A new garage

[Gregor1]

I thought I had already posted this, but apparently not. If it does show up twice, forgive me.

I built mys garage in 1991. The lay of my land slopes. I have a walk out basement in my house. I had to have 8' walls poured to set the garage on. Rather than just fill it with sand, I decided to put pre-cast concrete slabs on top, and have a basement in the garage. The garage floor was then poured on top of the pre-cast slabs. There is also a concrete floor in the basement of my garage. The ceiling in the basement is the underside of the pre-cast slabs. Ceiling height is about 7 1/2'. I have a special order 7' wide double door in the basement, so I could store my boat in the winter. I am getting a quote for a new garage. Same size, 24 X 26. It may or may not happen depending on the cost. Again, I will have to have 8' poured walls as a foundation. My wife still has the paper work from the 1991 build. The pre-cast slabs at the time cost $2980. That is delivered and set on the foundation. I called the same place in S. Beloit IL., to see what the same thing would cost today. Slabs for a 24 X 26 garage, delivered, and set on the foundation. Are you sitting down? The same thing today is $15.600. Needless to say, if I do build a new garage, it won't have a basement.

[fredhargis]

That does seem like a huge increase, but remember you built the first one over 30 years ago. I didn't look up the inflation factor over those thirty years, but certainly coupled with what we've seen lately (inflation) it's probably to be expected.

[MstrCarpenter]

I like the idea of a basement under the garage, especially if existing grade will allow a walkout. I had concrete poured on long span steel decking for the front half of my 24' x 48' "barn". There's 12" x ??? I-beams at 6' O.C. and another under those that cuts the span to about 12' so it's capable of supporting my 15,500 lb. JCB backhoe. With the cost of steel being what it is, I'm not sure if that would still be less expensive. It was in the 90's. 

I've been in lots of old buildings where the concrete floor/ceiling was poured in place on top of site built forms. Perhaps that's an option worth reinventing.