My spouse and I will be have a new house in 6 weeks, which means moving the shop. My current is a gambrel roofed garage, 22 x 28, that I built 20 years ago. The lower portion is heated, wood is upstairs. Ceiling height is 8'8" since I started with a row of cement block. A staircase + a single post exactly in the middle have always made the equipment arrangement challenging, but I've worked out a pretty good plan.
The new location has a 32x48 pole shed, 10'2" to the top of the plate that holds the trusses, 4:12 roof, cement floor, one large sliding door and one regular, 100 amp service, no heat and no water. The shed has styrofoam inserts between the horizontal studs, both sidewall and roof, but I'd hardly consider it insulated. I'm working through ideas about the new space.
1. I don't like being cold, so will build an insulated box inside the shell. Sidewalls I'll fur out flush with the inside of the posts (12" square) and fill it with blown in cellulose or fiber. But what do do with the ceiling? One choice would be to sheetrock below the trusses and fill the top with 16". A white ceiling will certainly make it brighter. One down side is that I'd like to stack my lumber vertically, and just 3 weeks ago I bought a stash of walnut (1100 bf) from a nice gentleman that has realized he'll never get to it (over 80 and recent stroke). About 2/3 of it is 13.5 -14 foot 15/16" by 12" boards, air dried for 20+ years (not live edge), and the other 1/3 is 11-12 feet and 7-10" wide. (There was another 60 bf of misc butternut and maple, but that's all 10 ft or less, for a grand total of $2625).
Are there other good choices for the ceiling?
2. In the current shop I laid fomular250 foam over the concrete with OSB over the top, no sleepers. A simple computation said that it should work fine, and it has. Consider my 1947 Unisaw: the base is about 2' square and if you assume the osb can spread that 1" to each side of the contact point this gives 200 square inches of bearing surface over 250 PSI foam = 22 tons. I did put two strips of solid wood under the Moak bandsaw (26", 1100 pounds) out of caution, but had no trouble rolling it into position on 3/4 pipes, from one side of the shop to the other. I'm thinking of 3" of fomular400 underneath OSB (I don't like cold feet either). I won't be able to run dust collection in the floor, but could certainly put a vertical piece of 4x4 in selected locations for power.
3. I originally planned to carve out a 32 x 32 part of the space, and leave the rest unfinished, for a tractor or whatever -- not that I own one. It would give me 1.67 the amount of current space (and no post in the middle!). But the more I think of it, the more I wonder whether I should use it all.
4. I'll need to trench the natural gas over, about 250 feet. What type of heater do people recommend? Breaking up the cement floor and starting over ain't gonna happen, by the way, so we can leave out in-floor.
5. My Oneida cyclone (5 HP) came from a commercial shop, along with 5 8' tall by 12" diameter felt dust bags (open at both ends). Nice heavy stuff. I didn't have room for those in the current shop and use 2 Wynn filters. Should I reinstate the felt now that I'll have room? Use both?
Current hardware: 16" minimax Jointer-planer, 6" Yates jointer. 6' by 6' square with Delta unisaw on the left, Delta HD shaper behind it as an outfeed, Atlas table saw to the right as a surface (one fence for both), router table in the 4th corner. 26" Moak bandsaw, 14" Walker-Turner bandsaw, Ekstrom Carlson edge sander on stand (80"x 6" belt), rolling tool chest with Delta benchtop drill on it (and tools in it), Oneida cyclone, Dewalt radial arm saw, home-made slot cutter/mortiser, bench with Yost patternmakers vise, hand tools, clamps, etc.
Terry T