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Shop Things to have in your dream shop!

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Chicken lights

Forum Pony Express Driver
I have heard that garage pits are outlawed in Alberta. Fire hazard??
Can’t say for Alberta. I hear varying reports of grandfathered in to not allowed to outlawed, yet two fairly new shops and a newer oil change place have pits. It’s likely a mix of not encouraged and insurance is very high for them, but who knows. The newer ones have lighting built in, slides for drain pans and are not the “pit” we all think of
 
1800 sq feet and about $28 a sq foot? Wow. @Darren how thick was that? Lots of rebar?

Is concrete in Canada just crazy expensive? What would a shop floor cost in Montana? Burnco and LaFarge have the market locked up and they seem like an oligopoly to me.

I've often wondered if with the right crushed and heavily compacted gravel bed if you could get away with patio pavers. A 20x20 garage floor would use $1600 worth of pavers. How much for a big load of gravel/sand? $500? Tool rental $500. So for $2500 you could do a garage floor. Would it be durable? Move machines on bigger wheels? Possibly put in concrete piles where the machine feet go? Any civil engineers on here who could authoritatively weigh in on this?
I think he is including the over inflated labour.
 

BMW Rider

Super User
Pits are not so much outlawed but the requirements for them are so difficult it achieves the same thing. Easier to use a lift.
 

Mcgyver

Ultra Member
Yes I believe fire/explosion hazard as well as asphyxiation due to fumes dropping and collecting in the Iow spot.

That and walking into it.....there are ways to mitigate it, but still, it scares me thinking of someone getting hurt falling into it. (thinking at the plant where we do a fair bit of work on trucks and truck body fabrication/installation)
 

Hacker

Super User
After looking through this there are a few items I would like to add.

If you are doing any trenching add extra communication lines between the house and shop. I use them for controlling temperature and turning on and off various zones in the shop. Also used for security system and internet.

Put up slatwall everywhere, as tough as plywood and you don't have to paint it.

I put plugs in the ceiling in the equipment room this allows me to move the lights around when I have to move machines to fit in a new purchase.

I use gym floor around all my machines. I use coolant and it makes cleaning up leaks and spills much easier. Only down side is occasionally a hot chip will stick onto the the surface
x.jpg z.jpg
 

Hacker

Super User
No not hardwood it is a rubber flooring that comes in rolls. It is used and I buy this stuff from an outfit that does commercial flooring. Here is the add off of Kijiji "Rolls are 5' wide, 1/4" thick; lengths vary between 16'-25'. They look like hardwood gym floor and even have the court markings on them. They were laid without glue and the backing is perfectly clean. This is a flexible product. Each roll costs between $40 - $70, depending on length."

https://www.kijiji.ca/v-renovation-...m-flooring-0-50-sf-various-lengths/1629526181
 

Gearhead88

Super User
I haven't seen a pit for a loooong time...gotta be a reason.;)

D:cool:
Years ago , the 70's , in Calgary there was a stand off / shoot out with the police , It got ugly , they had the place surrounded , cops on both sides , they thought the guy should have surrendered by now but he wasn't ready ,a few of em got pissed off and started emptying the magazines on their revolvers , the bullets went right through the building , I believe at least one cop was wounded by friendly fire . The guy was safe in the pit of that old garage ,They ended the standoff with a tactical vehicle , beat the hell out of the building . Situation awareness changed after this incident , so did the use of tactical teams and vehicles .
 

Dabbler

ersatz engineer
What separates a typical garage pit from the ones found at your 10-second-lube places is the ingress and egress. From my understanding if there is a fire in the usual small pit you are unlikely to survive.
 

Dan Dubeau

Ultra Member
A friend had a pit in his old house. Was put in by the original builder/owner of the house back in the 60's (he bought from his widow in her 90's). He had some heavy planks covering it, set into angle concreted in the the edges. There was a ladder to get into it at the one end. I'm pretty sure the guy that bought the house when my friend moved, filled it in right away.

There were lots of interesting things and built ins in that house. I got the blacksmith post drill when he moved as payment for helping move :D.
 

Brent H

Ultra Member
Well, there won’t be a pit as I would need to blast out rock - that is not in the plan. But, cables to house and other ideas are totally possible - thumbs up!!
 

Susquatch

Ultra Member
Administrator
Moderator
Premium Member
Well, there won’t be a pit as I would need to blast out rock - that is not in the plan. But, cables to house and other ideas are totally possible - thumbs up!!

Regarding cable to the house.

For the alarm there are at least three ways to do it. If you make the shop a full zone, you will need a 4 wire control cable. That's the way mine is done. This gives me full control from the house and shop. However, you can also treat the shop as a separate 2 wire circuit that the house alarm sees as one sensor. If this one unit is an output from the shop, then both can be separate alarms but still only look like one from the house. I prefer the former but it is more difficult to setup and control. I believe there are decent WiFi alarm setups now too, but that requires a battery backed WiFi system. I don't know how reliable they are. I understand that many crooks nowadays cut your phone and cable system before breaking in.
 

Susquatch

Ultra Member
Administrator
Moderator
Premium Member
Well, there won’t be a pit as I would need to blast out rock - that is not in the plan. But, cables to house and other ideas are totally possible - thumbs up!!

For the internet, I did a long range wireless bridge. This requires a directional antenna on the house and another at the shop - Both pointed at each other. The advantage is that the shop becomes part of the house home network with IP addresses set by the house router. If your shop is close enough, you can run an Ethernet cable instead and put a wireless hub in the shop. Mine was too far away.
 

TorontoBuilder

Ultra Member
For the internet, I did a long range wireless bridge. This requires a directional antenna on the house and another at the shop - Both pointed at each other. The advantage is that the shop becomes part of the house home network with IP addresses set by the house router. If your shop is close enough, you can run an Ethernet cable instead and put a wireless hub in the shop. Mine was too far away.
I did this when my brother lived a few doors down the road...

Got tired of intermittent disconnections though so eventually went hard wired... used a garden edger to make a slit in the turf and dropped a wire in and covered it up... easy peasy.

IF I even get my country house though, I'm opting for a cut and cover access tunnel, using precast concrete sections. Getting to the shop in a blizzard no problem.
 

Hacker

Super User
I understand that many crooks nowadays cut your phone and cable system before breaking in.
Security cables are for cameras and sensors so you should already be warned before they cut the cable. Also on the shop end only the gas line enters the building through the outside wall so to cut the cables they have to find the source. and if they are willing to do that I doubt you are going to stop them. I tried the wifi route between the shop and house and found it to be a PIA.
 
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