| Message |
1. Try to keep as much stuff off the floor as possible. My garage is much smaller than yours (only 18x20'), so floor space is nonexistent. Opening both doors fully at the same time is truly a blessing when needed - find a way to make sure you can do that.
2. Overhead lighting. Lots of it. Consider some lights on the wall too.
3. Outlets in the ceiling. I would do at least one centered above each bay so you can hang a drop light over each car - no cords draping onto the other cars if you need to pull out the full length of cord.
4. Air compressor on its own breaker. Sounds dumb, so it's usually overlooked. Complete pain in the balls when the compressor kicks on just as you're wire wheeling something.
5. If you're doing new construction, I would suggest getting a separate sub-panel for just the garage. Gives you room to grow electrically, and keeps everything in one tidy place. It will cost you a lot more to add one later if you fill up the main box :(
6. A 220V outlet on each side wall. In my last house, I only had one near where I welded. Was perfectly fine till that one day I needed to weld something real quick that I couldn't get to from that side of the garage. Instead of rolling the welder to the other side of the garage, I had to spend a few hours taking everything apart so I could get to it with the welder. Talk about being pissed off.
7. The plain white "sheets" of whatever plastic for shower stalls make for awesome white boards. Usually cheaper than buying a real whiteboard, and you can get like 6x4' or whatever size you need. Cover an entire corner, especially if the garage will be unfinished.
8. Fan in a back corner, facing the door. Good for clearing out smoke and fumes. If it's new construction, you could probably go nuts with ducting for all that, but a simple fan hanging from the ceiling in the corner has always worked for me. Doesn't do much in the way of cooling, but keeps the air moving a bit.
|
 |
