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Building a Workshop


Retroanaconda

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Yep and yep to Mikey and Mike, outward opening is better for fire as well, in case you need to escape in poor visibility, and a pre-built, even second hand plastic door will be better than you can build yourself out of timber, they are cheap as well, because no-one really wants them, and hard to recycle.

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I second (or third or whatever) the opening outward, not for safety or fire though, purely because you will invariably dump cr... useful items just inside the door when you are in a rush and if it opens outwards you'll still be able to open the door fully rather than trying to squeeze through a tiny gap when all your 'useful' stuff falls over behind the door ;)

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Yeah I've been told I may have issues with condensation. I will see how I get on. I don't plan to put any plastic membrane on the roof, the plan for that was an OSB deck and then roofing sheets of some form or another over the top of that. Was looking at Onduline/Coroline but have been pointed to the box-section metal sheets as an alternative, which I will try if I can get them at the right price. I know I could get away with running cross battens along the length of the building on top of the rafters and putting the sheeting on top of those, but I used OSB on a flat roof with Onduline before and I get practically no condensation on that because the air inside the building is not actually in contact with the underside of the sheeting for the most part. On the same building before the OSB deck was installed I suffered greatly with condensation, not helped by it being very damp inside due to all the leaks caused by unsupported and sagging roof sheeting as there was no deck!

I really recommend you put Tyvek or roofing felt on top of the OSB. I have one garage with just bare tin on top of the roof trusses, and it sweats like hell especially with a gas heater inside, but even with just the ambient temperature difference there is moisture on the underside.

The new garage has OSB on top of the roof trusses, then Tyvek held on with battens running up each roof truss, then plastic coated steel sheeting screwed on to purlins running horizontally across the top of these battens. If you don't put a membrane on, the condensation will ultimately rot the OSB, though there should be an air gap anyway to allow ventilation. It's not hard to do while you are building it, not much extra cost, and a lot of hassle to do afterwards. In the light of experience I'd never cut corners on this again, not even for a garden shed.

In a windy spot, person access doors should open in, unless you like replacing them!

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The door question really shows the benefit of this forum, I hadn't thought of the wind catching the door ..... which is funny as the door on my workshop opens outwards and does get caught in the wind. But in the end I attached a rope and spring to it to stop it 'gently' when the wind catches it. An auto closer is a better idea.

So in the end it's a trade off between losing some workshop space or dealing with the wind catching the door.

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Just to revert to the issue of resin anchoring - we use this all the time on structures of up to 50m x 150m or so and you don't have to put the anchors in first...

Simply drill your timbers in the preferred location, then use the masonry bit to drill a suitable (matching) hole in the concrete. Owing to the size of the masonry bit, you will need a slightly oversized hole in the timber and may need to use the vacuum cleaner to clear dust from the hole - ideally, you want to blast some air down the hole (but mind your eyes... ask how I know...) so that you have a clean hole for the resin.

Gun the resin in, then insert your threaded rod.

Leave to go off before tightening up otherwise you'll simply wind the rod back out of the resined hole...

Looks a good shed though!

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James,

I would offer you my set of wooden garage doors i brought new off eBay, includes frame, hinges, lock and handle. Can't remember the size, but i got them made so i could fit the 90 in to the garage i was building at the time...then i swapped to the roller shutter type.

However these are currently in N Wales in the stable, so a bit too far to come for them!!

I will get the sizes and maker of them if you want.

Edit: Item i purchased was http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/COMPLETE-GARAGE-DOOR-PACK-/200519002358?pt=UK_Home_Garden_Doors_LE&var=&hash=item2eafdd28f6

my doors where GBP349 plus GBP40 postage

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A thought on the large door, 7ft wide roller shutter doors go for stupid money on ebay second hand, but a mate picked a 10ft (3m) one up for £100 for his shed, perfect nick, and was going in a 14ft wide shed same as yours, makes it easy to get in and out the workshop if you have the vehicle only parked part way in, e.g. if you are running it.

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Pitched roof Ross.

Thanks all for the comments and discussion, very useful to see different ideas. With regard to the personnel door I'm still not sure, budget constraints might preclude it to be honest. But I've got until I clad it up to decide, as that's when installing it would become a pain.

BogMonster, I assume the membrane for the roof (is this the stuff? http://www.roofingsuperstore.co.uk/product/tyvek-supro-1m-x-50m.html) can just go directly onto the OSB. Could I then run battens along the length of the roof (ie. across the trusses) and fix the roofing sheets to those?

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my workshop has a personell door in the large door, both steel hinged items, which is a blessing and a curse with the large one.

it can be really hard to open the door on a windy day, as it is a very large door, however on the plus side it acts as a great windbreak if you want to work on the outside concrete pad at all.

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Slight hiatus is due as the car decided to remind me that it does indeed wear the green oval by way of the clutch slave cylinder failing during the week. Leaving me to drive to work and back once each way without a clutch (luckily I could nick my works van in-between) which, as fun a challenge as it is, probably isn't that good for the gearbox! Still, it's now home and I've got the new bits so will hopefully get that sorted this weekend and then normal shed-building progress can then resume next weekend.

It's given me a good opportunity to test the door aperture and size of the building!

post-10578-0-32799800-1380916029_thumb.jpg post-10578-0-11049000-1380916040_thumb.jpg

Fits nicely, though what looked quite a big space when empty now feels a lot smaller when filled with car - and disconcertingly this is the smaller one. There is still plenty of room to work round it though, and I will just have to be clever about where I put workbenches etc. in the future.

Just in the stages of finalising the roof design (and pricing it up - ouch :(), so once that is done and the car is fixed hopefully I can get on with sourcing bits next week.

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I'll have a play with some cardboard cut-outs when I've got the building done. I'm hoping the majority of my storage will be off-ground either on shelving or wall cupboards, with only really heavy/bulky items needing to rob floor space. Part of the reason for the open-truss roof design is to allow for storage of bulky but not mega-heavy items up there.

A workbench at the back end on the upper side is just what I was thinking provisionally Bowie. I'm not sure they'd need to be movable, but it's not a bad idea if space was short. I also like the big sturdy bolted down workbench to beat things on :P

I will also likely store some things outside, like the bigger aluminium body panels off the 110 for example. Some tarps will see those covered OK.

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I've seen the steel plate on top method before and it intrigued me. Especially useful for welding apparently as you can attach it to the welder earth and then placing items on the surface effectively grounds them, if I recall correctly?

How do you keep it from rusting? Unless you don't bother with the welding thing and have painted it?

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Why not extend the roof on one side to overhang by a couple of foot? That way you can store stuff against the side of the shed and the roof will keep the heavy rain off....... although the cost might not be worth it as you'd still need a tarp for blown rain

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....How do you keep it from rusting? ....

Use it ;)

TBF they don't tend to rust if you are using it and it gets oil and other rubbish on it ..... only tend to rust where you heat it directly. Or at least mine has in the 15 years it's been in my shed. The black scale on it when you get it gives some limited protection to.

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