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New Garage Build

sennister

Well-known member
Joined
Nov 30, 2013
Messages
45
Location
Twin Cities, MN
Last summer we found out we have hail damage on the house. Insurance company looks things over we are getting a new roof and siding all the way around. Well that got me talking with my wife. Our house was build in 1963 and we have a 2 car tuck under garage that we don't use. Truck won't fit because the opening is only 6' tall. My car fits but I don't park there because of heat loss and bedrooms are above it. Not to mention I leave for work at 5am and drive a Subaru WRX so the family wouldn't enjoy the early wake up when I start the car. Anyhow we decided now is the time to pull the trigger on the garage build. Ultimately we will convert the tuck under to living space and we are attaching the new garage to an existing 10x20 porch behind the house. The porch will grow in size to 10x29 with and become a mud room/laundry. The garage will be 40x29 with 12' ceilings. We are stuck with the odd 29' depth on the garage because of an existing window on the house that we don't want to mess with. We closed on financing for the garage a couple months ago but construction is at a hold here in MN and we plan on breaking ground in the spring.

The garage is primarily going to be used for parking. In the winter I will keep my tractor in the 3rd stall and in the summer my motorcycles. On the property we have a detached 1.5 car and 2 car garage which are uninsulated and not heated. As well as a 32x46 pole barn which is insulated and force air heated. The pole barn is my shop area. So I don't know that this will become much of a work area. Though I want to prep the slab in the middle stall for a 2 post hoist.

My wife is an CADD Drafter so she is working on the plans in Microstation. I have been working in Sketchup to figure out some stuff. Here is a rough idea from Sketchup of what we are looking at so far.

The room shown with the steps is the existing porch which is being expanded. The house isn't shown but it is on the 29' side of the porch. It is crawl space vented to the outside under the porch. The porch is currently heated with electric baseboard heat. We are going with Hydronic floor heat for the garage and will run another pump and loop for heating the porch since the floor has to be ripped up and redone. I am also considering adding a loop down the apron of the garage. We are also pouring a patio behind the garage which will be an outdoor kitchen (eventually) and probably a hot tub. 5 year plan on those two. I am also considering adding a loop under the patio. At least part of it. I assume as long as there is an expansion joint I should be fine not heating all of it. Just looking at keeping the snow clear as we make a run to the hot tub.

Edit: Looks like I can't add the photo just yet until I hit 5 posts. Been a lurker here for many years but never posted. So I will have to keep everyone in suspense. Or you can look in my album as the photo is there.
 
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sennister

Well-known member
Joined
Nov 30, 2013
Messages
45
Location
Twin Cities, MN
As mentioned if you look in my album you can see the sketch up drawing. One thing I was considering is adding a closet/small room in the corner of the garage behind the steps coming from the porch. I was thinking it might be nice to put the Hydronic system in here as well as the sub panel. We are also making some big changes with power on our property. We currently have 150A service providing power for everything with a 60A sub panel in the pole barn. I want more power out there for welding as my In-Laws tie into that with their 5th Wheel Camper when they are in town and that means I am limited to what work I do out there. No welding on hot days. We got the OK from our power company to go up to 400A (Well I guess it is something like 340A) meaning we will replace the meter box on the side of the house with one that contains 2x200A breakers. This satisfies the code of a breaker within ___ ft of the meter and our house panel will become a sub panel and the new garage will get a new feed from the second 200A. The pole barn and other accessory buildings will then be fed from the new garage sub panel. A lot of people have commented that this is a lot of power for a garage but when factoring in the other buildings, shop, fed off it. Not to mention it future proofs me for an electric car or two at some point. I also homebrew and have a 50A 240V brewing system that will likely live in the new garage. Then the In-laws will still tie into it. We also have a camper that it would be nice to have a 50A 240V hook up for when we are prepping for a trip to be able to run the AC and such on. I figure it is going to be cheaper to install 200A now than to try and go back and change things later.

So one of my questions is how big would this room need to be. I would like to get the sub panel on an interior wall so that I could feed more wires from the attic should I need to add a new circuit at some point in time for something. I want to say I read that you need 42" of space in front of the breaker for code. Not sure on requirements for the hydronic system as I have never had one before. I am planning on adding a natural gas boiler but I haven't seen the numbers back on how big of a system I need (BTUs). One thing to note as another option on this. About 4 years ago I installed a 199,000 BTU/hr tankless water heater which is capable of running in boiler mode (160F) We currently run it in tankless water heater mode (120F). In talking with a buddy he mentioned we could jumper it to run in boiler mode, add an indirect hot water tank and not have to add another boiler for the floor heat system. My concerns is with a family of 4 (one a teenage daughter) we like the infinite hot water. We would go back to the limitations of a tank water heater. But there could be benefits in not having to mess with venting and another appliance to fail. I am kind of torn on this option. It would likely mean we need to add the tank in the basement of the house and run lines out to the new garage.

Anyhow if the stairs are where they are in the sketch up I would be looking at about 4x9 for that room. My wife wants to shift them closer to the back wall which would reduce this to maybe 4x5 or 4x4. I am just concerned that this might be too tight for the boiler and the electrical. Though I guess the panel could go on the garage side of the wall. However it may have to be accessible from the top of the steps going into the porch.

Thoughts on this?
 
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