Building a garage with 2 lifts, to save money...

[Fabrik8]

I'm planning a garage. Finally.

I'm looking at ways to make the best use of available space, because I like good design and don't want to make the garage huge for the sake of making it huge. That would be nice, I don't want to pay for a huge garage, and I don't want it to overwhelm the house it will be attached to.

My idea to save money and make use of space is to get two lifts. I am already planning to have an asymmetric 2-post lift because they're so flexible, and now I'm thinking that adding a 4-post is a good cheap way to increase space. I want two cars worth of parking that is separate from the shop area with the 2-post lift, etc.

By my math, it's a lot cheaper to pay $3-4k for a 4-post lift than to add another 10x25 space for extra parking, so I can get away with (for example) 10 or 12 feet of width for two car parking instead of 20 or 24 feet of width. So that may shrink the garage down to something around 25x30 instead of a 25x40, a 250 ft^2 reduction, which is pretty substantial cost savings (possibly a 5 digit number). I'd rather spend that extra money on other parts of the house, because there's a lot of things to fix and upgrade still.

One of the 3 cars would either have to park outside, or park inside the 2-post lift when it's not being used. No big deal, they've already lived a significant amount of their lives outside. The car on the 4-post lift would not be driven a lot, so it's serving as a storage lift.

Has anyone done anything like this, and how well did it suit your needs? Any people who just have 4-post lifts who would like to chime in too?

 

[untchabl]

There is no such thing as too big of a shop. Just saying...

 

[rodney eppes]

I worked at a house being built; owner was into small foreign cars. With no lot to speak of, we dug a basement for his collection. He had a 1 car attached garage, street level. He installed an elevator, & could park 4-6 cars in the basement! I never saw it finished, but that was the plan.

 

[mcutler]

Kinda depends on what your planning on doing in this garage. If it's just parking and the occasional oil change or sas you'll be fine.


I did fab work in the white building on the right for 10 plus years. It's a 24x25, (no lift). My new building is 28x48, (one lift). More than double the footage. In the small shop, building a turn key buggy is crowded, even with good over head storage, parking two vehicles was a nightmare. In the new shop I have plenty of room for two full projects, or three smaller jobs. I use the center area for fabrication tools and space, and/or a long term project. Everything not attached to the walls has wheels and forklift pockets, so it can be moved to the small shop if needed.

Matt

 

[mcutler]

Also, gotta think about welder access around two vehicles and two lifts. On the occasion when I had two rigs in the small shop to work on, navigating the welder around both vehicles to do work was near impossible...without a lift. Even in my new shop I have a hard time getting my welder to the passenger side of the lift to work.

Matt

 

[sawdoff]

A friend has a similar set up. Using his 4 post for storage much of the time. His shop is 30x30. I would suggest making it that deep from helping around his. Iirc his ceiling height is about 13ft. Iirc his 4 post is maybe 22 ft?long with ramps. So with toolboxes and weldrs and all the other crap I think you will run outa depth quickly.

 

[jeepinmatt]

My shop is 34x40, plus a 34x10 loft, and has a 2 post lift and a bunch of tools and junk. I feel like I am constantly having to work around the posts or arms of the lift in some way, and I think a 4 post might be even worse. Though for simply parking it might be OK since the space would generally be occupied. Mine is a work area only, so if the space is occupied, work is (theoretically) in progress.

How much more would it really cost to add 10ft of length? I did the majority of my shop myself, and it was about $13/sqft. It's just a plain steel walled pole building, but even if you triple that by paying a contractor, it's still about $10k or less, and you have the extra space when you need it for something other than a car. Without knowing the construction style, it should just be 10ft of walls and roof, and 250sqft of concrete...

 

[Fabrik8]

My shop is 34x40, plus a 34x10 loft, and has a 2 post lift and a bunch of tools and junk. I feel like I am constantly having to work around the posts or arms of the lift in some way, and I think a 4 post might be even worse. Though for simply parking it might be OK since the space would generally be occupied. Mine is a work area only, so if the space is occupied, work is (theoretically) in progress.

How much more would it really cost to add 10ft of length? I did the majority of my shop myself, and it was about $13/sqft. It's just a plain steel walled pole building, but even if you triple that by paying a contractor, it's still about $10k or less, and you have the extra space when you need it for something other than a car. Without knowing the construction style, it should just be 10ft of walls and roof, and 250sqft of concrete...

It's an attached, so it can't be a steel building or pole barn, and it needs to complement the house. If I build it myself, it will be started soon and completed in 10 years by the time I get ..er... time to finish it in little bits. I'll be doing some of the work, but not nearly all of it. Again, I'm doing shop space and parking space, and the parking space is the part I'm trying to downsize. I'll still have a 20 x 25 shop area (shared with the 2-post lift) which is somewhat small but should serve my needs okay. I'm mostly curious about whether a 4-post is actually a workable solution for parking so I can use the saved space (or the saved money, depending) for other things.

 

[fordwheelinman]

If I had your proposed shop and lifts this is what would happen: I would have my weekend cruiser on the 4-post raised up so I could walk around and work and I would inevitably fill the space with tools, scrap, extension cords, or whatever and them for get about it. Flash forward to a bright sunny day and I want to go cruising.....except I don't because I don't want to spend the 3 hours cleaning up just to be able to take a cruise, and in my laziness I would just scoff, get mad, and walk away....

Sent from my D6708 using Tapatalk

 

[dash]

It's an attached, so it can't be a steel building or pole barn, and it needs to complement the house. If I build it myself, it will be started soon and completed in 10 years by the time I get ..er... time to finish it in little bits. I'll be doing some of the work, but not nearly all of it. Again, I'm doing shop space and parking space, and the parking space is the part I'm trying to downsize. I'll still have a 20 x 25 shop area (shared with the 2-post lift) which is somewhat small but should serve my needs okay. I'm mostly curious about whether a 4-post is actually a workable solution for parking so I can use the saved space (or the saved money, depending) for other things.

Absolutely, i used mine to double park a vette and z4.

What kind of cars are you planning on double parking? Make sure you have enough ceiling to support that.

Track your door to the ceiling.

My lift is 9' wide, 14,3" long (without ramps)

 

[Fabrik8]

Absolutely, i used mine to double park a vette and z4.

What kind of cars are you planning on double parking? Make sure you have enough ceiling to support that.

Track your door to the ceiling.

My lift is 9' wide, 14,3" long (without ramps)

Probably my WRX on the 4-post, or whatever car that gets swapped for (which will likely be smaller than that). I'll probable end up doing a cathedral ceiling to keep the walls short, and the door will track up the wall and across the ceiling at roughly the ceiling angle. I'm planning on having a standard height door, because I don't like the look of tall doors and there is no reason for it. The 2-post lift will likely set the requirement for the overall ceiling height, and I can't imagine the 4-post with a car would need to be higher than that.

 

[obullfish]

Keep in mind that an attached garage is going to transfer all the fumes from welding,painting,cutting,fuel, and anything else into the house and get your wife bitchin. My shop is 28x34x12 tall with a single 18'x10' tall door with 1 walk thru door and 3 windows. The shop was built to match the look of the house siding and roof and is about 80' away. I had a friend that's a builder do all the work other than the paving and the electrical for $11k. I did all the electrical from the 200' trench, 150 amp service, and all the wiring and cost me around $1150 from what I remember.

 

[Fabrik8]

Keep in mind that an attached garage is going to transfer all the fumes from welding,painting,cutting,fuel, and anything else into the house and get your wife bitchin.

Trust me, I used to run a side business making carbon fiber parts out of an attached garage in out old house in VA. I know about the bitching. Luckily I was using epoxy for everything but the mold tooling so the fumes weren't that bad most of the time. The noise of the vacuum pump running was usually the big annoyance. Well, that and some of the amine-based epoxy resin chemistries would smell a bit like cat piss before the resin cured.

This one will be breezeway attached, so no direct path for fumes. Breezeway is a lot easier than figuring out how to attach directly and not have to remove blocked windows on the house, etc., and still meets the zoning requirements for being attached.

 

[paradisePWoffrd]

A friend uses a 4 post for storage with great success. They usually have a car or tractor on the lift with another car or 2 parked underneath. The other nice thing about a 4 post, you can roll it out into the driveway to use if you really need, or atleast move it around some to clean/adjust.

 

[Tom@Hilltop_Machine]

How big of a shop will zoning let you build?

 

[Fabrik8]

How big of a shop will zoning let you build?

Bigger than I want to pay for I'm pretty sure, but it's been a while since I've looked at them. The rules for attached and detached are different, and most/all of the size restrictions deal with whether there is living space above it, etc. We've got a power line easement at the back of the property, and the house is already behind the rear setback because the zoning changed after the house was built, so it's difficult to package a detached back there because our build-able depth is fairly shallow now. We honestly haven't ruled out a detached, but it will need to be very carefully planned and can't be very deep though. A detached won't really add much of anything to the house value either, which is important for the future if you're actually going to spend a significant amount of money to build something. So all signs point to attached.

I'm not really trying to build my dream shop though, I just want a good, well considered workspace to do the projects I have time for (mostly house projects for a long time, maybe some welded railings and things too), and eventually build a street rod or whatever. If I keep hanging around here I'll want to build a tube chassis buggy. Dream shops are for people who have the time and motivation (and money) to do cool things in them.

You can do a lot of really cool things in modest sized spaces....

 

[shawn]

I've been thinking about this today, and if you could tolerate the bullshit of having to move one car, wait for the lift, pull out the other car, put the first car back, etc... and had numbers to back up the cost savings... it's probably a pretty brilliant idea.

 

[Fabrik8]

I've been thinking about this today, and if you could tolerate the bullshit of having to move one car, wait for the lift, pull out the other car, put the first car back, etc... and had numbers to back up the cost savings... it's probably a pretty brilliant idea.

That's the thought. The weekend car (the third car) would get parked on the lift, and I don't drive it but once every week or two usually. That would leave one car parked underneath, and one car outside.

 

[rockcity]

Depending on the added space you would need, I'd think in would be much more convenient and cost effective to just add the square footage to the construction of the garage. Even if it's a wash, you have much more room to work with and added value to the house and less frustration workin around a smaller shop.

If you have the room, I'd make a bigger shop. It will fill up much faster than you realize regardless of how well you plan.

 

[Fabrik8]

Depending on the added space you would need, I'd think in would be much more convenient and cost effective to just add the square footage to the construction of the garage. Even if it's a wash, you have much more room to work with and added value to the house and less frustration workin around a smaller shop.

If you have the room, I'd make a bigger shop. It will fill up much faster than you realize regardless of how well you plan.

That's the plan; if it's anywhere close to a wash on cost then I'd rather have the extra space. I suspect there will be significant cost savings from the 4-post lift though, but I'll find out later in the design process. Who knows, I'll probably end up adding one later even if I don't shrink the garage footprint, at least so I can add an extra car in dry storage. I'm brainstorming at the moment.

 

[shawn]

Depending on the added space you would need, I'd think in would be much more convenient and cost effective to just add the square footage to the construction of the garage. Even if it's a wash, you have much more room to work with and added value to the house and less frustration workin around a smaller shop.

If you have the room, I'd make a bigger shop. It will fill up much faster than you realize regardless of how well you plan.

Do both. Build the bigger building, then add the lift in a year or two when you run out of floor space.

 

[Fabrik8]

Do both. Build the bigger building, then add the lift in a year or two when you run out of floor space.

See my last reply, same thought..

 

[Loganwayne]

How much are you budgeting per square foot for the garage? What kind of finishes are you planning on doing. I'd say most homes you can figure $50-75 sq.ft.

Sent from my XT1254 using Tapatalk

 

[CasterTroy]

I've been thinking about this today, and if you could tolerate the bullshit of having to move one car, wait for the lift, pull out the other car, put the first car back, etc... and had numbers to back up the cost savings... it's probably a pretty brilliant idea.

It's how paul walker did it

 

[Fabrik8]

Canepa Design thinks like I do.