[vanwyk4257]

Well, I received the blessing from my wife last weekend to go ahead and build a garage out back (it might have helped that I have two F-bodies in the garage at the moment and she's parking outside (IMG:http://www.frrax.com/rrforum/style_emoticons/default/ph34r.gif) ) so I am trying to work out the details on design, size, layout et al.

I am thinking of doing a 24x30 with 12'foot walls to allow me enough height to install a 2 or 4-post lift down the road.

My thought is to put a 16x8 overhead door off to one side of the 30ft. wall which will face the house and then have a 3ft. steel service/entry door as well.

I want to have room to park two cars inside and still have a decent workshop space for working on engines, etc.

I do plan to insulate the entire building and will be running natural gas and electricity (110V only most likely) to it. Heat will be from a 90%+ efficiency furnace, i.e., forced air (my dad's in the business so I can get one cheap).
I also plan to finish the interior walls and ceiling with OSB as opposed to drywall just because it will be easier to live with, i.e., I can bang into it with tools, parts etc. without doing any real damage, and if I do manage to punch a hole in a sheet it will be easier to replace. Finally, I am anticipating putting a loft area in the trusses for storage with a pull-down ladder.

I am looking or any input with regard to the size (I know you can never build too large) based on the aforementioned parameters, will it be large enough?

Also, I would welcome any advice or input with regard to layout etc.

Thanks in advance for the input guys!

[vanwyk4257]

24ft. is the depth. I could potentially go a bit deeper than 24' but I'm pretty restricted by my small backyard and all the offsets from the lot lines et al. I want to keep the overhead doors quite a way back from the house and also leave myself more then enough room to maneuver my trailer to park it next to the garage in the back yard. If I went much deeper than 24 feet that would get a bit more difficult.

I don't plan on putting any shelves in front of the area where the car(s) will be parked. All the shelves and workbenches will be off in the side of the building with the workshop area. My tool cabinet has casters so I can just roll that over to the car when I need to work on it.

I agree with your recommendation on the concrete and will be checking into that once I select a couple different contractors to get quotes from. I will definitely go thicker on the side of the garage that would eventually get the lift, if not the entire garage. It depends largely on my overall budget at this point.

I only have one car at this point and I'm not too concerned about having two cars in the garage at a time. Worst case scenario I can angle one slightly into the workshop area and still have plenty of room to work on stuff.

There are really a couple reasons I'm looking at gas heat, one I think forced air heat is far more efficient at heating up an area like a garage than electric heat would be, and I don't plan on keeping the temperature too high in the garage in the winter anyway, just warm enough to keep my hands from going numb! (IMG:http://www.frrax.com/rrforum/style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)