If you put in a sink and toilet, it may save running into the house when you are busy in the train room.
Flooring question
- Thread starter DeckRoid
- Start date
If you put in a sink and toilet, it may save running into the house when you are busy in the train room.
And give a whole new meaning to "toilet training".:-D:-D
Wayne
Ohhhh....baaaad joke! Bad! Bad! sign1
Maybe if he models in a large enough scale, one of the gondolas can haul around a Porta-Potty?
And give a whole new meaning to "toilet training".
Wayne
Oh, man... someone open the window! That pun has got some stank on it. lol...
Hi guys it been awhile... any idea as to how you will heat and cool the new garage? How about power considerations? Electric heat, very very very expensive...I live in nj and have a sunroom on my home. I have 2 - 8 foot electric baseboard strips against the windows. Both units are oil filled. on average the cost to run these baseboard strips was about $200... I have an ac unit 6000btu and that runs me about $250 a month. These costs are just for the sunroom 12 by 16 foot.
An idea which i am thinking about for my new "garage" - lol is baseboard heat - hot water. an inexpensive way would be a hot water heater with a circulator pump and a thermostat, natural gas would be my bet..
I love the idea of a seperate building away from the " construction manager" - a 2 or 3 bay garage - detached with a full loft upstairs. A dinette with a toilet, a few sofas and the main room a massive layout. Just leave the mess and the house will be left undesturbed.
An idea which i am thinking about for my new "garage" - lol is baseboard heat - hot water. an inexpensive way would be a hot water heater with a circulator pump and a thermostat, natural gas would be my bet..
I love the idea of a seperate building away from the " construction manager" - a 2 or 3 bay garage - detached with a full loft upstairs. A dinette with a toilet, a few sofas and the main room a massive layout. Just leave the mess and the house will be left undesturbed.
Hey Michael,
Believe it or not, I have done alot of thinking on this. We will be too far out for natural gas, but I am thinking of getting a propane tank for the house and garage. I have looked into some cost effective radiator style heaters that run off of gas, and it looks to be somewhat efficient. Its better than electric heat, but I am concerned with propane. It's not regulated, like electricity and natural gas.
A/C is another sticky point. I live in Southwest Idaho, also known as The Desert. Our winters can dip down to the single digits, but our summers hit triple digits for 5 to 6 weeks at a stretch. Which ever way I go for A/C, I am going to include a ceiling fan.
If the trainroom gets to be sunken, which is my hope beyond hopes, I wont have to worry about the massive degree shift, as most basement/sunken spaces tend to be more mild. That is one reason our friend put his shop under his garage. He is nutty about wood working and didn't want to have his stuff be effected by climate change as he works on it.
George
Believe it or not, I have done alot of thinking on this. We will be too far out for natural gas, but I am thinking of getting a propane tank for the house and garage. I have looked into some cost effective radiator style heaters that run off of gas, and it looks to be somewhat efficient. Its better than electric heat, but I am concerned with propane. It's not regulated, like electricity and natural gas.
A/C is another sticky point. I live in Southwest Idaho, also known as The Desert. Our winters can dip down to the single digits, but our summers hit triple digits for 5 to 6 weeks at a stretch. Which ever way I go for A/C, I am going to include a ceiling fan.
If the trainroom gets to be sunken, which is my hope beyond hopes, I wont have to worry about the massive degree shift, as most basement/sunken spaces tend to be more mild. That is one reason our friend put his shop under his garage. He is nutty about wood working and didn't want to have his stuff be effected by climate change as he works on it.
George
George: thanx for the quick response, i also forgot to mention, think lts of insulation, either hot or cold - insulatin is key... the deck of my sunroom is alledgedly 6 foot of ball styrofoam insulation compressed to 6 inches, sammiched between 2 - 3/4" plywood sheets... the floor is comfy.
The problem isn't the electric heat or the air conditioner: it's the fact that your sunroom probably is mostly windows, as are most. Even the most energy-efficient windows have an insulation rating of R-3 at best.
Check the cost of propane in your area - around here it's about the most expensive heating method going. My nephew was paying over $800.00 per month to heat his house, and that was back in the late '80s. I can't imagine that it's gotten any cheaper.
My house has electric heating, and I wouldn't have anything else. My total monthly electric bill is about the same as my daughter's combined gas and electric bill, yet her house is only slightly more than half as big as mine. You heat the rooms that you're using, and turn the others down. It's also the only heating that can potentially be environmentally "green", with wind, water, and solar providing the power.
If you do end up with your layout beneath the garage, don't skimp on the insulation - my layout is in the basement in an unheated room and is useable year-round, thanks to adequate insulation.
Wayne
For heating you could use a passive solar hot water system if the garage roof gets a lot of sun. What I would do is solder copper pipe with "u" bends to make a giant radiator that would mount on the roof. You paint the copper with a black heat absorbing paint and route water through the copper to the water heater. You could then do water filled baseboard heating, and set it up on a thermostat with a circulation pump. The pump circulates the water through the roof coil, water heater and baseboards until the water temp reaches thermostat set point, then shuts off. You hot water heater has either a propane or electric back up, but if the sun is shinning on even the coldest winter days, you should pick up enough solar gain to keep everything toasty. You might need a separate thermostat and solenoid valves for the baseboard heaters because you would want your hot water hotter than the baseboard heaters.
I agree insulation is the key, where ever the Train Room ends up. (or down...)
Solar brings to mind an article in the Sunday paper that talked about this guy from around here who put this Photovoltaic film on his metal roof and sells his excess power back to Idaho Power. He is not using the panels of old, but these PV tiles on Tevlar all over his entire roof. Of course, this takes his roof costs from a 25k dollar roof to a 100k roof, but he is selling back to the power company. He also said in the interview that he didn't have to limit his power usage like he thought he would.
I would be nervous every wind storm that came along. We get some howlers coming through this area...
On a side note, the main heat in our proposed house is going to be a twice burning wood stove that is connected to the hvac duct work. The one we looked at will heat up to 3800 sq ft. Which is nice as we will have only 3200 with the basement.
Thanks for all the input. I am pushing for the basement under the garage instead of a 2 stories.
Solar brings to mind an article in the Sunday paper that talked about this guy from around here who put this Photovoltaic film on his metal roof and sells his excess power back to Idaho Power. He is not using the panels of old, but these PV tiles on Tevlar all over his entire roof. Of course, this takes his roof costs from a 25k dollar roof to a 100k roof, but he is selling back to the power company. He also said in the interview that he didn't have to limit his power usage like he thought he would.
I would be nervous every wind storm that came along. We get some howlers coming through this area...
On a side note, the main heat in our proposed house is going to be a twice burning wood stove that is connected to the hvac duct work. The one we looked at will heat up to 3800 sq ft. Which is nice as we will have only 3200 with the basement.
Thanks for all the input. I am pushing for the basement under the garage instead of a 2 stories.
I think the basement under the garage may have a bit higher construction cost than building up, but your temps will definitely stay more stable year round with the ground around it than being exposed to the weather.
The one problem that I have always had with carpet is trying to find small parts that I drop on the floor. I keep listening for the "click' of the part when it hits the floor but it never comes.
Back in the years I was newly married....We had a solar water heater on the roof. This was a unit my ol' man had developed and was testing out. Even on the coldest days, that water was scalding hot. The back-up water heater (gas) was never needed. Bears some looking into.
Potty training....indeed....
Potty training....indeed....
We're fortunate to have radiant hot water floor heat in this place we're in, based on a solar collector that covers the entire back of the garage, plus a passive solar solarium along the entire from on the house. There is also a woodstove for emergency backup that recycles it's heat into the solar water tank. Works great...and I love those toasty bathroom floors in the winter!