Help setting up the space in my new shop?

[Lynden]

One thing to remember when walling off a parking space in a two- or three-car garage is the walled-off parking space needs to be wider. In a multi-car garage, the car door opening area is shared between vehicles. When one parking space is walled off, the new wall may interfere with opening the doors of the cars parked on both sides of the wall. You can see the shared area if you look at the tire tracks in your second picture. If you place the wall under the beam (where the column is), your wife may not have enough room to comfortably enter and exit her car. 

http://www.houseplanshelper.com/images/s...nsions.jpg

http://www.houseplanshelper.com/images/d...e_door.jpg

To find out where to place the wall, park your wife's car in the driveway, open both front doors about 3/4 of the way (or more) and measure the total width. If she will be getting a larger (wider) car in the future, you'll need to add a little to the total width.

[®smpr_fi_mac®]

Tom, this is in MD, south and east of DC. Insulating the garage will make a big difference and will be done after I put in all the wiring.

Harold, I watched that video. He actually moved into a *four* car garage and took three of the bays for his shop. I got the idea to remove the door hardware from his video.

Lynden, thanks for that. I'll keep it in mind when designing that wall. Might move it away from her side or only make it a half way (from the ceiling) to accommodate.

I appreciate the advice!

[EdL]

Holy carp! First thing I would do is find a compentent garage door company and have ALL the doors redone.

They make tracks that will take them up the wall and close to the ceiling......so they don't look like that.

Ed

[wood-chips]

Sounds like you have worked out a pretty good layout/plan. You've given a lot of thought to the electrical needs. Be sure not to overlook the light switch circuits. If you plan on a lot of lighting, that could easily use up two 15A or 20A circuits.

How are you planning on utilizing the celling space you mentioned?  If you load up the celling with heavy "stuff" the celling will eventually sag as it's not designed to carry a big load.  When you build the wall you could add some structural joists and put a support post at the opposite existing wall to carry the load. That would allow you to have heavy loads above without compromising the existing celling.

When it comes to finishing the walls I would consider using 3/4" plywood. It would be more expensive that sheet rock. However, with plywood you can hang anything anywhere without having to find a stud.

Good luck with you're new shop. Many hours of enjoyment to look forward too!

[Wipedout]

I agree with Ed. I would have the tracks redone and leave the door functional That way when you have nice weather you can open up the shop. Other than that it looks like a good plan.

[®smpr_fi_mac®]

Ed, the bay door to the left (looking at the doors from the house wall) will remain operative and will allow access in and out and provide fresh air. Along with the windows on the adjacent wall, I'll get nice air movement when needed. The wall I'm contemplating adding in will only extend about 2/3 of the way from the house wall towards the bay door, light and air will be able to move around AND to allow me to move things in and out of my side of the space. Not only that, but I think the area above those two doors is the best place for me to put wood storage.

wood-chips, I plan on putting in a large sub panel so I will be able to run a lot of circuits. LED lighting doesn't draw much in the way of amperage, but even so, I plan on putting in two, maybe three 20A circuits dedicated to them. On the ceiling space? I don't know. The more I think about it, I probably won't be able to use it for storage--I'll be hanging at least one ceiling fan, lots of shop lights, and two air scrubbers. That won't leave much room for anything else. The idea of plywood isn't a bad one. It'll be about 6x more expensive, but if done over the course of months, I might not get killed by SWMBO...and the idea of being able to hang heavy cabinets more easily sounds nice.

A question just came to mind--is there a "best practice" method for laying out lighting? Are 48" LED shop lights the way to go? How densely should the be mounted? Patterns?

The walls will eventually be painted white, but there will eventually be a lot of unpainted birch ply cabinetry on every surface I can make use of.

[EdL]

This is the type of track system I'm talking about.

High lift video

Ed

[Lynden]

A question just came to mind--is there a "best practice" method for laying out lighting?  Are 48" LED shop lights the way to go?  How densely should they be mounted?  Patterns?  

Have you seen this information?

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.p...&p=1912943

[®smpr_fi_mac®]

Thanks for that!

[Wood'N'Scout]

It sounds like you've thought about this quite a bit.  The only thing I'd suggest would be to call your homeowners insurance company and check on what you're doing.  Especially the fact that you're adding a wood burning stove in a woodshop that's attached to your house.