Planning my shop Build-out for next summer, looking for advice.
I have a 10ft ceiling in my garage and I have installed a MaxJax lift. It raises the vehicle to about 4 ft high.
I've been looking at lifts, I really have, but everything I've found necessitates cutting-up my floor so I can lift my trucks. And I'm not sure I want to do that....yet. Maybe sometime in the future...
Another feature I'm thinking about doing in my garage is to mount LED tube lighting fixtures close to the floor on the walls so when I'm under the car, I get way more light
Sounds like a pretty good idea, but I don't think it will work, as I'm already running out of usable space along the walls when I draw things out with my Crayons! Think I'll just stick to ceiling/overhead lights, with a couple pull-down "trouble" lights.
You can buy insulation in a big blanket that goes around the roof trusses right on the underside of the roof and down the walls. It insulates better cause there are no 2x4’s to transfer cold to the inside wall. On mine I ran siding faced plywood up 4 feet on the inside walls and the rest metal siding in including the ceiling. There is 10 inches of blown in insulation on top of the ceiling plus the blanket insulation on the underside of the roof. This is where most of your heat loss is. Don’t forget to put a vapor barrier between inside walls and insulation.
That's what I'm doing right now: planning-out the insulation and what-not. (Never heard of these "blankets, though, so Thanks!). I have a "friend of a friend" who does closed-cell foam insulation as a side business, and he quoted me something like $8k to spray the walls and ceiling (he called it a "hot roof") with 2" of foam about a year ago. Not sure what to think of the "hot roof" idea, but I like the idea of using the foam as the vapor barrier.
Floor drains are a nice touch!
We have a drains (2) in the garage up at the house, and I agree that they're nice, but I would have to tear-up the existing floor to put them in the shop/shed, and I'm not too keen on doing that right now.
Finished the floor.
Installed the largest stationary tub I could find and hot water tank under it.
Windows.
We had the garage floor coated (for the house), and we love it, so that's on The List! As for water, the PO of the property buried about 100 feet of 1" PVC in the ground from the house down to the shed/shop (cold water, w/a shut-off for winter), so there's a spigot about 10' from the side service door already. Not Code by any means, but it
is handy. This is an intriguing idea, thanks! As for windows, Yup! I plan on installing some up high, so prying eyes can't peek inside the space (easily).