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Why does it have to be filled in 5’? Does it flood now? Do you have a lot of things you have to roll out by hand?

Sink it down 5’ so you can have a higher roof than it looks like.
 
Phil said:
Why does it have to be filled in 5’? Does it flood now? Do you have a lot of things you have to roll out by hand?

Sink it down 5’ so you can have a higher roof than it looks like.
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That's the drop down is. My house and driveway are up on a precipice. I've got my log pile I do my firewood at, and boom, 5' drop. Its a total shit show to build on. I can't even turn a truck around at the top. I've got a few hundred sqft of lawn, and a drop off. I'm at a base of a mountain and its all sloped. My place is almost on the "spine" of the mountain.
 
Why not cut into the slope, use the removed material to fill the low side and build a retaining wall? You only need to move half as much material to do that.
 
arse_sidewards said:
Why not cut into the slope, use the removed material to fill the low side and build a retaining wall? You only need to move half as much material to do that.
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The area behind the house is sloped and that was the original plan. And I may still do that. The only issue being is its hearty. Lots of boulders, roots, and what not. I started to do it in the L series, but I was hammering my tractor. That'd need something a little more substantial. But I will chat with him on it.

I really need to take a few pictures or something. Borrow my wife's phone or something. My old smartphone just keeps rebooting when I turn the camera on.
 
woods said:
The area behind the house is sloped and that was the original plan. And I may still do that. The only issue being is its hearty. Lots of boulders, roots, and what not. I started to do it in the L series, but I was hammering my tractor. That'd need something a little more substantial. But I will chat with him on it.

I really need to take a few pictures or something. Borrow my wife's phone or something. My old smartphone just keeps rebooting when I turn the camera on.
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Are you on a camelback type of terrain? I am - it has caused lots of prob... err... opportunities.

Any other location options?
 
rockota said:
Are you on a camelback type of terrain? I am - it has caused lots of prob... err... opportunities.

Any other location options?
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Its all rocky, there's running water in the Spring, lots of trees. Ledge. Granite. They had to sort of "platform" the plot where my house is located on. Cut into the side of the mountain. All the area around it is sloped or drop off.

edit: yea, I'm going to have to dick around with moving the shop closer to the house perhaps. On the platform the house kind of sits on. I'd still have to fill in, but won't be as much. The only sucky thing is no flat spots anywhere. 20 acres and I can barely turn the truck around. Was hoping to have some area to park something.
 
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woods said:
Its all rocky, there's running water in the Spring, lots of trees. Ledge. Granite. They had to sort of "platform" the plot where my house is located on. Cut into the side of the mountain. All the area around it is sloped or drop off.

edit: yea, I'm going to have to dick around with moving the shop closer to the house perhaps. On the platform the house kind of sits on. I'd still have to fill in, but won't be as much. The only sucky thing is no flat spots anywhere. 20 acres and I can barely turn the truck around. Was hoping to have some area to park something.
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Sounds very similar to my place. When we bought the property, it was all old-growth hardwood. Ravine on either side. Had to carve into the camel back to get a semi-flat spot for the house. Since then, we've added probably 50 loads of fill dirt around the house and property. I also moved another ~20 loads of fill from behind the barn to the side of the barn to get more flat-ish space.

You'll beat that tractor to death... I did most of the work here w/ a 25 year old Bobcat 773... worth it.
 
rockota said:
Sounds very similar to my place. When we bought the property, it was all old-growth hardwood. Ravine on either side. Had to carve into the camel back to get a semi-flat spot for the house. Since then, we've added probably 50 loads of fill dirt around the house and property. I also moved another ~20 loads of fill from behind the barn to the side of the barn to get more flat-ish space.

You'll beat that tractor to death... I did most of the work here w/ a 25 year old Bobcat 773... worth it.
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Yea, the tractor is reserved for firewood and snow plowing. That sort of thing.

Honestly, I'd probably just rent something of size. Use it for a few days and send it back. Kind of like owning a dump truck vs just calling something in.
 
woods said:
That's the drop down is. My house and driveway are up on a precipice. I've got my log pile I do my firewood at, and boom, 5' drop. Its a total shit show to build on. I can't even turn a truck around at the top. I've got a few hundred sqft of lawn, and a drop off. I'm at a base of a mountain and its all sloped. My place is almost on the "spine" of the mountain.
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I understand there is a drop down. Why does it have to be filled in though? Leave it low. Backfill against a 6’ concrete wall on that side and have walk-up mezzanine access.
 
Phil said:
I understand there is a drop down. Why does it have to be filled in though? Leave it low. Backfill against a 6’ concrete wall on that side and have walk-up mezzanine access.
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This is basically how every barn built into the side of a hill is built only the 2nd floor is the main level and the drive in 1st floor is the shop.
 
Phil said:
I understand there is a drop down. Why does it have to be filled in though? Leave it low. Backfill against a 6’ concrete wall on that side and have walk-up mezzanine access.
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I'd think that would cause major water issues. And the angle would be a pain to drive down into the garage.

Or. Hold on. Fill in the area closer to the house. The 5' or so. So part of it is already on the level area. And the area around the shop fill in less, but with ledgepack. Make the parking area lower than the shop. That's an idea too. huh.

I think I'm going to steal my wife's phone and take the pictures and videos I need.

I got in touch with the guy that did the surveying at our rentals. Nice guy. He's going to be around tomorrow and I'm going to chat with him. See what he says. Get him to swing by.
 
Setting yourself up to be a fill site for a time is a good suggestion. I know people that had acres of land built up with thousands of tons of free fill (legally) on the premise of a 'sod farm' future. Then they had a change of heart and went into some other business. :laughing:

Site prep was spendy for me not because of the material cost, but the trucking/machine hours attached to it. I didn't have the time or acreage to pull off the sod farm stunt. :rolleyes:
 
Around here, you have to pay for 'clean' fill.

You can get absolute garbage dumped on your property for free those. Full of concrete, rebar, trash, and whatever the fuck was on the site that day.

A local dirt pit back filled their hole property with trash, then sprinkled good dirt above it. A real estate investment firm out of Florida bought it, and is trying to sell it for millions. Its fucking worthless.
 
woods said:
I'm thinking 32x48 at the moment. Maybe cull it in to 32x40 if necessary.
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I'm hankering to move and build a shop and 30x40 would be a minimum. It has already been said but build the biggest one you can fit and afford because I'm sure you'll find plenty of stuff to fill it with :D
 
Opiebennett did I think 32x48 and is really where I got the idea for sinking the shop into the terrain.

Opie do you want to put a picture of the shop from the house and from the inside?
 
Phil said:
Opiebennett did I think 32x48 and is really where I got the idea for sinking the shop into the terrain.

Opie do you want to put a picture of the shop from the house and from the inside?
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36x48 with 16' walls. big doors on the 36' end, A 12' wide by 14' tall door and a 10'x10' door. Wanted the 14' tall door so I could fit whatever is legal to go down the road height wise, or a class A motor home someday?

Loft runs the 48' length of the shop on the side in the hill, and is 6' deep. Windows for natural light, and so I know when im.in trouble and it's too late to come to bed, so might as well keep working.

I had 8' walls on top of 4'7" wide x 12" footings. 4 pours came out to just under 100yards of mud total, including the road approach.
I didn't keep track all that well, but with doing my own electrical and hiring most everything else out, no insulation, no plumbing, I think I was close to 75k in 2019. Frost depth here in WA is only 1.5 foot too, and lumber has almost doubled.

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I'll also add that I paid like $3k in waterproofing the foundation. Both the spray on tar a the real expensive bubble wrap. Foundation drain has water coming out most days, but haven't had any in the shop.

Back filled with drain rock against the foundation with landscape fabric to keep the dirt fines from getting in.

I like the "daylight shop", it makes it not look so big from the house, and dominate the property.
 
I like the idea of the staggered wall heights, but also consider going up to 16' all around.

Then put a loft / mezzanine / second floor in.

On your original 30' deep by 40' wide, you have a 14x14 door offset 4' then a 9x9 next to that and we're at 27'

That leaves 10-12' of tool space on the remaining end, and with 16' walls that means you can put a floor at the 8' mark - plenty of head room still, and you get an extra 30x10 or 30x12 second floor over there.

If you only needed a short door in the middle, you could even make the second floor more like 20x30.

Fire up Visio, or on Linux "dia" and do the boxes-on-paper thing and figure out where you're stuff is going to go, what your "work triangles" look like, where will the grinding dust collect.. then figure out how to adjust your floor plan.

I can tell you 28' is just deep enough for a long-box 4-door and to still swing the engine hoist around the front, but barely. 30' would be better, but plan on NOTHING against the wall where you want to pull the motor.

Or perhaps in your case, pull in the middle door diagonally to get yourself more room.



I like the tip about storing half-sticks of steel vertically. I have one wall with heavy duty shelf brackets set up to hold full sticks.
 
PAToyota said:
Keeping things to 4' increments is good. Worst case, try to keep it to 2' increments.

I'm not going to download the HD planner just to see, but does it allow you to do layout?

Grizzly Tools had a workshop planner - https://www.grizzly.com/user/shop-planner - but Adobe discontinued Flash, so they're still working on the next generation of it.

It would allow you to chose Grizzly tools and lay them out in a space, but you could also make boxes to represent other things - ie: a Suburban is approx. 224.5" x 80.5" or your tire machine is 4' x 3' - make a box of those dimensions and label it.

Old school way was to cut pieces out of graph paper (a square is one foot by one foot) and move them around on another sheet representing your garage. I'm sure you can find other software to use as well.

In any case, lay out the sizes of your vehicles and equipment and spend some time moving them around on paper to see what fits.

In any case, once your garage is built you'll find that it is too small and you'll wish it was larger... :flipoff2:
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They're always too small. Mine is 36x40 and I need another 20ft on the back for a dedicated machine/weld/plasma cutting area and use the front with the lift and doors for vehicle builds and maintenance only.
 
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