Darrin's Shop

Having a warm and dry year-'round place to work has always been a dream of mine.  In the Summer of 1999 I began construction of the building. Much like the construction of our house, I designed the building and did everything except the foundation.  This time, however, I contracted the truss and tin installation on the walls and roof.

The shop is 64' wide and 44' deep, earth bermed on three sides (almost - I still need to pour two retaining walls on the front, so I can finish the berm.)  The rear-most 12' is partitioned off with a 12' high load-bearing wall supporting the back of the main shop trusses.  This yields a 12' side-wall for the paint booth and service area.  The back 12' of floor space (64' wide) has an 8' ceiling, to reduce heating costs in the rooms for tool storage and machine work.  I included a 12,000 lb. auto lift, paint booth, machine shop/welding room, and tool storage room.

Here's an interior shot during construction...

The above photograph was taken before construction of a 12' high wall which will partition off the paint booth.  Trusses are constructed of 2x8s on 8' centers over the service area, but are 2x4 on 2' centers over the paint booth.  This was done so that I could install a horizontal ceiling over the paint booth and then insulate it from above with fiberglass cube.  Here's a shot of the ceiling material - white tin - being installed.  I used it for numerous reasons, including ease of installation, durability, reflective qualities, and price... (again, this is before construction of the partition wall.)

Here's an image of the front, again without gravel and before the last retaining walls (to be poured Spring of 2001 along with Andie's Hydroponic Greenhouse...)

The photo above shows the north side of the shop.  The door on the left leads to the lift in the service bay, the center door also opens to the service area, and the door on the right is for the paint booth.  The doors measure 10'x10', 12'x10', and 10'x10' respectively.  I made sure that the biggest Unimogs would fit, as well as all of our ranch equipment too.  Unfortunately, my Unimog Expedition Camper wound up being a little too tall to fit in the shop, so I have to take the camper off to get the chassis inside.

As I mentioned at the top of this page, WARMTH is of utmost importance. There are currently two sources of heat in the building, heating four independent zones. Zone One (Machine Shop,) Zone Two (Office/Tool Storage,) and Zone Three (Paint Booth) are heated by an 80,000 BTU Burnham LPG-fired water boiler...

...while Zone Four - the Service Area - is heated by a Modine LPG Unit Heater.  It's important to keep the furnace off of the floor in the service area to reduce the risk of fire/explosion should there be any flammable gasses settling to the floor. This heater is 175,000 BTU...

The fuel source for the shop is a 500 gallon LPG tank, located behind the building.  It was chilly this year, but I only used three hundred and fifty gallons of fuel so far, and it's almost April. (I fill in September - once a year.)  I heat the areas with 8' ceilings throughout the entire cold season.  The service area and paint booth are heated when I use those rooms, to keep fuel costs down.  Since we generate over 100 gallons of waste oil every year, I'm seriously debating buying or building a waste oil furnace to supplement the service area heat.  

Next to the heat, my favorite thing about the shop is the four post lift.  It has made routine maintenance almost painless! Here's the 8460 lb turbodiesel 404 Unimog project on the lift, getting some exhaust work finished up...

The lift (and door for the lift) is centered between two trusses so that vehicles can pass between them when elevated by the lift.  At times, there's not much room...

Currently, the service area and paint booth look like this...

The fabrication room/machine shop in the back contains...

Here's a shot of that room...

So that's my shop!  Year-round wrenching without freezing or getting soaked. I had to tunnel through snow to get under my first car to repair its transmission.  I was 17 years old then, and highly motivated to make my first car run!  At nearly twice that age now, my joints rebel when asked to do things like that.  Now I can savor the skinned knuckles, fumes, hernias, and pulled muscles in a climate-controlled environment!

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