Show me your garage

Pete
To answer your question, both. I built a house with an attached garage and would like to build a nice shop in the future. I am not sure how near in the future it will be so I have to be content with watching yours and some friends shops go up and take notes on what I want.

I zip tied tubes to my mesh before I poured my floor in my basement and my garage with no intent of using them right away if ever, but I insulated the floor and foundation anyways so what's a few more bucks to add tubing before I pour. Lately I have been thinking about hooking them up in the garage before winter, but am not sure what I want to heat water with. I could buy flow center and run them through my geothermal heat pump, but I don't want to tax it that hard.     Gas is not an option since I don't have any. Electric would work, but resistance heat is not cheap. That leaves wood, and I haven't researched wood fired boilers enough to have an opinion.

Keep up the good work.

pete
a supply house in town calculated the load at 2.5 tons. i pruchased a 2to4 ton unit (two stage compressor) that also heats my water. in the summer heat for the water is a byproduct of cooling the house so hot water in the summer is relatively free. in the winter it heats the water for the house the same way it heats the house. since it is a closed loop geothermal (or ground source as some call it) my concern is droppong the temperature in my vertical loops too much and making the entire system less efficient. one option would be to drill a couple more 200' holes and see if someone sells a geothermal boiler.

as far as wood goes, i have plenty of hedge (osage orange), there isnt a wood that burns hotter but contrary to popular belief it is not free when you add up gas, chainsaws, wear and tear on your pickup and trailer, and your time. i have no idea how to come up with a good number on what that is worth though.

let me know how your system works when you fire it up, i would imagine there is not a more comfortable heating system.

pete,
just to clear it up in case we arent on the same page, i dont have an open loop system (pump and dump) that uses well water. i have a closed loop system which consists of 4 200' holes that i drilled and installed a 3/4" poly loop in each hole and grouted the hole shut. the loops are trenched together into a header and brought inside to a flow center that feeds into the geothermal unit. i would guess that in the dead of winter, you might see a 15-20 deg. drop in temp (normally its around 58) this system heats/cools an 1800 sq. ft. house and provides all of my hot water.
i did some reserch last night and called a knowlegable contact i have in kansas city and he pointed me towards a water to water geothermal heat pump made by Florida Heat Pump. this unit will cost in the ball park of $2000 and i am able to drill holes and install loops for about $350 per 200' hole (that is cost of materials and fuel). according to my scratch pad and barely ledgible numbers i have written down, it will cost me in the ball park of $4000 to have a system like this in my garage. that will put a huge damper on purchasing a CC winter boat project. i will have to decide if i want to be warm with nothing i want to work on, or have a boat and freeze to death. choices.

Gary,
You got my wheels turning. I could heat my garage with bayliners. It's cheap heat and I could do my part to rid this country of eye soars.
In my neck of the woods a 200' heat loop will cost you around $2000, I just happen to have access to a couple of rigs and only pay for materials for the loops. That seems like a lot of money but there are some government incentives that take the hurt off of running geothermal systems. Some electric companies even have some incentives to install a geothermal unit. There are other alternatives to installing vertical loops though. You can trench the loops in or you can run a open loop system (pump and dump) . An open loop system is where younuse a water well provided the water is fitnto run through a heat exchanger.
I installed my geothermal system from start to finish and have been very pleased with it. I would recommend it to anyone who wants a cost efficient no hassle hvac unit.

I just got word from up north that the attic insulation was blown in yesterday. 18" of blow in fiberglass and a little extra over the dust collection ductwork should keep in the heat! The drywall taping is almost done but slowed due to no heat yet. The GC wants to get all the drywall finished and painted before the plumber starts with hanging all the valves and boiler on the walls. In the mean time he cranked up a "torpedo".

I'll be heading up in a couple of weeks to do some compressed air, dust duct and the lighting PLC trim out. I'll get some more pictures.

These long "dry spells" of not even seeing pictures are killing me!! (no Charlie or Mark to send me any!!)

Man, I could live in that bad boy...

Very nice !!!

Looks great! A lot of progress since Labor Day and the cabinets look even better in the shop than they did in the crates.

Steve,
Those cabinets are fantastic!! The GC and his crew has only used HK one other time and they commented multiple times on the quality and construction.

We did run into one problem with the vanity cabinet. I should have given them a extra 1/2" to play with between the wall and stub wall. The top of the stub wall is fine but the bottom is kicked (less room) out of plumb. It looks like the plumber did some "rearranging" when he roughed in his plumbing into the wall. The wall will not move so it must be tight against the piping. They need to do some "heavy" scribing on both sides - half of the ply too!!! They pulled out the power planer with the bad blades to handle the staples!

That is done right!

Pete, thanks for the compliment on the cabinets, Thats why they have been our main line for the last 20 years.

Where did the butcherblock tops come from? I assume someone in that area?

Dreamy!

8122pbrainard wrote:

Looks great Pete, need to be careful or your never get things done with all the CCF guys hanging out there. I think we have the first CCF lodge meeting hall just trying to think where best to put the sign, I do think the sleeping quarters look a bit to cozy for all the guys

Pete that is amazing. I never heard of/saw compressed air out of the wall like that. And the cabinets are nicer than what's in most people's houses. No wonder Quinner relabeled your plans. Like I said before, when it's your wife's turn to fix up the house, you're in big trouble.

Pete,
Im with you on the pegboard...nothing hangs on my shop walls either. Thats part of the reason I drywalled mine... cant put nails in it either.


As for keeping track of where tools areat, I suppose writing on the door with a magic marker is out of the question!?!?

Bruce,
I have a lot of my tools in my cabinetry(not as many cabinets as Pete has)...the rest in two tool boxes, none of the drawers/doors are marked. The regularly used stuff is easy, Once in a while I do open a drawer or two to get some of the lesser used tools. I just blame old age.