Ben's Garage
 

Hi folks!

After thinking about it for years, I finally have the money and other requirements to rebuild my garage. If you've seen my various videos of working on electric vehicles, etc., you've probably already seen my garage, the fact that it is uninsulated, roof leaks, and there are giant cracks everywhere in the concrete.

So, it's time to build a new garage. The new garage will be fairly traditional construction BUT will have a Pex heated slab, plenty of insulation, and a metal roof with solar panels.

The first step was emptying the garage. Not an easy step, as my house has no basement, and one bedroom doesn't even have a closet. I'm at a bare minimum for storage space. The new garage will be larger than the current one, and give me some warm winter workshop room and storage space.

Now on to the fun step. Destroying the old garage. We just did this yesterday. We got a construction dumpster, and my brother stopped over. In one day we tore down and completely removed the existing garage.

Please enjoy this silent film style video of us tearing down the garage. Future updates to come as the project advances.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZBrN8pV1mw

PS: To charge my electric car, I rewired my garage breaker panel to the back porch. The EVSE (car charger) cord reaches from the porch to the driveway.

Nicely done.
I like the video.

Wooo, very cool Ben. I know you've been wanting to do this for years now. Glad to see progress!

Here's some more info on what I'm planning.

The garage will be 27' x 29'. Unfortunately, the county won't let me build more than 18' high, so that limits my roof angle and upstairs storage space.

I'm planning on hydronic heat in the concrete slab. I haven't decided for sure the exact details of what to heat with. I'm leaning towards an electric micro-boiler. That could be set on a timer to use "off-peak" electricity for heating.
I would cast 1/2 PEX in the concrete during the pour. 2" of foam insulation around and under the slab.

The roof will have solar panels over a standing seam metal roof. I should be able to fit 21 panels (3 rows of 7 panels each) in the 250-280 watt size on the due-south facing half of the roof, and make a roughly 5KW PV system. I'm planning on using Enphase micro inverters for simplicity and nice monitoring.

The garage will also have power for electric car charging.

Walls will be traditional "stick-building" as it's affordable and easy to do myself. Fiberglass insulation with a little foam on the outside of the sheathing.

Here's a still image of the plans as they are right now. Solar in the image is NOT to scale, only there to give a rough idea. Details of concrete slab is still to be determined. I need a slab design that holds up to my weird ground-water movement, but can also be insulated so it can be heated.

I'm located near Milwaukee, WI. The point of heating is to have a workspace that's comfortable to work in in the winter. That means it does NOT have to be heated to 70 degrees. I mostly want to work without wearing long underwear and a bulky coat. 50 degrees in a garage is pretty luxurious when it's 10 degrees out otherwise.

http://300mpg.org/wp-content/uploads...gar4_72DPI.png

Another thing.

I'm also planning on adding a glazed door to one of the two garage doors so that on a sunny winter day I can open the garage door and use the entire doorway for passive solar gain.

It's this idea: Solar Workshop or Studio

I would do one of the two doors so that I could still actually get a car in and out of the garage. We have two cars. I could park one in the driveway, or, I think that with the extra space in the garage that I could pull in through the one door and still maneuver to the next space over. We would just park the more fuel-efficient car in the handy space, so that car was always the first one used.

Does anyone have any good info on using an air source heat pump to heat hydronics? I was talking with Ben the other day about this and he hasn't been able to find any good info. I know we have a bunch of people doing heat pump water heaters, but this is a bit different.

You might want to rethink the shape of your garage, especially the south wall.
Something like this might work better for you. House heating Solar Shed -- homemade collectors

If you move your man door to the west wall, you could open up some solar space. Maybe even just for a passive solar hot air collector.

Building your own out of what have you is not impossible. AC Hacker, Randen, and Aquario all have discussion threads detailing their custom builds. The general principles used in the smaller units remain the same, but instead of using a portable or window unit, you would be using a larger outdoor ASHP unit with defrost control. For the condenser, you could run a buffer tank with a submerged heating coil in it, or a refrigerant-to-water heat exchanger with or without a buffer tank.

The major manufacturers all offer air-to-water heat pump systems now. The main two types of systems are monobloc (packaged, single unit with water pipe/hose connections) and split (separate indoor and outdoor units). Some of the bigger name brands are listed here:

Daikin Altherma

Maritime Geothermal Nordic ATW

Fujitsu Waterstage

Panasonic Aquarea

A new technology being used in some of these systems is generically known as enhanced vapor injection (EVI). The term describes a new compressor design that has 3 ports instead of 2: suction, injection, and discharge. The injection port is used to add cool vapor (at intermediate pressure) at a certain point inside the compressor. This has the effect of increasing the capacity of the compressor at high compression ratios without wasting energy or overheating the compressor. This is especially useful when heating during frigid outdoor conditions, where the low suction pressure needed to run the evaporator effectively limits raw BTU output.

EVI heat pump technology
http://img.diytrade.com/smimg/502558...10S_L/6e2f.jpg

EVI technology is kind of like the polar opposite of VSI (variable speed inverter) technology. A VSI compressor changes the speed of the compressor to match the heat load, saving energy by lowering the compression ratio and power draw (when it is running slower). An EVI compressor boosts the output of the compressor by feeding itself higher suction pressure. The newest compressor designs include both technologies, and the manufacturers are really talking up the performance of these new systems.

Bens Garage
 

Bennelson

Congrats on your decision for the construction on your man cave. It looks like a beautiful project. Forgive me but which EV are you currently driving???

If you would like I would strongly suggest HEATED FLOORS. I've installed and live with 2 systems. The first is at my shop in the office, lunch room area. If you have been following my posts its heated with my DIY Geo-thermal HP. Its working extremely well.

The second is in my home heated with SOLAR HOT WATER and backed up by Geo-thermal. Some seasons 1/2 my space heating is FREE from the sun. And you can't beat, free.

Heated floors are the holy grail. They are sooooo comfortable.

Now you have a few options. It looks like PV is your 1st choice EXCELLENT. With the prices and equipment that is now available, awesome. TESLA power wall comes to mind. OH did you see the unveiling of the PV shingles.

Another option is Solar Hot water heating your floor. for your application this maybe a great fit. It may keep your space comfortable all the time at no cost!!! 50-60 deg. The floor will stay warm for about 4 days without sun. (6" of concrete and well insulated)

To go hand in hand add a small mini split if you need a little boost of heat AND in the summer air conditioning. This can be powered by your solar PV.

The option to build your own air to water heat pump is entirely do-able but its a lot of work and to get all the parts to play nice is daunting at times. The thought to try a direct exchange to concrete had crossed my mind.

IMHO it would be best to stay away from a utility bill. The technology is here that will prevent that bill from arriving. Your already ahead of the curve with your EV. I'm thinking you really enjoy driving by the gas-station.

Randen

Hey Guys.

I'm driving a Mitsubishi iMiEV electric car. It's not fancy, but it's a VERY functional car, and in the 2012 model year, it was THE MOST EFFICIENT CAR in the United States, period. It was also affordable enough that I could simply write a check and be done with it.

I'm designing the radiant floor system right now. I was able to get a trial copy of the LoopCAD software. Unfortunately, I couldn't get it to work on my computer, so I had to install it somewhere else. Would be handier to have it at home, but oh well.

I did a few loop layouts, and it looks like 12" spacing on four circuits of half-inch Pex tubing would work fine, but there would be a fairly steep temperature gradient from the send to return lines. I also spoke with Daox, who said that in part of his house, he has some 12" spaced radiant heat, and that you can really feel the difference between the warmer and colder spots.
I don't know how different it will be with the heat coming up through four inches of concrete, but a little closer spacing seems like a good idea.

I also ran diagrams for 9 inch and 10 inch spacing. 9 inch starts to look a little complicated, and starts using longer runs of tubing. I think I'm going with the 10 inch spacing. The loops are still relatively short (only one going over 250 feet) and the labor to lay out the tubing should be a little easier.

Here's an image of the 12" layout. I forgot to save an image file version of the 10" layout when I was on that other computer.

http://300mpg.org/wp-content/uploads...nch-layout.png

All three of the layouts I ran COULD get my garage up to 70 degrees IF I wanted it to. I'm shooting for just being able to comfortably work in the garage in the winter, and 50 degrees is LUXURIOUS compared to not being heated, but I'd like the system designed so that I COULD heat it higher (for example, if I ever have to live out there, work on an extended project, etc.)

The masonry for the garage is done. Now I have to layout the Pex this weekend, and the mason will come back on Monday to pour the slab. We have 2 inches of foam under where the slab will go and around the foundation wall.

For solar power overall, the plan is to go with PV only. That will make a nice looking array on the roof. With PV, I can make electricity which can then charge a car, power my house, or make heat. I'd love some solar thermal as well, but I'm just very limited on space.

I do have a 4x10' hot water panel on the south-east corner of my house, which I do not have plumbed up yet. That should be good for domestic hot water in the summer, but probably not much help in the winter, and certainly not enough for any garage heat. (I've spoken to a guy locally with a very nice modern solar domestic hot water system. Says it's fantastic all summer, and does minimal good in the winter. That's just all based on cloud-cover and sun angle in my area in Wisconsin in the winter.)

I do have a wood-stove in my living room and would love to plan for future expansion. In theory, I could run some "outdoor wood boiler"-style hoses from my house to the garage, and at some point in the future, connect a heat exchanger to my wood-stove to be able to send some heat from the house to the garage. Likely, I would need to upgrade my stove to do that properly.

Here's some photos of the masonry in place with the insulation on top of it.

http://300mpg.org/wp-content/uploads...1/IMG_1891.jpg

http://300mpg.org/wp-content/uploads...1/IMG_1895.jpg

There are a number of limitations imposed on me by the size and shape of my property, as well as by the county in which I live.

The garage doors need to be on the south side, as that's where the driveway is. The corner of the garage was already on the property line, and I needed special permission (and permits, and stupid meetings, and $$$$) just to be able to rebuild the garage where it was. I was also limited by the county board on how tall I could build the garage.

So, yes, I certainly have considered different shapes. I also considered a gambrel roof and some other options, all of which had negatives as well.

Moving the man door to around the corner would have been a possibility, but I do like the look of where it is. Also, the main electric breaker panel will go right in that south-west corner. My parent's garage has the layout of a man door around the left corner, and it's NOT a great design, it ends up making the corner less usable. I don't think that door on their property has been opened in 20 years. Also, my property is on a bit of a slope. If the door was on the west side, it would be a BIG step down out of that door. At a bare minimum it would need a concrete stoop, and I'm already building to the west as far as the county will let me.

The big upsides of what I am able to do are:

1) Rotating the roof 90 degrees. The old roof faced east-west. The new one will face north-south. The south-face really does face nearly due south - perfect for solar.

2) The garage will have an upstairs. We will be using "storage trusses" which leave a space down the middle. It will be a little over 6'6" tall (which is good because I'm 6') and about 4' wide on the flat of the ceiling, with lower storage space on either side of that.

3) It's bigger. The new garage is 5 feet wider and 7 feet deeper than the old one. This gives me storage space, so that I can for example store my riding lawn mower indoors, instead of in my yard, and have space for workbenches and tools.

4) Heat and insulation
The old garage was completely uninsulated. I could literally see daylight through the siding. Simply insulating that structure wouldn't have made sense. It was falling down. I experimented with heating. What worked best was using some old TV Studio lights - 1,000 watts each, as radiant heaters. As long as they were pointed right at me, they worked pretty well. They really didn't heat the garage, but as long as they were pointed at me, I stayed somewhat warm. Still not ideal, especially depending on the outdoor winter temperatures.

Lastly, as far as solar-thermal goes, because the garage doors DO face south, I'm planning on building some glazing for one of the two doors, so that on a sunny winter day, I can open the garage door and use it as a giant picture window, letting the light in.

I was just thinking that if you could change the angle of the roof so whatever collectors you put up there would be more efficient.
Rotating the roof to catch the sun from the south would do it. :thumbup:

Unfortunately, the pitch of the roof is determined by the maximum height of the building, which the county won't let me go as high as I want. I think a steeper roof would look nice! For one thing, it would match the pitch of the house.

It would also give me more space upstairs. I have a couple of neighbors who have very big garages, which look GREAT! Oh well.

I did purchase 1,000 feet of Pex tubing and a manifold this evening. Tomorrow, I'll install the tubing. I also rented a stapler for the plastic staples to hold down the tubing to the insulation.

http://300mpg.org/wp-content/uploads...1/IMG_1904.jpg

I also finally had a chance to meet with the mason in person. (His schedule and mine have been opposite for this entire last week - the whole time he was here!)

I should be able to put a little insulation around the slab on the interior of the wall. The outside of the wall already has an inch of styrofoam on it. I want to put at least an inch on the interior as a thermal break. I'm not sure if I want to do 2 inches or not. For one thing, that's a big gap all the way around the outside of the floor when I'm all done. 2 inches is a LOT of space to try to cover with a piece of trim.

I've seen diagrams of doing perimeter insulation with a bevel cut in the top of the insulation in such a way that the very top of the concrete slab covers the top of the insulation all the way to the wall. It looks nice when it's done, the insulation is protected, and you get most of the benefit of the insulation. Looks like a lot more work and skill to do that though.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/finehomebuil...e-foam_xlg.jpg

Have you considered some exterior slab closed cell insulation around the footing? Even an inch would prevent a tremendous amount of thermal "bleed" in your Wisconsin winter.

I know its a garage . . . .


Steve

There's an inch of foam around the exterior where it's exposed to air and two inches where it's below grade. Two inches exposed to air would be hard to do because then the foundation would stick out further than the wall.

I'm going to do two inches of foam with a bevel on it around the INSIDE between the wall and the slab.

I'm with Steve on that one: it would be much easier to just pour your slab all the way out to the block on the inside. From the pic you posted, it looks like you went below grade along the footer with the xps board. The deeper underground you go with the foam, the harder it will be for heat to find its way in from below. In any case, I would definitely sheath the footer down below the frost line. Also remember not to make a moat around your footer: make sure it can drain and will not act as a wick that can hydrate your block.

I've been looking around on the web about air-to-water systems, and have found a couple of new things. They are much more popular in Eurasia than in America. In the last 5 to 10 years, the Chinese and Indian manufacturers have been conjuring up all kinds of inexpensive systems. A decent number of OEM's that sell complete systems also market "universal replacement control board" modules. These "brain in a box"packages can be used to replace defective controls in existing systems, or to modify or invent your own equipment. The offerings range from "standard window A/C controller" to "programmable commercial control box". Some of the air-to-water controls I happened across:

Qunda QD25a is commercial, QD26a is residential.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/PCB-...c-4ce8d11a5ca4

I liked your video. Thanks for sharing.

Bennelson

For my home here in Canada the perimeter of the slab inside the foundation is exactly like what you have in the illustration. We didn't bevel the top edge of the foam. The floor tile is covering the 2" of foam. So the thermal break is on the inside. I'm not sure if warming the block foundation would be in your best interest. With my experience here I would go with the inside perimeter foam thermal break.

I can hardly wait to hear your findings of floor heat in your man cave once you have it operational.

One final word of caution. DO NOT OPERATE WITHOUT AN ANTI-FREEZE in your system. One burp be it a power-outage or pump failure or a battery going flat in your thermostat your tubes will freeze and split. Rendering all your work useless and near impossible to repair.

Propylene Glycol is your friend. NON toxic and it will save your butt if something goes south in the depths of winter.

Randen

Yesterday was concrete pour day!

I was working from before sunrise until well after sunset, but my wife was home and snapped a few photos.

Also, this weekend, I got a call from my brother (who actually has experience in construction and is acting as general contractor for me) and he said that he and the mason had concerns about the weight of the concrete truck on the driveway. As in, "It will be the heaviest thing ever to be on your driveway and will probably break it."

The mason had a "concrete scooter" and used that to ferry loads of concrete from the road to the slab. Unfortunately, that also meant extra time and labor, but still cheaper than driveway repairs would cost!

http://300mpg.org/wp-content/uploads...1/SAM_2622.jpg

http://300mpg.org/wp-content/uploads...24-640x480.jpg

http://300mpg.org/wp-content/uploads...28-640x480.jpg

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http://300mpg.org/wp-content/uploads...1/SAM_2636.jpg

It was only this morning (when I could see in the daylight) that I saw that the masons sawed off the tip of my nice foam bevel! (I saw the waste strips stacked on my materials pile.) When I spoke with the mason before the weekend, I explained what I was planning on doing, and he said it was fine. It may have been that the crew arrived, saw the foam bevel and perhaps had some concerns about the thinness of the concrete at that point.

So, the perimeter is insulated for 3-4" of the 5 inch thick slab. Had I known they were going to trim the foam, I would have simply ran it all the way up, and figured out a way to cover the exposed foam later.

We've also had good weather recently, but might get rain and then freezing weather this weekend. I realized that I might want to cover up the location where the Pex goes into the slab. I don't need rain water getting in there and then freezing.

Overall, I'm very pleased with the slab. The crew was very quick, and I never could have done all that work by myself! I'm a little miffed about my missing insulation bevel though!

Great project! I also have an insulated heated shop. Be aware that, when temperatures and humidity rise in the spring, your shop will not. When that 80 degree 75 DP air hits your 50 degree shop, it will turn into a swamp.

The remedy, of course, is to raise the temperature to at least 65 or so and add a dehumidifier. My own shop has the thermostat at 65 year around. It normally gets up to about 67 or 68 in the summer, although it did hit 70 once during an unusually long hot spell.

You will need a dehumidifier. If your air sealing is halfway good, it will not be necessary to run a permanent drain. My dehumidifier takes out less than one bucket of water per week if I don't open the doors too much.

I just did a post on my blog on the whole Pex installation process. Lots of photos and all. You might just want to look at it there.

Installing the Pex

Otherwise, here's the recap, just using YouTube videos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvtELaVmSi0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gFnKTWnWhc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hO0kPTWhK4

Here's just a video slideshow of the pour.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8QC4Ny2XuU

It was a nice sunny day today, and I wondered what a thermal video of the concrete would look like. The vertical surfaces of the stem-wall sure sucked up the sunlight. If will be interesting to see how the concrete might suck up some winter sunlight when I have one of the garage doors glazed in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTxG3nN5A_A

Looks like its coming along great Ben! Are you and your brother going to be doing the framing on the garage?

Nothing prettier than a new poured slab. Very nice finish work. I like the exterior stem wall blueboard!


Steve

Yes, it will be my brother, my Dad, and I doing the framing. For the roof, we are using engineered trusses. The garage is big enough that it makes sense to use them instead of cutting rafters. Also, the garage will have an UPSTAIRS! To make that work, you need a little structural engineering anyways for storage trusses.

I just wasn't expecting the trusses to show up today! They were supposed to show up next week. We don't even have walls yet!

Blog post:
Trusses Delivered

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4M9R4UYwEM

I'm hoping to get some time soon to start the framing.

The whole south side of the garage is all doors - there's almost no structure there to hold the upstairs and the roof, so that's going to get a big fancy beam all the way across. I think that will be a fancy micro-lam beam special order from the lumberyard.

Nah... Not a chance, at least if the driveway is in good condition. I mean yeah it very well might be the heaviest thing ever on the driveway; but concrete, even residential, has a compressive strength of 2500 psi. The highest pressure that truck would exert on the driveway is likely 150 psi, putting a car on jackstands places more point load pressure on concrete than a concrete truck would, especially one that is not even fully loaded. The risk comes in from the sub-layers below the concrete, specifically if there are voids, or inadequate soil. If there are voids or inadequate soil below the concrete considering the assumed age of the concrete (close to the age of the garage or at least a few decades) those issues would most likely have already surfaced. I'm not saying residential concrete driveways would make for good highways, but they will handle occasional large loads.

What are you doing for sheer on that wall? Yeah, yeah I know Wisconsin ain't gonna see earthquakes (ha!), you still need to ensure that wall has plenty of sheer strength.

That framing should go fairly quick. Even a couple of rank amateurs using small hammers should get the framing up in a weekend. Though I would hold off on putting up the trusses until you have time the next day to put on the roof sheathing. The trusses really aren't fully secure until the roof sheathing is on.

Also I noticed you will be using exterior insulation, and in-cavity insulation. For your climate I'm not sure 1/2" exterior insulation is enough (1/2" is barely adequate for my climate in NC). Especially considering the likely moisture load from running a vehicle inside, and the low temperature you plan on keeping the space. I'm not even sure the International Residential Code requirements are really enough (it's meant for houses with a higher indoor temp). The issue is really the low indoor temp and the in-cavity insulation as that will reduce the temp of the sheathing possibly allowing it to get to below the dew point. This will cause the sheathing to get wet, and wet sheathing is rotting sheathing.

*Late edit* The reason 1/2" exterior insulation is risky is not only does it not keep the sheating warm enough, but it also stops it from drying outward. Insulation, interior and exterior slows the energy flow by putting insulation on both sides the sheathing receives less energy to move the moisture out of it. Also the foam exterior insulation acts as a vapor barrier (almost completely eliminating vapor drive to the exterior as a way to dry out the sheathing).

The driveway isn't in great condition.
The driveway is blacktop, not concrete.
Putting a car on jack stands CAN damage my driveway, I always put some plywood under them so they don't do that.
The soil on my property ISN'T good, that's one of the reasons the original garage concrete was so bad.

Should have known that was salt stained asphalt, but I'm southern so I have no clue...

Even still with asphalt it's the sub-layers that are the most important. For example at my grandparents house the asphalt was laid down directly on the soil (basically sand) and it was torn up almost immediately. Had the asphalt been laid over a good gravel base, with drainage taken care of that driveway would still be in good shape 40 years later, that likely would not be the case in your climate though. Asphalt has some give to it, so in someways it is better able to cope with slightly imperfect conditions and heavy loads, since asphalt has some ability to give a bit.

All that said, I'm not trying to criticize your brother's decision. Not knowing how it was built and knowing it was not in great condition I probably would have made the same decision. Erring on the side of caution is a good thing as long as it doesn't put a halt to what you are trying to achieve.

Another video and blog update.

Black Friday - We put up the walls!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tTIGt7ok8s


Blog Link: Ben’s Garage: Wall Day

Also, I'd love some input on lighting.
In my previous garage, I experimented with LED Tubes. Those are the LED sticks that take the place of a four-foot fluorescent bulb in a standard fixture. Overall, I really liked them. The downsides were that they tended to be expensive, and they didn't work with all fixtures, but boy were they bright, energy efficient, and came on instantly to full brightness (unlike fluorescent when it's cold outside.)

This weekend, there are LED shoplight fixtures for sale at the big box store for $20 each. They are 3,000 lumen with a standard plug. (So, they would work well on switched outlets installed in the ceiling.) They also can daisy-chain together, to reduce the number of outlets needed.

I think I would like to just purchase a pile of those fixtures while they are on sale. (Normal price is $40 each, so half off right now.) I'm not quite sure how many I want to get. I've tried finding some info on brightness levels for workshops, and have found numbers ranging from 50 - 150 lumens per square foot.

If the lamps produce 3,000 lumens, and the garage is 783 square feet, I need anywhere from 40,000 to 120,000 total lumens, or 13 to 40 fixtures! That sure sounds like a lot!

Just looking at my garage plan, and spacing out some fixtures in my head, I could see a dozen shop lights going in. It would be easy to space out three rows of four fixtures across the garage.

I think I'll buy a dozen this weekend on sale. I can easily see using that many. If I put them up and decide I need more light, I still have some of the original fixtures I used in the old garage, and I could always purchase more of the matching fixtures.

Go with the 1/2 price specials - and lots of them. You will NEVER regret putting in more light. I put in banks of lights wired in thirds.

One switch turns on every third light, turning on the second switch turns on two of the three banks and the third switch has them all on.

This would work out well with your proposed three rows of four lights. A bit more time and $ wiring these up to works in thirds, but it was my time and not an electrician.

For most every day stuff, I use the 1/3 bank. But I have found it VERY handy to turn on all when I have a project where I need uniform and bright light. With all banks on, there are no shadows and it is almost like noon daylight.

In my case I used T-8 fluorescent bulbs, but the new LED "sticks" are just about the same price, put out more light for less cost and last FAR longer. At 1/2 off, that is a no brainer.

Bottom line - do it all now and enjoy.


Steve

Is that 3000 lumen per fixture or per tube (x2?)? If it's per tube, I'd go for it as long as you can either see them in store or they have a decent return policy. If those are ~1500 lumen per tube and 2 per fixture, I'd get these instead.

https://www.earthled.com/collections...ant=2403570948

They're a little more expensive, but they provide a decent amount of light. It's slightly below what a normal T8 bulb provides at 32W, but way more than a 25W fluorescent, and they seem to use a little less than 24W.

LED bulbs in general are all over the place in terms of their actual specs. I've bought LED tubes at Costco that were listed at 17W and used way more power than the 24W bulbs in the link. Granted, they also put out a lot more light. I think it's a good idea to test the power consumption and brightness of any bulbs you're thinking about before buying a bunch of them.

I ended up buying 12 fixtures. I went to the closest store, and they were all completely sold out. Well, they were sort of a Black Friday special....

I used my smart phone to check out the store's web page and found that at the next nearest store they had 17 in stock. When I got there, there were 12 fixtures still left on the shelf, so that's what I bought.

http://300mpg.org/wp-content/uploads...48-640x480.jpg

I agree that there's a BIG range of prices and quality when it comes to LED lighting. These are LED fixtures. They do NOT hold tubes. So, the lumens rating is for the whole fixture not for one tube or two tubes. The store has a good return policy and these were on sale NOW, so I bought what I could.

When I got them home, I did pop the cover off one to peek inside. It's basically an LED strip directly on an aluminum extrusion which acts as the backbone of the fixture and as a heat sink for the LEDs. Electronics inside are pretty minimal. These run on 120VAC, and have a connector to daisy-chain multiple lights from a single cord. These fixtures are smaller than a typical fluorescent shop light and weigh probably half as much.

http://300mpg.org/wp-content/uploads...53-640x480.jpg

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We got the electrician to stop by today.

I told him about what I wanted for electric heat (micro-boiler for the Pex in-floor heat) and an electric car charging station and a FUTURE electric car charging station.

My current EVSE is good for 30A 240V, even though my car only has the 3.3K (16A) charger. That's not to say that my NEXT car won't have a faster charger.

Also, when we eventually replace the Prius, that will be with some sort of plug-in car, and at that point we'll want a second EV charger.

Current wiring to the garage was individual 8 ga wires for 50A at 240V. We decided that we will upgrade the wiring from the house to the garage to either 4 ga copper wiring or 2 ga aluminum. The garage breaker box will also be upgraded and will be for 100A/240V instead of 50A/240V

I'm also looking into getting an estimate on SPRAY-ON FOAM insulation. The original plan was to have the garage insulated by a professional insulating company with typical fiberglass. With the right company, a person can get a building insulated for LESS than one could simply purchase the insulation for at a big box store. No joke!

Due to the shape of the upstairs with the engineered trusses, the roofline is already a good candidate for spray foam insulation. There's not much space up there for fiberglass and venting together. Foam would take less space and seal it up nice. Of course, if a person is going with spray foam, it would be for the whole building and done in one fell swoop.

The beam for the top of the south wall (across the man door and both garage doors) is on order. I'm hoping it's delivered by the end of the week, and we can build the fourth wall soon.

I also have to finish digging the trench deeper so that when the electrician does show up, it's ready for the power and conduit.

Good idea! My parents had a heck of a time getting Tiger Foam to stick to ceilings, so a company that does it for a living will likely know what they are doing and do a better job.

I'm toying around with how the lighting will be laid out in the garage. I cropped in on part of my architectural diagram and kept it to scale. Then I drew in a shop light. I duplicated it and spread them out evenly.

The lights are spaced apart about five feet from end to end and about six feet side to side.

A few things that I noticed is that the pull-down attic door will always interfere with a light. Seems to make the most sense just to run a light along side it, which should illuminate the staircase well.

The other thing that I never liked with my old garage is that the overhead doors block lights I would have on the ceiling. I often work at night in the summer with the doors open/up. The doors then block the light. I think maybe just having a shop light running the length of the door on either side.

So, attached is an image of ONE WAY I could do the lighting. The power cords on the shop lights I bought are five feet long. Opposite pairs of lights could share a switched outlet in the ceiling (represented by the black circles, within 5 feet of a shop light.)

I think that this layout would work best on two circuits. The farthest left column of lights would be on the the left column of switched outlets. The center and right column of lights would be connected to the right column of outlets. That would let me turn on just the left third of lights as I come in through the man door (for being at a work bench on the left/west wall or going to the stairs.) Otherwise, I could turn on both switches for all lights on.

Each shop light also has a pull chain on it, so there's nothing stopping me from manually turning OFF any lights I don't want. If I just wanted two lights on, in opposite corners of the room, I could.

http://300mpg.org/wp-content/uploads...l-modified.png

PLEASE use copper wire (as opposed to aluminum). You might want to get 3G copper compared to AWG 4. I just bought some AWG 3 and it was 4 cents a foot more than AWG 4.

Copper is really cheap now. Yes, them ampacity of aluminum and copper can be assessed and made equal, but copper will never, ever corrode.


Steve

Here's another image with cars drawn in. I think I got pretty close to the right scale. This was just using some stock images from the internet, and scaling them based on how long they are supposed to be. Scale might not be perfect, but should be pretty close.

On the left is a Prius pointed nose out. On the right is a Mitsubishi i-MiEV pointed nose in.

The Mitsubishi has the J1772 charging port on the "wrong" side, as it was originally a Japanese right-hand drive vehicle. With the nose in, the charging port is near the south-east corner of the garage.

If the Mitsubishi was parked in the left bay, and nose out, the charge port would be towards the west wall, but that area will be either walking path or have a workbench right against the wall there - not an ideal location for a charging station. One alternative would be to mount the EVSE to the wall, but then have hooks or something to run the cable overhead to the car.

On some other car that we might own in the future, the charging port is likely to be on the front of the car (Leaf style), or the front left fender. Either of those would work better for a car pulled straight in forward in the left bay without the charging cord getting in the way of the driver.

I think that I'll want to have my current EVSE installed in the south-east corner (as shown in the diagram.) I'll also install a 50A circuit for future EV charging somewhere on that west wall. I could even just do that with a 50A NEMA 14-50 (RV Park style connector) as many Tesla drivers right now often use that connection.

http://300mpg.org/wp-content/uploads..._in_garage.png