Ive been working on my shop for about a year and a half now. I had Southwest Building Supply build it and deal with alot of the issues i didnt want to deal with. They dealt with county, did permits, did concrete, installed the building, everything but the garage doors and electrical. No it wasnt cheap but i also wanted the damn thing done in a timely manner and i very well knew i wasnt going to have it done within a year. The longest part was waiting on county and the G&D i needed so i didnt have an outragous dirt work bill. I did all the dirt work and my FIL is doing all the wiring. outsoured the doors to a friend of my brothers who got me way better doors than SW would have and they were cheaper. I had dirtwork quoted by a few people and everyone wanted between 15-25k for the shit. fuuuuuck that, that is fucking dumb for the work that needed to be done. i bought a kubota tractor with bucket, gannon, and backhoe for 23k and did the whole pad in 2 weeks. i pulled out about 200 yards of dirt and move another 200 yards into the build up area (one corner needed to be cut down while the other needed to be built up). to soak and compact, i rented the biggest skip loader i could get and borrowed my buddies 5k water truck so i could move/fold the dirt in a timely manner over the summer without having all the water evap before i was able to move it back and compact it. That only took a weekend and cost 300 bucks. didnt save much but i now i have an extremely handy tractor that i use the shit out of. well worth it and its paid for its self in the side jobs ive done.
Building specs are 50x50x16.5 (i wanted enough depth to fit a 40ft trailer inside with no issues), 2 4ft man doors, a 14x14 door for the RV and a 10x16ft door. Concrete is 5" fiber re-enforced monolithic pour with 24x24" footers. 4" wall insulation and 6" roof like Tommy did on his old shop. Garage doors are polyurethane insulated.
If i were to do it over again, id just bump my garage door up to a 14x16. have not needed it but its better to have and not need to need and not have. There is no way i could make 10x10 doors work. id for sure hit the damn sides of the garage door with a truck or something. just too tight. 14ft is way better but 12ft would be a good comprimise. I needed the 16ft high ceiling to have the 14ft high door and so i could do the pallet racking like tommy stated as well. 12ft tall rack looks small inside lol. i didnt pre=plan any electrical inside and honestly dont think i would. instead i put alot of 220v outlets inside the shop so really anywhere i placed equipment, a plug was near by. Im glad i did because my original plan and layout i figured out with chaulk and tape measurer did not work out. If you are going to do an underground line to the lift, pre-plan where the lift goes based on your saw cut lines or move the saw cut lines, its a big no no to have the lift too close to the edge of them as its a weaker area. I chose to just drop a line down, you have to run a bunch of lines up there anyhow for lighting. In all, i think i have 10 220v outlets (8 are 30amp, rest are 50 amp), a fuck ton of 110v 4 plug outlets and then lighting. I have a 400 amp service on the house with a dedicated 200 to the house on one main breaker and another main 200amp breaker than then drops into my underground and is ran to the shop. Shop then has a 200amp panel on it. My panel is filling up quick but i still have plenty of room to add more circuits and the eventual 3 mini splits for a/c in there. Im not even worried that a 200amp breaker will be enough. even with 2 guys, i see no way we can pull enough power to blow it with a/c going, welder going, plasma going and an rv plugged in and it pulling max power. thats going to be max - 150 amps.
