Garage Keep

[Scott Marzahl]

New Garage

Terry,
I am just finishing up my detached garage. It is 30 wide by 36 deep with 10.5 high ceilings. I have an insulated roll up door that is 16 X 9. I used traditional construction techniques with 2X6 walls to maiximize the R value. The ceiling is blown in insulation. Since I don't have gas in the area, I have an electric forced air furnace which heats the shop up in minutes, what a joy. I too would have gone with in-floor heating because I still need to lay on a piece of cardboard or carpet to stay warm. I would not recommend the concrete block walls, concrete is very porous and likes to hold moisture, I would be concerned that it would always be damp. The garage is sheet rocked and painted gloss white. My concrete floor is poured 6 inches thick, has rebar reinforcement over 6 inches of packed sand which is over a heavy MIL plastic vapor barrier. I used a two part epoxy paint on the floor, light grey in color and the brightness factor doubled in the shop.

[Terry M.]

Re: Garage Keep

Thanks to everyone for all the great imput and ideas!

[John H.]

Re: Two post versus four

Jerry -

Patrick pretty well covered it - all I'd add is that a 2-post lift, due to its asymmetrical design, generates cantilevered loads at the base of its columns; as such, they require a fully rod-reinforced floor with a minimum of 6" concrete thickness and the correct commercial concrete anchoring devices. Our 4-post lifts just "sit" on their pads on a plain ordinary garage floor and can be moved anywhere you like by one person with the caster kit.

[Blake W.]

Re: Garage Keep - Door Height???

Larry, I've got a pair of 4 post lifts in my garage. Fortunately I've got an 11 foot ceiing so I can store 2 cars up and 2 down very confortably. What I had to do was order a high lift kit for the door. this merely extended the tract so that the door tracks to within a few inches of the ceiling when open. Works great but sure fills a 2 car garage with 4 cars! Blake

[Jim T.]

Re: Garage Keep - Door Height???

I have two Auto Lifter four post lifts in my two car garage. I was lucky in that the garage that was built with the house had 9' 9" ceiling height.
I did not change the height of my garage door's original track. I adjusted the opening height of the garage door since only Corvettes are in the garage. The open height of the bottom of the garage door matches the height of the raised ramp. Using this method the cars antenna either have to be off or retracted coming into the garage.
With this method I cannot store my cars on the lifts unless I back the cars onto the lifts. Using this method the clearance for the garage door to come up once the cars are raised is no problem. This is with a 68,70,85, and 96.