New Acreage.... What size shop?

[firstgenaddict]

Finally found a piece of property and have a contract, (closing later this month) on a nice piece of property after looking for-EVER...
7 Acres - 25 minute drive from the intl airport- 12 year old SOLID Barn... Creek... spring... 250 foot well... granite outcroppings... 10 miles from I85 little north of the midpoint between Atlanta and Charlotte.
Now comes a building... and spray booth.

[Canuck]

200 sq ft per car. Count up all your cars ,multiply by 2, add car wash bay,work bay, paint booth,clean room then add another 2000 sq ft and you are close.

[bbbentley]

Very pretty piece of ground. Congrats! Always exciting planning the possibilities and new horizons. Shop size? I worked in a large machine tool factory, up here, in Cincinnati. Standing at one end, you literally could not see the other end of the building with the naked eye! It was huge! THAT is the size building one needs, IMO. It’s never big enough.

[A12pilot]

Wow! Awesome find and congratulations! You've gotta be excited for sure!!

What I did for my shop was divide the buildings. Yes, I'd loooooove a shop that was visible from Alpha Centauri, but when I walk out my door, I didn't want to see the Empire State building. What I did was to build two buildings: one 1200 sq. Ft., and another 900 sq. Ft. In addition, an oversized 1000 sq ft 3-car garage on the house. The main big shop will be divided into a paint booth with parts mezzanine on top, a 2 post lift in one space, and a clear bay on the other. The other building will be the MCACN shrine...er....the reassembly and clean room for newly painted cars! Basically, one dirty shop, one clean shop followed by car storage at the house if needed.

Obviously, this works for me and not most. Mainly because I sell all my cars when done anyway so car storage, while needed, isn't the main concern. My main concern is keeping newly painted cars away from all the dirty crap! This decision for me comes from years of having different shops and what worked and didn't. What I found myself doing was always dividing bigger buildings into smaller ones to separate stages in my build process so one doesn't muff-up the other. I can handle that part! So that's why I decided to do smaller shops. Well...I guess smaller is a relative term. They are also located across from each other for ease of transfer between the buildings.

Just another suggestion for you to consider besides the bigger building concept. Keep us posted...and nicely done!!

Cheers
Dave

[firstgenaddict]

Bentley... too big is never big enough. I looked at 125,000 ft building a few years ago and thought... I can only spot 8 rail cars, and the drive way is just over 1/4 miles straight... ... not big enough & not a long enough drive for SHUTDOWN area.... LOL

Dave,
How tall are you to the eves on your building and what is the height for your mezzanine? We had a nice mezzanine in our Paper Converting Plant BUT had 21 foot eves on the building.
I was also considering breaking it up so that I didn't have paint/body work and assembly going on in the same building. I too have dealt with the irritation of having a complete mess all over cars being assembled AND have been using a paint booth to put a car together which means I have primed a bunch of parts outside or in the shop for the last 6 months.

[A12pilot]

The eave height on my building is 14ft, and the peak is 18ft, so the mezzanine will have a sloped ceiling peak, but for what I'm doing with it as far as storage, it'll work out fine. Paint booth won't be more than 9ft high, so a car on a twirler can rotate a good distance to get on the underside of the body. Worked in my last shop and I was pretty pleased with the 2,500,000 Lumens of LED lighting I had in there. Turn those on and it was like an X-Ray machine went off! I looked like a walking skeleton!

Cheers
Dave

[mockingbird812]

That is a pretty piece of property! Congrats! Have fun! Keep us posted!

[Jonesy]

I have 6 cars right now. I just built a new shop last year. Mine is 60 x 72 with 2 18 foot overhead doors on it and a man door across the 60 foot side. That left me plenty of room for workbenchs and cabinets. I have an area with a 4 post lift. I did a full bath with walk in shower, compressor/utility room and a storage room thats 12 x 30. I did 12 foot ceilings which works great for the lift.
You have the room, go for it!!

[Crush]

Mine is 26-30’ x 70’. Two barns put together. Ceiling is 16’ and drops to 10’. I have 1 14’ door, 1 10’ 2 car and 2 10’ 2 car doors. I have 5 cars and a few bikes and always looking for more!
6” concrete with 1” foam and plastic underneath.
No lift yet, doing the research via GJ. They have a lot of ways to spend money over there, heck it’s as bad as this place!
Happy to give my pros and cons on barns if you ever have questions.
Have fun with it!

[Keith Seymore]

I would also recommend more than one building.

Keep lawn equipment in one building; that way you are not tracking lawn clippings and leaves into a clean work or storage space.

One area partitioned off for dirty work: welding, grinding, blasting. A separate area for storage and display.

Make the ceiling high enough for a hoist and make the entry high enough to allow an enclosed car trailer or RV (if you have one or ever might entertain the possibility of maybe getting one).

K