Garage Floor Drip Pan Recommendations?

[Jabroni]

I'm looking for a drip pan approximately 5'x10' the will catch snow melt off my tractor and snow thrower. Here's the caveat: I use chains, so the material has to resist tearing. There are several brands that use a thin plastic poly liner, but I don't think it will last long with the chains. Any suggestions? How about just corralling it so it doesn't run all over the floor?

 

[radioman]

what is the floor made of? Do you want something that is easily removable or just something semi permanent ? If concrete -You could use silicone caulk and lay down a a bead line around the tractor leading to the drain. it wont be pretty , but at least its not in the way or be totally destroyed and cost lots of money to repair or reeplace. If the bead line rips - just lay down a new line where its torn. just an idea :confused3:

 

[Carl_NH]

Dont heat your garage

Get some rubber back outdoor carpet and glue/screw and roll edges and corners around a piece of 1x2 AZEK trim or composite deck material.

The water will evaporate over time.

You can brush off the majority of the snow with a long 6" bristle soft nylon floor broom - I have one that I use a lot to clean up engine cooling fins, getting dust and dirt out of the crevices on stuff.

 

[crazyal]

I have a rubber squeegy that's like 2' wide. It works like a push broom. Got it from Lowes or HD. I just use it to push the water out the door or into the drain.

 

[Carl_NH]

Al,

Good idea,

Its a driveway sealer applicator like $7.99 at HD - I have one in the barn to do that and also it does a good job getting under and around stuff too that a broom is too thick or big to get under.

Further to the OP, you can find rubber strips (garage door sealer strips) that get adhered to the floor and they are 1/2" thick - you could put these down and contain the water in that area with these too.

 

[oldballs]

I've noted that when pushing the water back out the garage door, it freezes on the concrete incline. That's not a good thing either. So I soak it up with several beach towels that the girls left after moving out. I dry them out on a clothes line in the basement and they are ready to go again. So far in the past two years, there hasn't been enough snow to get the tractor out.

 

[chim]

Not a very elegant solution, but here's what I did at our last house. The garage floor would get small puddles under the car in the winter from melting snow and to some extent in the summer coming in out of the rain. I drilled a 1" hole through the concrete at each corner of the vehicle. What little water there was disappeared down the holes.

One of the holes came in handy when the one car didn't start on a very cold evening. I pulled Wifey's car ouside and dropped a steel rod into the hole as an anchor point for a snatch block. Ran the winch cable through it to the dead car and pulled it in to work on it.

EDIT TO ADD: When we built our current house, we made sure we had a floor drain for each bay and good slope to it.

 

[Johnp33]

I built 4, trays made of 1/8 steel years ago they are 4 ft square easy enough to move around and I can put them side by side and cover an area.Also I can move one to work then put it back in place. I also had a bunch made to fit a tool box, of galvanized tin, they were not very expensive, to have made.
What I do if the ice is going to build up at the door is vacuum it up with the wet vacuum. Then drain the vacuum.

 

[rubadub]

I would bite the bullet and put a little concrete berm over top of your existing concrete. Heres this 12 Tips on How to Adhere Concrete to Concrete - wikiHow but you can google up other stuff on it.

Then if its got a gradual incline you won't trip over it and when you get a bunch of water in it wet vac it out.

I made a 8' long concrete wall in a garage I had in Michigan and its hard to remember but I think it was a couple inches deep and maybe 4 inches wide to keep water from getting under one of the overhead doors, and that wall was poured over some old existing concrete. That worked really slick and we washed a lot of cars in there after that.

Rob

 

[Jabroni]

Thanks for the tips. The floor is poured concrete, and the two bay garage is unheated but is under the house so it's often just above freezing. I need to corral the water around the tractor as I share the garage space with my wife (imagine!), and she has some storage containers in her half. It seems I spend an inordinate amount of time brushing snow from the machine and implement before pulling in rather than just letting it "drip dry" inside.

I like the idea of affixing a flexible berm around the perimeter of the tractor, leaving the one end open for sqeegeeing the snow melt out the door. But I can't find any commercial material for that purpose. I can investigate the garage door sealer strips, and I'll try an experimental bead of silicone to see how that works?

I found perforated snap together tiles which look great until you realize that A) they're extremely expensive, and B) they have no bottom tray which means it just melts through the tiles and out onto the floor underneath.

Any other ideas?

 

[michael.white]

How about an elevated parking surface with the poly liners (mentioned in your original post) underneath? Maybe some 2x8/10/12s supported by 4x4 blocks on each end and a couple spots in the middle. You'll need to anchor them on each end.

 

[Jay4200]

Send your wife out there with a mop.

JayC

 

[wawajake]

I have had exactly the same problem , and my solution is not perfect so I am looking for a better way too. The former owner of my house was never smart enough to install a floor drain in the double wide garage and worse the floor slopes toward back wall instead of out overhead door. My first idea was to just cut a hole in floor and let the melt water from the tractor(with chains) and ATV run on floor and then squeege it toward hole, but I was warned by a friend that an major amount of water sitting in the gravel under the garage floor could freeze and crack the floor close to the outside wall where frost could penetrate by midwinter (its minus 20 farenheit today here), I have lots of clay around here so the 4 inches of gravel under floor won't further drain very much. I keep garage heated because it is my workshop. So this winter I put pressure treated 2x 4's ramset to floor then I caulked the 2 x 4 with mono caulk so that water gets directed to back wall where it eventually ends up anyway. At the back wall I chisled out a bowl of concrete roughly 12 inch diameter 3 inches deep so not right thru the floor ) Now I just wet vaccum up the depression in concrete. But it only holds maybe a quarter the amount of a typical snow melt (yes still brush off tractor before bringing in)
So my next step might be to chisel the bowl right thru the floor and cement ? a pipe from the outside of back garage wall and run it a few feet out from the foundation to drain outside . The inside depresssion is only 12 inches inside the back wall so might be able to do it all from outside.........but still leary about winter freeze up of water. All this to say your not alone, AND ANYONE BUILDING A GARAGE PUT A FLOOR DRAIN SYSTEM IN IT !!!