That view is why i dream of moving west. However, all our family and support is here.
But a man can dream.
Carry on.
That view is why i dream of moving west. However, all our family and support is here.
But a man can dream.
Carry on.
In reply to Karacticus :
All of the Ubiquiti gear I have worked with has been amazingly good.
wow, what a view. I think I'd sit in the door all morning drinking coffee, then just switch to beer and watch the sunset.
You might want to consider running a fiber optic cable instead of cat 5, and pony up for some cheap adapters on each end. Something about the two different grounds in the two different buildings getting tied together through the shield in a cat 5 tends to burn them up.
My shop is 30x40 and while it's not a bad size for working on stuff it is a little small for both working space and storage space.
snakes
30x40... that's almost 25% of the entire lot my house is on. 
I can't think of any reason not to do the lean to.
I have a 30x40 garage with an attic, stuffed full of storage.
One of my plans for the year is to make some room for the Miata. And my canoe. And my dad's art collection.
Don't see it happening. Anyway, I'm really happy to follow along here.
About the price of the lean-to - you can get them from Home Depot. Price depends on footprint, but the 4x7 I'm eyeballing is $339. I've been given the SWMBO sign-off on the lean-to concept, so I'll probably go that way with insulation on the walls for sound control. I'm liking the idea of a bit of air exchange so it doesn't freeze.
The junk in a shop will always expand to fill the space available, but Brits can build cars in what we'd think of as a garden shed. A bit of intelligent design at this point will maximize that storage and I'm thinking of marking off the various areas in paint so that the work area doesn't impinge on the parking area.
One thing I want is serious shelving. Most garage shelving is just a little bit sketchy, with legs made of thin wall angle iron. This design works until you put a little ding in the angle, then it collapses like a pop can. They're also limited in height, which means you're giving up storage space. Being a steel shop, I can't really anchor to the wall so they have to be free standing. Luckily, Husky makes a scaled down version of industrial pallet shelving that's up to 90" tall. Looks like the shorter version just dropped in price (it was $178 last week) but the taller one has 25% more storage space so it's worth it in the long run.
https://www.homedepot.com/s/husky%2520pallet%2520shelves?NCNI-5
Oldopelguy, thanks for the grounding caution. I'll look into that.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
I have about 18 feet of the home/industrial shelving in my garage and I can't imagine what I would do with all the stuff without the shelves. They can be bolted to the floor with anchors and used to provide 'walls' between areas to help with segregation of work and storage areas. Bonus if you sheet the back of the shelves on the storage side to prevent things jumping off the shelf and hitting stored vehicles.
We use the full industrial pallet shelves at work, including making walls out of them. I don't think I can go back to the spindly stuff 
I like the idea of a back side if it's used as a wall, that's simple and smart.
I've been reading up on wiring extra buildings. First, you can't run network cable down the power conduit so I'd be trenching. And fiber does indeed seem to be the popular suggestion for a bunch of reasons, including lightning protection. So now I'm back to thinking wireless is the smart choice. I can hide an antenna in the house attic. Looks like it's about 150' and it's a clear shot. I'd prefer something directional so I don't blanket the entire area. Any specific product suggestions?
For shelving I'd look for a local firm the handles used pallet racking. Even the lightest stuff will take thousands of pounds of load, and it's not all that expensive (at least around here).
Hey Keith, another option for internet is adding a powerline network adapter. It was something I was considering for my detached garage and even for getting faster internet between rooms since wifi seems to struggle with plaster walls in my old house. Essentially it runs the data over your power lines: https://www.amazon.com/Powerline-Computer-Network-Adapters/b?ie=UTF8&node=1194444
What I don't know is how these work when going between circuits. Not sure how well it works when going from the house circuit through the breaker box and out to a new circuit.
DeadSkunk said:For shelving I'd look for a local firm the handles used pallet racking. Even the lightest stuff will take thousands of pounds of load, and it's not all that expensive (at least around here).
I've looked. It's reasonably expensive around here, but also tends to be deeper than I was looking for. That's why I was so happy to find the Husky stuff, it's scaled just about right and is less expensive than the full industrial in my area.
Krautastic, I'll look into that. I've got some old-school Realistic intercoms that use power line transmission. They're having trouble in the house overall - probably the high number of old-school dimmers - but I haven't tried them between the house and the shop yet. I'll give it a shot, and if that particular canary survives then maybe power line is an option.
Wow, that’s a ton of shop space and a beautiful view. If I lived in the Fruita/Grand Junction area, I’d never get anything done when the weather is nice, I’d be too busy hiking.
I'm a little surprised you gave up the wedding tree, but for a shop with that view.. makes more sense now.
I have the Ubiquiti nanostation loco joining my house and shop. It’s probably about 150’ apart. And the speed is awesome and it’s seamless once set up. I would never bother to trench for cat5 again, for the cost.
oldopelguy said:You might want to consider running a fiber optic cable instead of cat 5, and pony up for some cheap adapters on each end. Something about the two different grounds in the two different buildings getting tied together through the shield in a cat 5 tends to burn them up.
Just wanted to say that's a good call. I've even seen it in a house when bridging different circuits with different ground potentials. What I've seen is routers/modems/Ethernet cards fried.
I have fired up a King Nerd who loves playing with this stuff and aimed him at the problem. I measured the distance on Googles Map and it's actually only about 150', which means we might even get away with a directional antenna painting the shop with radiation. There will be no cables or fiber now. Thanks for pointing out the grounding problems, that made me research more and there are a bunch of reasons I'm not going to run cat 5 down the hill.
I am still considering running water, though, which means a trench. Has to be about 2' down to avoid the frost around here. And if I go with the lean-to concept, I can have it pop up through the new slab into the insulated/heated lean-to so I don't have to poke holes in my "good" slab. At least, that's my thinking.
It IS a beautiful area. And we had a coyote howl just outside our bedroom window the other night. The house is going to get some work, but it's one that was custom-designed for the lot and it takes full advantage of the light. Even better, we bought it from the original owners so I have a full set of blueprints for both the house and the shop.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
I have the Husky shelving in my garage. Great stuff, easy to assemble and actually looks nice.
I did a small shed on the back of my last shop for the compressor. It was truly a game changer as far as noise pollution goes. I would have some concern over noise. +1 on your insulation idea. Mine was maybe 4X6, and in warmer months (Middle TN climate), I'd have to open the door, or the 60 gal. compressor would overheat. My plan was to put a air conditioner filter and frame down low for an intake on one side, and a fan (maybe just a box fan) up high, on the other side. In Colorado, this may or may not be a non-issue. I used the blue conduit as sold by Summitt, et al, and really liked it.
This was the same kind of game changer as PEX plumbing.
By the way, congratulations. That is truly awesome in all ways. I am sure it will be more so after the Tanner touch.
Stampie said:Keith Tanner said:I MAY be able to fish the network cable down the existing conduit for the electrical, but it's a pretty long way.
If you can seal around the electrical wire at one end and pull a vacuum you can use the plastic bag tied to string trick.
Use Cat6, not Cat5. Also, if you pull through an occupied conduit, lube the cable with either dish soap or, uh...lube.
I recently did a volunteer project to extend wifi a several hundred feet outdoors and had to penetrate RVs. For $50, you can't beat this AP. It's ruggedized, waterproof, power-over-ethernet, and cheap. May be able to irradiate your garage from the house.
Congrats. That place is a find!
For shelving, if you might look at the mythbusters solution, 1" square tube, welded together. The entirety of the shelving in M5 was built with it and it appears to have passed the test of time and a ton of stuff set on it.
For whatever reason the power line carrier stuff gets dampened out to uselessness in @100' when the wire is underground.
If you are trenching for water you might as well run a length of the black poly in the same trench for an air line back up to the house and data to the shop. The steel building walls plus pallet rack and such make a great Faraday cage.
I'll loan you my trencher if you want to figure out how to get it there and back. I think I have some training in Denver next month....
The answer to your internet is 2 ubiquiti nanobeam m5s. Seriously. Don't run cat5. You'll be maxing out the distance cat5 can run without a repeater anyway.
I have the nanobeams 300ft apart. My internet transfer speed is about the same, the latency went up like 10m/s. It's impressively good. Been running it a year with absolutely zero issues. They go up to like 10 miles with line of site, so you should be good on distance.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00N9ZIEJC/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_GfyYAbFDA978N
Gaunt596 said:For shelving, if you might look at the mythbusters solution, 1" square tube, welded together. The entirety of the shelving in M5 was built with it and it appears to have passed the test of time and a ton of stuff set on it.
I thought about that. It would let me build around some weird little kinks in the garage walls where there are guy wires and support beams. Means no adjustability (without breaking out the welder) once it's installed, but how often do you really adjust your storage shelves once they're set up? 1" square on the horizontal beams seems a little undersized, though. Any idea how far apart their uprights are? I mean, I'll be putting transmissions and iron Cadillac heads on these things.
Thanks for the offer of the trencher, but it's probably a lot quicker to run down to the local Coop and rent one than to get to Denver
Ubiquiti nanobeams of some sort are looking likely. If I do a bridge with an antenna outside the shop I can avoid the Faraday cage effect, but that means more hardware than simply irradiating the building hard. I know what the right answer is. I just have to work my way around to it.
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