Well guys i finally got around to getting pics of our new shop and writing up a description now that I have my new digital camera (Nikon Coolpix S550). Ive been using this thing a lot, for catchup on stuff ive always wanted to take pictures of. I bought it because it was tiny with a big screen and is a 10mega pixel camera. Fair price too. Anyways about the shop.
It is a 60x80 Morton building. We only build Morton buildings because of how overbuilt they are but mostly because of their warrenty. After our old freestall barn collapsed on new years eve in 2000 during nightime milking due to snowload, we will never build anything but Morton. You see insurance doesnt cover snowload. But Mortons warrenty does. If the paint starts to fade, pieces of the building arent true or are malfunctioning, or it completely fallsdown, they will fix it at no charge. Now they dont cover tornados or fire but insurance does.
here is a picture of their quality. It is a section of our loft. The post in the picture has two additional 2x8s on it that you cant see on the other side. They had to hire in a backhoe to dig the hole bacause they have to pour a concrete slab 4' in diameter by 6' deep
here is a pic from the outside
Ill start with the general dimensions and such. It is 60' wide by 80' long. Morton only builds wood buildings so it is made out of wood. However they are very anal about the construction and anything that could possibly get one drop of water on it, is green treated. The Inside ceiling height is 16' on the edges and peaks at 20' in the middle.
Heres an outside pic
The walls and celing are covered in acoustisteel and below the acoustisteel is 8' of 3/4" plywood. we used plywood as it allows us to hang anything anywhere. The acoustisteel is 2-3 times more than plain steel but is well worth it. it has a million holes in it which deaden the echoing. At first i didnt notice it, but when I set foot in our neighbors new shop without it, i noticed it big time. And when he started grinding I noticed that the acoustisteel isnt just for comfort but more for safety as I was deafened by the sound of his grinder all the way across the shop. In ours it sounds like a shop completely lined with plywood.
Here is a pic of the acoustisteel close up
One thing we learned is that you never have enough lights or outlets, so to adress this situation we decided to go seriously overkill and never regret it in the end. There is a total of 222 light bulbs on the ceiling. Half can be shut off and the row above the tool boxes can be turned on seperately. We went against the sodium hay lights as they take too long to power up. Let me just say its bright. and when we first built it and it was empty, it was a little too bright at night and I found myself turning half of them off. For the outlets we put recepticles with 4 plugins every 5' around the entire shop for a totoal of somewhere around 50 plug ins. We also have two welder plugs, one at the back of the shop and one at the front, but we have a 50' extenson cord so we can go anywhere with it.
here is a pic shouwing just how close the plugs are around the entire shop
Now every new farm shop has to have a loft to take advantage of the height of the celing. But the biggest issue is where to put it so that you have plenty of loft but keep it out of the way. After many different plans we decided on putting it in the back corner. It extends 30' across the west side of the shop and 30' across the north side. It comes out 12'. Now we just needed to find out where to put the steps to keep them out of the way. We opted to tuck them into teh corner and tuck the air compressor underneath them. However this made it harder to get large items upstairs so when me and my uncle made the railings we incorporated some gates so that we could lift things upstairs with the loader or the skidsteer.
Here is a pic from far away of the loft
Here are two pics of the lofts storage which is nowhere near close to full yet
here is a gate
here is a pic of the steps
We also new our dogs would need a new home in the cold winters so we installed a doggie door. Now I wish I had a pic before the plywood went up so you could see how ridiculous morton is. they framed it with green treated 2x8s that were stacked 3 thick. In addition they took time to add a nice door that we could use to close it off. The flp is magnetic so as long as the wind isnt too strong it closes and keeps the warm air inside. We also set up their kennels temporaily under the stairs(see above pic) to the loft but they will have to be moved when that area gets closed off.
Here is the doggie door
Now more importantly we needed to get equipment in and out because that is what a hop is for. Here too we went though many desings toying with the idea of bi fold doors, hydralic swing doors and overhead doors. we also had many different layouts but in the end just went with the overhead doors. A 24x16' in front, a 14x14' next to the big door and a 12x14' on the side. For people acess there is a walk in door in front and on the side. We also learned you can never have enough garage door openers. We probably have 15 of them now programmed to open any of the 3 doors.
If there was one thing we were sure on going into this shop it was how we were going to heat it. In floor heat, there really is no other way to go. Since the floor is warm, your body is always warm. and when you open the door it takes less than 5 minutes for the shop to recover. We toyed with gepothermal heating and cooling but settled on just using our existing wood burners. However the geothermal gave us a good idea, use our plate cooler water to cool the shop. It just gets wasted anyways due to federal law and is already at 54". so we added a large heat exhanger/de humidfier.
here is the a/c unit
Now for my toys. It didnt take much for me to talk my dad into adding a car lift and a nice welder. It did take a little bit to convice him to get his eyes out of the northern tool catalog and buy something nice. I settled on a Rotary S10i hoist which has the inbay feature. Anybody buying a rotary i strongly suggest the inbay feature. Its only $400 and well worth it. It moves to motor to the top of the hoist, out of the way and quiet.l It also removes the manual locking lever and replaces it with simple up/down and lower to locks buttons on both sides of the lift, which really comes in handy. In addition it also adds preplumber air and electrical hookups as well as tool hangers. I love this lift and it gets used all the time. One thing we shouldve changed was moving it out 1' more from the loft. Once the office walls go up I wont be able to get between the post and the wall. My other toy as I mentioned was the welder. I knew what I wanted and ended up getting a Miller, Millermatic 252 welder. I knew from previous experience that these are the most versitile welder and are great for people who arent pros at welding like the other employees at our farm. We have it set up with both .035 wire and .045 flux core wire so that we can weld anything from 18awg to 1' plate.
Here is the lift
here is the welder
we knew we wanted a bathroom and an office, and also knew the air compressor needed to be insulated for noise reasons. These items arent done yet. But we will be pluming the air lines soon with 4 hose reels, 2 will be non oiled and 2 will be oiled. we will also have other hookup spots by the bench for short hoses and also two big hookups for our large impact guns.Teh office and bathroom will be built shortly too.
here is where they will be. The bathroom will be closest to the point of photo and has a sink, toilet and shower, the office will extend to where the snowmobile sits and will have manuals and the internet for looking up diagrams. We also hope to add an inventory and repair order system to the computer The entire famr is linke dwith fiber optics so tieing the systems together is no problem.
We knew from past experinces that some of our employees tend t0o walk away with tools. Since nobody returns them or fesses up we added security cameras. One that watches the outside and one that watches the inside. These are tied into the systenm with the other cameras around the farm.
here is the eye in the sky.
this shop is definately a step up from our old shop which was just a finished off corn crib. we used that very effecintly for what it was but it simply didnt have the space.
Here is the outside
Here is the inside (That stroker is my gmas not ours)
here is an arial pic which shows the size difference.
You will also notice in the arial pic that our shop isnt straight. That is because we angled it slightly to make it easier to back semis in without tearing up our front lawn
heres a couple other pics
thats all for now, im sick of typing. Any questions just ask.
It is a 60x80 Morton building. We only build Morton buildings because of how overbuilt they are but mostly because of their warrenty. After our old freestall barn collapsed on new years eve in 2000 during nightime milking due to snowload, we will never build anything but Morton. You see insurance doesnt cover snowload. But Mortons warrenty does. If the paint starts to fade, pieces of the building arent true or are malfunctioning, or it completely fallsdown, they will fix it at no charge. Now they dont cover tornados or fire but insurance does.
here is a picture of their quality. It is a section of our loft. The post in the picture has two additional 2x8s on it that you cant see on the other side. They had to hire in a backhoe to dig the hole bacause they have to pour a concrete slab 4' in diameter by 6' deep
here is a pic from the outside
Ill start with the general dimensions and such. It is 60' wide by 80' long. Morton only builds wood buildings so it is made out of wood. However they are very anal about the construction and anything that could possibly get one drop of water on it, is green treated. The Inside ceiling height is 16' on the edges and peaks at 20' in the middle.
Heres an outside pic
The walls and celing are covered in acoustisteel and below the acoustisteel is 8' of 3/4" plywood. we used plywood as it allows us to hang anything anywhere. The acoustisteel is 2-3 times more than plain steel but is well worth it. it has a million holes in it which deaden the echoing. At first i didnt notice it, but when I set foot in our neighbors new shop without it, i noticed it big time. And when he started grinding I noticed that the acoustisteel isnt just for comfort but more for safety as I was deafened by the sound of his grinder all the way across the shop. In ours it sounds like a shop completely lined with plywood.
Here is a pic of the acoustisteel close up
One thing we learned is that you never have enough lights or outlets, so to adress this situation we decided to go seriously overkill and never regret it in the end. There is a total of 222 light bulbs on the ceiling. Half can be shut off and the row above the tool boxes can be turned on seperately. We went against the sodium hay lights as they take too long to power up. Let me just say its bright. and when we first built it and it was empty, it was a little too bright at night and I found myself turning half of them off. For the outlets we put recepticles with 4 plugins every 5' around the entire shop for a totoal of somewhere around 50 plug ins. We also have two welder plugs, one at the back of the shop and one at the front, but we have a 50' extenson cord so we can go anywhere with it.
here is a pic shouwing just how close the plugs are around the entire shop
Now every new farm shop has to have a loft to take advantage of the height of the celing. But the biggest issue is where to put it so that you have plenty of loft but keep it out of the way. After many different plans we decided on putting it in the back corner. It extends 30' across the west side of the shop and 30' across the north side. It comes out 12'. Now we just needed to find out where to put the steps to keep them out of the way. We opted to tuck them into teh corner and tuck the air compressor underneath them. However this made it harder to get large items upstairs so when me and my uncle made the railings we incorporated some gates so that we could lift things upstairs with the loader or the skidsteer.
Here is a pic from far away of the loft
Here are two pics of the lofts storage which is nowhere near close to full yet
here is a gate
here is a pic of the steps
We also new our dogs would need a new home in the cold winters so we installed a doggie door. Now I wish I had a pic before the plywood went up so you could see how ridiculous morton is. they framed it with green treated 2x8s that were stacked 3 thick. In addition they took time to add a nice door that we could use to close it off. The flp is magnetic so as long as the wind isnt too strong it closes and keeps the warm air inside. We also set up their kennels temporaily under the stairs(see above pic) to the loft but they will have to be moved when that area gets closed off.
Here is the doggie door
Now more importantly we needed to get equipment in and out because that is what a hop is for. Here too we went though many desings toying with the idea of bi fold doors, hydralic swing doors and overhead doors. we also had many different layouts but in the end just went with the overhead doors. A 24x16' in front, a 14x14' next to the big door and a 12x14' on the side. For people acess there is a walk in door in front and on the side. We also learned you can never have enough garage door openers. We probably have 15 of them now programmed to open any of the 3 doors.
If there was one thing we were sure on going into this shop it was how we were going to heat it. In floor heat, there really is no other way to go. Since the floor is warm, your body is always warm. and when you open the door it takes less than 5 minutes for the shop to recover. We toyed with gepothermal heating and cooling but settled on just using our existing wood burners. However the geothermal gave us a good idea, use our plate cooler water to cool the shop. It just gets wasted anyways due to federal law and is already at 54". so we added a large heat exhanger/de humidfier.
here is the a/c unit
Now for my toys. It didnt take much for me to talk my dad into adding a car lift and a nice welder. It did take a little bit to convice him to get his eyes out of the northern tool catalog and buy something nice. I settled on a Rotary S10i hoist which has the inbay feature. Anybody buying a rotary i strongly suggest the inbay feature. Its only $400 and well worth it. It moves to motor to the top of the hoist, out of the way and quiet.l It also removes the manual locking lever and replaces it with simple up/down and lower to locks buttons on both sides of the lift, which really comes in handy. In addition it also adds preplumber air and electrical hookups as well as tool hangers. I love this lift and it gets used all the time. One thing we shouldve changed was moving it out 1' more from the loft. Once the office walls go up I wont be able to get between the post and the wall. My other toy as I mentioned was the welder. I knew what I wanted and ended up getting a Miller, Millermatic 252 welder. I knew from previous experience that these are the most versitile welder and are great for people who arent pros at welding like the other employees at our farm. We have it set up with both .035 wire and .045 flux core wire so that we can weld anything from 18awg to 1' plate.
Here is the lift
here is the welder
we knew we wanted a bathroom and an office, and also knew the air compressor needed to be insulated for noise reasons. These items arent done yet. But we will be pluming the air lines soon with 4 hose reels, 2 will be non oiled and 2 will be oiled. we will also have other hookup spots by the bench for short hoses and also two big hookups for our large impact guns.Teh office and bathroom will be built shortly too.
here is where they will be. The bathroom will be closest to the point of photo and has a sink, toilet and shower, the office will extend to where the snowmobile sits and will have manuals and the internet for looking up diagrams. We also hope to add an inventory and repair order system to the computer The entire famr is linke dwith fiber optics so tieing the systems together is no problem.
We knew from past experinces that some of our employees tend t0o walk away with tools. Since nobody returns them or fesses up we added security cameras. One that watches the outside and one that watches the inside. These are tied into the systenm with the other cameras around the farm.
here is the eye in the sky.
this shop is definately a step up from our old shop which was just a finished off corn crib. we used that very effecintly for what it was but it simply didnt have the space.
Here is the outside
Here is the inside (That stroker is my gmas not ours)
here is an arial pic which shows the size difference.
You will also notice in the arial pic that our shop isnt straight. That is because we angled it slightly to make it easier to back semis in without tearing up our front lawn
heres a couple other pics
thats all for now, im sick of typing. Any questions just ask.
