Two story Shop on steep grade - Help me Design/Build it!!!

[dragoneggs]

Mark, I gotta check in, and I will tomorrow. (AKA read last page & 1/2, too .. :drink .. (btw, Occam's Razor sez you're '>95% there' :thumbsup

I hope you are right! I am a perfectionist and will spend a whole lot time spinning my wheels (in my head) to get this right. At the same time, I am not willing to turn this completely over to professionals that will end up costing me $200K! The trick is to find that happy medium where I end up with a structure I am proud of while not breaking the bank.

 

[EddieWalker]

Most of you money is going to be spent on your foundation. Once you get a price for that, then the rest is all pretty reasonable. Especially with you do a lot of the work yourself. Framing is easy. You might want to hire a roofer, but that's mostly because of how physical it is and how slow it takes for one person to do a whole roof. Exterior siding is also very slow, but wrapping goes quick and you can take your time putting on the siding ounce it's wrapped. On my house, I've been slowly redoing my exterior as we add on and make changes, so I've been using Zip siding instead of OSB and house wrap. It's twice as much money, but it removes the rush factor of protecting it from the rain and sun.

I think your dimensions are solid. My shop is 24x30 and it's a great size for working on projects and storage for my tools. I have run into issues with my wife taking over massive amounts of area in there, which is why I want to build another shop in the future. At 24 feet wide, or actually 23 feet between the walls, I have plenty of space for my work bench on one side and massive metal storage racks on the other side. This gives me enough room to bring my truck into there if it's going to hail during a thunder storm, or to pull out my table saw and rip plywood. I wouldn't want to go any smaller, but this has proven to me to be a very workable width. Since I will have more room when I build my next shop, I'm going to make it 30x48 and then add leanto's to both sides and then extend the back of the roof to create a massive porch like area to park my tractors under a roof. But that's all still just a dream for right now.

 

[airbiscuit]

My thoughts on making it 26' or 28' wide were based primarily on the fact that you only have a single wide overhead door on the lower level. You may not think you plan to maneuver items into the back 40, but you'll wish you had extra width if you do.

 

[RNeumann]

This is the challenge... $200K or even $150K is going to be a hard sell to the wifey. Should I just go with stand 8ft ceilings? Are my 12/10ft stories adding a whole lot to construction costs?

My assumption though is my cost per sq ft will go down with increase in footprint. Sometimes I wish I had a bunch of flat ground. But then I wouldn't have the view I do!

View attachment 621393 View attachment 621394

From my deck and basically the same from my shop from those windows along the NW end.

The size does affect cost. But your issue is the two story 30’ tall building. Excavation, waterproofing, retaining walls etc will drive costs. It’s not an easy site to build on either.

Concrete alone, as an example is about $100/yard - $200/yard placed (form, finish and material). The retaining wall for the downstairs is 11 yards. Then you will need exterior retaining walls to hold the hill- say another 5 yards. Footings (depending on the area) another 8-10 yards. Flat work downstairs, another 8 yards. Who knows what on the upstairs floor- even half of that in concrete, another 4 yards. That’s 36-40k in concrete alone-at only $100/yard

Excavation is probably 15-20k by the time they cut the site, put in the new downstairs driveway, install filter rock for the foundation drain, dig footings, backfill and finish the site. It’s probably 3 trips for them.

Engineering and design is probably another 5k. Your plans is only about 5% of what an architect does.

Permits are a wildcard. 1k?, 5? It will depend on the area.

Power to the new building is maybe 3k. Tie into existing panel (if you can), trench and install new or temp panel- no new circuits.

So you are at 70k and haven’t put a piece of lumber in the air.

The steel building come on prices that don’t include site work or concrete aren’t real prices. Same with the pole barn prices that don’t include concrete floors, electrical, insulation, ceilings or site work. All of those prices are for flat sites. They bring in their equipment and knock those buildings out in a week or less.

Just imagine being on the downhill side of your new building trying to paint or install the siding. You are 30 plus feet in the air with that slope. No lifts or other equipment can get down there. The crew will be on pump jacks or other scaffolding. Nothing about that is easy or fast.

Not trying to be a dream killer. Just trying to brace you for the practical not best case.

 

[shooterdon]

Really think through why you want 12' high in the metal shop. Designing for occasional use can wind up adding costs that do not make ROI sense.

I think your size is about right so no savings there. Bigger is always better but so are unlimited funds...most of us are in that boat.

I doubt you can complete it for $100k. Firs step is talk to a few contractors about the foundation and get their opinions and rough cast estimates. Add 33% to those numbers.

 

[EddieWalker]

Just imagine being on the downhill side of your new building trying to paint or install the siding. You are 30 plus feet in the air with that slope. No lifts or other equipment can get down there. The crew will be on pump jacks or other scaffolding. Nothing about that is easy or fast.

It would be a good idea to remove enough out of the hill so there is a flat area outside the building to set up scaffolding. Since I've never done this, but I have worked on ladders and scaffolding, I would probably want at least 6 feet of flat area, or almost flat with a small amount of slope for drainage, on the downhill side of the building, with 8 feet being a lot better.

 

[Industrial Toys]

What eventually happened with my thoughts of a MODEST pole barn!

 

[dstig1]

Wow. Deep water here... I originally started out with a very similar plan for my shop - 2 stories set into a hillside much like you are doing. It ended up just getting too crazy so i ended up putting a single story building in another location on the property.

Some key points:
1. The foundation wall that will be in that hillside is not just a foundation wall but a major retaining wall because you are open on the opposite end. Plus with vehicle traffic just in front of the shop, this is going to require some engineering. This is going to be true no matter what you do in this location. Plan for it

2. Consider Spancrete for the upper floor. It can span very long distances easily and they could easily set that all in a half a day. But this requires proper support to set the floor panels on. Downside is a concrete floor upstairs but that also makes it easy to add radiant tubing on top of the slab. Certainly isn't required, but something worth looking into.

3. Radiant tubing should go in any slab. It is great heat, but make sure you insulate below and at the edges of the slab. The only downside is you really can't drill into the slab safely as the risk of hitting tubing is high (darn near 100% with my luck...) unless you pre-plan areas to be free of tubing and carefully track and measure for those. Also you don't ever have to use the tubing if you don't want to, but there is no going back if you do not. Couple hundred bucks of tubing and a day is all it takes to set it up.

Will be watching your build with great interest!
-Dave

 

[JK22]

Also get some conduit laid in your slab... I really wish my contractor had asked me if that was something I wanted. Now I’m running electrical and have to do drops from the ceiling to tools that are not up against the wall (ie. table saw).

 

[Wagtail]

:laughing: As we say here in Aus, Eggsy, this project is getting "bigger than Ben-Hur!"