Updated Workshop Design Plan

Synopsis: Shed workshop built to exceed quality standards for residential housing, especially wrt energy efficiency, durability, and low maintenance.  Exterior size: 14'10" by 12'6" with 9 foot walls.   Best available materials and construction techniques.

0.  Already done: Concrete Slab: engineered and inspected with #6 and #3 rebar grid and wire mesh and 27 inch beams, 4000psi concrete, wet cured 1 month.

    a) Needs removal of forms, cleanup of scrap concrete, removal of unused rebar.

1.  Exterior dimensions 14'10" length, 12'6" width and 9' height or higher exterior walls.

2.  4x8 Hardiepanel vertical line siding (not plank!) painted to match house.  30 pound felt or Typar on 5/8 plywood backing.

3.  Hardietrim, Azek, Miratec, or real cedar wood trim on corners, around window, door, and A/C.

4.  2x6 framing on 16" centers.  Optional: 2x4 framing on north and east walls (for better acoustic internal dimensions).

5.  6 foot wide coated steel double french doors with internal blinds, Energy Star, facing east (toward house).  Lowes  ReliaBilt #289766 ($698).  Flexible pull screen system in front of door.

6.  One 29x47 Fleetwood Westwood 250 casement window (already obtained).  Facing north at 5 feet (min) from front, 36 inch minimum height.

7.  5/12 slope 2x8 framing for roof support.

8.  Eaves at 18" depth with (suggested) HardieFascia boards with drip edge.

9.  24 gauge galvealume steel roofing with hidden fasteners and white Kynar (PVDA) factory coating.  Class 4 hail resistant.  Strongest and most permanent seam design: Berridge Z-lock 180 degree mechanical double lock or equivalent suggested.

10.  Roofing rests on 5/8" plywood with radiant barrier facing down.  30 pound felt or Grace.

11.  Lowe's Valspar Premium exterior paint (top rated consumer reports), tinted to match house.

12.  6x2 foot concrete ramp poured on compacted soil with 3" gravel base.  Not attached to foundation for minimal effect on foundation integrity.  Some settling and drift is expected and tolerable.

13.  Two pound closed cell foam on all walls and under roof deck to fill maximum depth available with shaving to fit sheetrock.

14.  All 5/8 sheetrock:

    a) 5/8" Fireguard (tm, available at Lowe's) sheetrock on side and back walls.  This relatively expensive sheetrock also has reasonably good acoustical properties.  (optional: double sheetrock.)

    b) 5/8" QuietRock EZ (SeriousMaterials) on ceiling at 9 foot (flat) height and front wall.  I figured 8 pieces leaves plenty of margin for both, available through Building Specialties in San Antonio, quoted $58.38 per piece.

15  Electrical connection and wiring to be done by John Jones Electric if possible.

a.  Center ceiling fan with switch near door, remote control and screw in lights.

b.  Side outlets and light/fan switch by door.  10G copper wire in exposed conduit for all circuits.  Industrial grade switch and GFCI outlets, unbreakable nylon Decora plates.  All wiring in interior exposed insulated conduit to avoid wall and ceiling penetrations and enable future modification.

c. 220V AC connection with building panel and shutoff.

16.  24" deep shelf at back of building, minimum clearance of 6 feet.

17.  Two rows 16" deep shelving on sides past back shelf at 6.5 foot and 7.75 foot height.

18.  Porcelain non-slip freeze resistant tile, (suggested) Marazzi "Brazilian Slate" available at Home Depot.

19. 5800 slide-out BTU Commercial Grade Air Conditioner with digital controls (already obtained) mounted through wall on north side.

20.  Best quality interior white paint.

21.  optional: Marking to show location of studs and electrical wiring.

Siding Costs

Better Homes and Gardens lists the costs of each type of siding.  Unfortunately, some they choose to list the uninstalled cost, and others they list the installed cost.  Anyway, you can guess that in most cases installed cost is at least double the material cost, and more for cheap materials like vinyl.

Seen in this kind of presentation, real brick is not out of line.  But it doesn't count costs like extra foundation strength, and wasted interior space.  Brick and stone veneer are about as expensive as real brick (assuming installation cost about the same as material cost).

Stucco is (or at least can be) surprisingly expensive.  Even the material cost can exceed that of installed brick.  Both the house I grew up and and the only house I bought in California were stucco.  I thought nothing of it at the time, but less of brick and much less of wood, especially horizontal strips of wood which made me think of poor hillbillies who couldn't afford better.  Now that's back in style, big time, with fiber cement boards.  But I like fiber cement panels better somehow, perhaps partly from childhood prejudice, and that is how my house exterior is finished (vertical simulated boards in panels, originally "engineered wood" but now fiber cement in front).  Somehow that looks more modern to me.

I lust after the faux stone veneer in the front of my workshop, to make view from bedroom window nicer.  But I'm worried that pieces adhered to the side with special bonding mortar (and not nailed or bolted on) can fall off and hurt someone, especially perhaps under the stress of opening the front doors.  I suppose the probability of that happening is very small, but the fact that it could happen makes me think I'll just stick with Hardipanel.  Besides appearance, the only advantage of the faux stone pieces is that they never require painting.  But you can't get hurt by peeling paint.

The problem with faux brick and stone in fiber cement panels is that eventually the embossed coating wears out.  25 year warranty is typical.  And then you have terrible choices.  You can either replace the siding entirely, or paint over by sandblasting or chemical etching first.  At least that is my guess.  You cant just scrape off the loose paint and repaint, as you could with painted panels.

Bottom line is that painted fiber cement seems like one of the best choices of our time.  Yes it is fake wood, but superior to most wood in most respects as a siding material.  So you might consider real wood to be the overpriced imitation.

Veneerstone...I like the look

Taking a walk through a Home Depot store recently, and then again, I came across the Veneerstone display.  My first thought was "well this is nice, but I certainly can't afford it."  I figured it was real stone, it sure looked real, just sliced thin.

Well now I've checked it out online, and I think it is very nice, and affordable too.  It's not real stone, but concrete pieces cast to look like stone.  They are fairly lightweight (though they feel solid) and they attach to the plywood or OSB sheathing of a building exterior much like tile with a special grout and lath backing.  No special footing is required as with brick, and no extra thick wall (giving up lots of potential interior space, in my case around 22sqft) is required as with brick (or real stone), though the pieces do project outward from the sheathing a bit.  It's hard to know exactly how long lasting Veneerstone is, but there is a factory warranty of 75 years.  No painting is ever required.  Installation is said to be fast and easy, with instructions provided.

Actually, I think it looks better than brick, and I'd love to have this on my shed (which I've decided to start calling my "Workshop" as the engineering company did, since it is intended to have finished interior like living space).

Back to long lasting...I suspect the pieces will look fine for my lifetime, but thermal cycling over many years might cause some pieces to fall off an require re-attaching.

The material price might be no less (or even slightly more) than brick, but brick installation is a huge amount of work, even getting the many pallets of brick I would have needed into my back yard was worrying me.

Probably the main issue is finding someone who could do this installation.  This is kind of a niche product, so there may not be that many professional installers, and how many of those would be able to build a entire workshop as well?  On the other hand, Hardipanel is a mainstream product, and anyone who does any kind of construction probably knows (or at least think they know) how to install it.

Interestingly enough, the website does show a shed, and even a dog house.

Anyway, next time I go through Home Depot I might ask if they know any professional installers who could also build an entire workshop, given that the slab has already been constructed.  The Veneerstone website only lists Home Depot stores as the dealers in this area.

BTW, it's too late for real brick, as I did not get a brick footer.

solar roof mounting

This is looking pretty complicated.  It's not surprising that the standard recommendation is that you get experienced solar installer.  OTOH, such installers are used to installing 3-6kW grid-tie systems with dozens of panels, not something rinky-dink 230W system with one panel that I'm kinda doing just for fun.

Anyway, there are lots of brands of standard rails for mounting typical solar panels.  Then what do you mount the rails to?  Well, some kind of mount.  And the typical mount that comes with the typical rail assumes a real roofer is doing the job, and knows how to do appropriate flashing.

Here's a company with a better idea.  They have mounts designed for quick installation which include precut flashing to go with it.  It's more expensive, but intended to be fast and not requiring roofing professionals, just solar installers.  Looks very nice, but they don't make one yet for metal roofs.

http://quickmountpv.com/index.html

Another possible contractor

CD's Remodeling and Home Repairs.  Scott Dunlap.  One of the few more A rated shed/garage builders on Angie's list.  Also from Hondo.  Sounds like a neat guy, but long distance, and not of the ratings are for a particular new garage/shed project.

Building Durability Analysis

So many mistakes have been made.  And generally making something like energy efficiency better has made durability worse.  But now we've got the answers.  Or have we?

http://www.buildingscience.com/documents/digests/bsd-144-increasing-the-durability-of-building-constructions

July 30 and 31, putting up the canopy

On July 30 I began putting up the canopy frame to shade my slab from the intense solar irradiation which combines nowadays with 100+ degree heat in the daytime.  That cannot be good for my poor slab, which was not designed as a patio and does not have any expansion joints.  I'm thinking now that building will not be resumed until sometime in September.  I have to find another builder, get estimates, and I have other things to deal with now also.

 Just a couple days before, I had quickly moved all the canopy parts from the backyard patio (where I put them shortly after arrival) into the house and garage.  Each pole (and there are about 50 of them, because the fit together to make larger poles) had to be shaken and carefully inspected for bugs.  I did not want to be bringing bugs into the house, or even the garage which is attached to the house through an often open door.  The forecast had been for rain on July 29 and 30 resulting from a tropical storm.  Well, false alarm, there was no rain.

But having all the poles inside the house in the cleared out living room (after party previous weekend) made it easy to start putting the poles together as required.  With the comfort of air conditioning.  And that was helpful because although I didn't start until around 11pm, it was still above 90 degrees and very hot, humid and uncomfortable outside.  It was hard to imagine ever getting it up, but once started such projects seem to drive themselves, and I had the frame assembled before 2am.

Then on July 31, after I had been doing yard work and gate repair all evening since about 7pm, I began putting the cover on the canopy frame at.  It was even more hot and uncomfortable, but I got the canopy frame braced with stakes and the cover put on before 2:30 am.

Then on August 1 I got some pieces of wood to cover the portion of the slab not covered by the canopy.  I had a 4x8 sheet of the cheapest plywood available cut in half.  I was a little afraid that I would not be able to fit the full 8 feet of plywood into my car, so I had one foot lopped off one end.  Then I used that extra piece to bridge the gap (mostly between the two sheets of plywood.  There is still a small gap which can be filled with one of the pieces of 2x4 Ronnie left behind.  The plywood sits on 4 cement pavers that sit on top of the plastic on top of the slab.  I has still not removed that plastic.