Thread: Multi-use shed payout ideas

No Auto (I can't get any vehicles down the side of the house but I do have fairly well defined metal and wood working areas.
Shed is small and crowded - only 42m^2.
MW lathe, MW mill, WW lathe, welder, plasma cutter, 1.5HP DP, 1/2HP MW bandsaw, 4HP WW Bandsaw, Large belt/disc sander, 3 1HP grinders, 3HP Table saw, 2" SCMS, 10" Thicknesser/planer common combo, 10T press, 4HP twin bag DC and 4HP compressor are in enclosures outside shed..

Metal work area is more fireproof, clad in minor and insulated with Rockwool. Woodwork is Gyprock clad with bubble wrap insulation.

I have a small fume hood in the metal work area that I do all sorts of things in - welding, plasma cutting, grinding, and spray painting. I also spray small wooden items, and undertake some chemistry experiments and tests. When I can I use TIG welding as this produces no slag and less fumes.

I use the DC to extract both wood and metal dust from machines and use a hot metal catcher to prevent hot metal bits from getting into the DC bags.
Welding fumes get extracted by the fume hood. I also run the fume hood when using my ATM/kero metal coolant/lube on the mill.

Shed gets used for many other things.
Electrical work like motor conversions gets done on my WW bench.
Small mechanical repairs and things like chainsaw sharpening (I have 7 of them) gets done on the "metal work" bench but I often end up using the WW bench or the top of the TS

The biggest object foot print I can build inside my shed is about 1800 x 600mm. Anything big and I have to resort to the back patio.

Just build two, or maybe three sheds, definitely easier. I went to a place recently that had four, all for different stuff, all well outfitted, and very well organised. It was an interesting look around for a few hours.

Two or more sheds can also be a PITA. Then you need duplicate sets of hand tools and machines like drill presses, sanders, grinders etc. I had two sheds for 9 months and even though they were right next to each other the constant back and forth looking for hand tools and using machines etc drive me nuts and would never do that again. Eventually I knocked down the adjcent walls and made them into one shed. I was going to just put a door in teh walls but I figured I could make better use of the space. If you have the space dividers and door(way)s are a good idea.

Mind you that has not prevented some duplication within the shed. I do keep a basic set of hand tools and PPE at each end of my shed and in my electronics nook in the house and in the car.

I have a largish American Barn (16m L, 2x 3.75m skillions, and a 5.5m centre section) side walls 5.3m H, centre 7.5m at ridgeline. One complete skillion and 2/3rds of the other have mezzanines giving 2.5m headroom for ground floor and mezzanine. The mezzanine that runs full length is used for storage (access via stairs and a battery forklift) with 12 x 3.75 enclosed woodwork shop and 4 x 3.75 enclose metal shop, the other skillion is car storage on base level with a 4 post lift at one end for car stacking giving 4 car spaces, a mancave and a computer room and electronics workshop on the mezzanine. Central section has a 2 post hoist in the far bay for working on cars, rest was set aside for undercover storage of a caravan or motor home that probably won't eventuate now, but is also available as extra work space for whatever is happening at the time.

Still working on getting it all set up internally and divided up, but if you can go up with engineered storage it frees up a lot of work space at floor level. Helps also if you are building outside the urban areas, I was allowed to do a slightly smaller version a 6m H on 0.5 acres in City of Maroondah in 2006, but when we moved to Alexandra, we asked the council before we locked into the land purchase contract and their response was that they accept that vehicles need undercover storage, and as long as the shed has vehicular access, they consider that it is a garage and all's fair, no planning permits etc required, just a regular building permit. Got them to put it in writing, and fed that back to them 5 years later to build it.

The only tool I have duplicated in both sheds is a drill press and that is not really a duplication. The one in the metal work shed is way beefier than the woodwork one.
Best to keep machining bays seperate to assembly areas to help reduce dust. A main shed with a skillion on each side works well for this.

Originally Posted by malb

I have a largish American Barn (16m L, 2x 3.75m skillions, and a 5.5m centre section) side walls 5.3m H, centre 7.5m at ridgeline. One complete skillion and 2/3rds of the other have mezzanines giving 2.5m headroom for ground floor and mezzanine. The mezzanine that runs full length is used for storage (access via stairs and a battery forklift) with 12 x 3.75 enclosed woodwork shop and 4 x 3.75 enclose metal shop, the other skillion is car storage on base level with a 4 post lift at one end for car stacking giving 4 car spaces, a mancave and a computer room and electronics workshop on the mezzanine. Central section has a 2 post hoist in the far bay for working on cars, rest was set aside for undercover storage of a caravan or motor home that probably won't eventuate now, but is also available as extra work space for whatever is happening at the time.
....

This is like a super sized version if what I was thinking of. Do you have a plan drawing or pictures I can look at to get a better idea?
Except I have decided against the American barn style and want to keep the width below 11m.

I am rural-residential and after the house is built I can only have 1,100m2 of shed. The wife tells me the house is a requirement. I ignored her, but the council told me the same thing and so it turns out she's right. So it only up to 1,100m2 for the shed I'm afraid. Should be able to squeeze it in! Actually there is this height restriction which really is causing headaches - which I discussed above. Also I want to keep the width below 11m so that it fits in a certain site, so as to preserve the view. Which my wife tells me is also a requirement. I stopped ignoring her now, cause you know she'll end up being right again.

Anyway it turns out you need to own an entire Swiss bank to be able to afford enough steel to build a really large shed, so I'm just going for the biggest I can afford.

I have a quote for 4m high walls and 10 degree pitch gable roof.
Then a cheaper quote from a different company for 3.5m high walls and a 15 degree pitch gable roof.
Locals have recommended both companies, so not worried about quality or lack of local knowledge.

The "mezzanine" is just for storage. I'm in QLD. I mean it would be a good idea to have a real mezzanine if you were born on the sun and prefer an ambient air temperature at the melting point of lead. But for me, it will always be for storage. The question is, what skull cracking height level is tolerable?

Right now, I'm trying to learn enough of Sketchup to play around with a mezzanine design.
One thing that has just occurred to me is that - will I realistically need steel posts and beams for the bearers? Originally the "mezzanine" storage was going to be about 6m x 4m. I can build the bearers into the wall frames and run 450mm spaced joists the 4m width. But to make it easier to position the stairs, now I think it should span the whole 10m x 4m. This so the 6m part has a wall frame but the additional 4m x 4m bit would only have a frame on 2 sides. The other two sides need to be open.
These posts will come down on a part of the slab that is siting on fill. And if I have steel posts and beams then should I specify some extra piers at the points where I plan to place those posts?

How much would it cost me to get an engineer to design this properly for me?

Only 1100m2? That’s a bit small isn’t it? Best you move to a different area with different council regulations.
Which council is this ? Because I’m looking to move soon as we sell and I don’t want to buy in an area where I can only have 1100 square metres of shed, that’s just way too small.

If you can go to 1100 sqm, your only problems are finance and the wife's insistence on 11m W, but you might need a scooter or similar to traverse the 100m length regularly. My floor area at ground level is 208sqm, plus another 100sqm approx for the total mezzanine area.

American barn is a better way to go if you want mezzanines, even if you juggle things so that the critter looks like a gable roof. With an American barn, the entire mezzanine load transfers to the columns that would be there anyway, though they may be wider and thicker than otherwise. With a conventional clearspan shed, you need to add a lot if support columns under the mezzanine, to the point where the area under it and close to, but beyond it suffers a lot of interference from the support columns. If the mezzanine you want is only partial, it might be viable to do it clearspan, but for what I wanted to do, american barn was definitely a better way to go.

My barn is 4 x 4m bays, so 5 frames 4m apart. Mezzanine bearers are 4m L 300C channel lengthways frame to frame, with 150C channel bearers set with top flush with the top of the bearers. All held by the frame uprights. All custom engineered for 800kg/sqm dynamic load plus whatever static load is created by the structure and flooring. Engineering was done as a custom job by the Dinkum Sheds engineering consultant who are based in QLD and charged $1K up front to design and spec the entire shed. This is normally included in the price for a standard shed that can go through the Dinkum Sheds design app, where the local sales agent pops user sizes, doors, windows etc into the app and it generates general drawings, prices the kit etc. The app can do centre section mezzanines but is programmed for bearers to be across the centre section with z joists running lengthways across the top of the bearers. This approach is OK for a horse barn or similar where the feed etc is kept on the mezzanine and stalls are under the skillions as you can climb up to the mezzanine and drop your feed into the stalls as you walk along the mezzanine. Doesn't work when you want high clearance through the centre and the mezz's under the skillions though. Also my mezzanine layout occupies 325mm of the available height as the top of the joists are flush with the top of the bearers, whereas the standard approach incorporated into the app would occupy 475mm of height.

Foundations under uprights are specc'd as 700mm sq x 1M deep but were made as 900 Dia x 1M deep by concreter as it was cheaper to pay for the extra concrete than to bore 600dia holes and pay labour to square the and expand to 700 sq. given the number of footings and how hard the clay is.

Rough breakdown of pricing for you Concrete floor and footings (roughly level site to finished floor) $22K, complete shed kit, including 1 container door, 2 sectional panel doors (all three across front, one roller door in back under skillion for drive through/rear access to car stacking 4 post lift, 2 whirly birds on roof, PA door and 3 x Al windows, all Colourbond sheeting walls and roof, foam cored ali insulation under all roofing and inside longitudinal centre section walls , $84K, erection crew including hiring sissor lift etc $13K for stage 1. Short on finance at the time due to a very slow paying property developer and sick of waiting and paying storage, so opted to do it in 2 stages, Stage 1 floor, complete shed frame and fully sheeted with insulation and whirly birds with just the container door and PA door, mezzanine bearers and angle brackets for joists along the skillion outer walls only, Stage 2 supply and install central mezzanine bearers, all joists, mezzanine flooring, sectional panel and roller doors, and all windows. Going 2 stages saved the cost of the Stage 1 erection crew from the kit price and meant that the shed went up. Waiting till the ratbag developer to pay what he owed so I could build in a single step would have cost me almost $15k in storage fees and set the thing back 18 months, so staging really made sense that way as well. Started negotiations with supplier today for the stage 2 materials and labour, would have been about $15K overall when the contact was costed and signed July 2020 to do it all in one hit, staging saved that then but will cost about $20K for stage 2 in April.

I drew mine up in stages in Sketchup so that I could give the agent and engineers an idea of what I wanted, and to make sure that there was sufficient space for what I wanted to include, and I knew the general structure etc. I assigned different elements of the frame to different layers and colours, started at the floor, and added each set of elements to their layer in turn, saving as a separate drawing as each layer went in, so I had a series of drawings, with only the last showing everything, including hoists etc, and the ability to hide any layer whenever I wanted. Once I was satisfied I printed it to an A2 sized PDF for the agent.

I think I addressed the items you wanted info about, happy to fill in gaps if requested. My sparky came to start basic wiring and commented that it would be a white elephant now because Qantas weren't leasing hanger space in the bush any more, so it is a fairly big structure.