give us a 16' wide room that runs the length of the shop with dormers upstairs. This be my wife's office and business space. I'll have run of the downstairs garage with cars and workshop.

Because of the slope of the land, we need to build some concrete walls to fill under the slab. We are in a place with very good soil that tested at over 2500 PSI.

Looked at the metal building route, but couldn't figure out a way to get a second-story easily.

Footers a couple of days ago.... Walls today.....

 

[CarFire]

Poured the walls today. The deep/tall walls are 10" thick the shorter ones are 6" thick. We will have a slab ledge on the 10" walls so the slab is tied into the wall. We will use rebar pins to lock everything together. The deepest wall is about 7' high on top of 2' of footer!

 

[CarFire]

Forms coming off this morning. They've only been on about 16 hours, but time to move to the next job. Very cool to see the walls steaming as the forms come off. For those that think that concrete "dries" vs "cures" checkout the thermometer pics of the ground on the 68 degree morning vs the wall right after the form comes off!

 

[Deezler]

Nice! Thats a big building going in. Any more pics for the lay of the land and site? What state are you in?

Yeah I was amazed how steamy my garage was when we poured the 5" slab inside the 30x36 building. Concrete is awesome stuff.

 

[CarFire]

Forms off ready to sit for a week to strengthen before we start to fill it.

 

[CarFire]

Nice! Thats a big building going in. Any more pics for the lay of the land and site? What state are you in?

Yeah I was amazed how steamy my garage was when we poured the 5" slab inside the 30x36 building. Concrete is awesome stuff.

Thanks! Yeah, I kinda got ahead of myself with all of this. Now that we are down for a week, I plan to backup and show land and orientation to the house etc. As well as planning process. This was about a year of off and on planning to get to this point! Lots of lurking on this forum. Location is southeastern US.

 

[CarFire]

OK, So now that we have a few days to let the wall cure, back to the beginning.

We bought this house as a foreclosure. It has a 3 car garage, which is even air conditioned! However, I needed a place to put my lift and tools etc.

Ultimately the place to put the shop is to share the pre-existing concrete pad to put all the garages in one "motor court". This saves on concrete expense, but requires a wall to deal with the slope in the lot.

I've attached a floorplanner mock up I did before getting drawings done. Note ( I don't own a Porsche, but that is what they had in the CAD to use to as a placeholder. The Big SUV is actually my Dually Truck!)

 

[CarFire]

Ultimately, here is what it looks like from the outside. The main doors face south, so we decided to put awnings over the doors to keep summer sun off the doors. We're going to tie in the stone facade and the hardie plank siding. This may change some, we may go full stone front and plank on the dormers. See how much it costs.....

 

[CarFire]

On the inside, the biggest trick was gaining a lot of extra square footage for office upstairs. Then we had to find a way to squeeze in stairs. The downstairs will be 13'4" so it will clear my lift. To get this, we're going to do advanced framing. 2x6 @24OC. 12' 2x6 on 1' concrete wall. The 24"OC will give us much better effective insulation than 16OC, As long as we block the 2x6 2 times per bay we will have enough compressive strength.

 

[CarFire]

Upstairs is going to be a fairly huge room to use for home business or storage. One thing we did in our last shop that my wife recommended and was 100% correct about was putting in ALOT of light. All of the windows will be fairly high for security reasons. Additionally there will be 5 skylights. 3 for her area and 2 for my shop. All skylights and windows will be on the north side, with a possible few east windows. The windows will likely be 20" square fixed downstairs to keep them affordable. Upstairs, probably single-hung for cost and air-tightness.

 

[ConCretin]

Poured the walls today. The deep/tall walls are 10" thick the shorter ones are 6" thick. We will have a slab ledge on the 10" walls so the slab is tied into the wall. We will use rebar pins to lock everything together. The deepest wall is about 7' high on top of 2' of footer!

Nice looking foundation and an amazing project overall. I wouldn't pin your slab to the exterior walls. A slab that size will shrink considerably as it sets. Restraining it around the perimeter will increase the chance of shrinkage cracks. Control joints will hopefully keep them hidden but since the dowels aren't needed to begin with, it's an un-necessary risk.

 

[CarFire]

Good input, LLWillysfan! Thanks.

 

[CarFire]

Finally got to the fill. We have good sand/clay here that will compact to upwards of 4000psi bearing capability. As we have dirt on site, I wanted to use it to save on fill. There are some risks to it, but seemed a good bet. I hired a soils engineer and testing company to be on-site. I wanted per the engineer at least 95% compaction.

 

[CarFire]

We had a decent first day, but the soil testing guy showed up late and then it rained torrentially the next day! The day after it was too wet, but the grader just dug up fresh deeper fill and we pulled out the top layer of what we had. Ultimately, we had to play with the dirt to get the moisture level we wanted but when you get the moisture level with in a +/-3% window, it packs like concrete.

To give a sense of the difference. When it was 5% too moist, a probe rod that is 1/2" in diameter with a pointed tip could be pushed 18" into the packed fill with my 200lb body weight on it.

When we got in that +/-3% window with good packing you could stand on that rod and get 3/4" at best! Huge, huge difference.

Best results were from track packing with the big cat with a bucket of dirt and 10" lifts.

In the end, 98% compaction which is as high as DOT highway specs!