Who has the best Garage on Pistonheads?
Discussion
_Leg_ said:
Limited numbers I think Bertie. More focused car, scaffolding etc etc. Plus its likely to be the last manual (Although we will find out later this year). Porsche prices have generally gone mad of late though, and Ferrari. The HAGI index recorded 23.8% growth in collectible Porsche prices last year. Insane but hopefully sustained. We will soon see. More fun than sticking it in the bank anyway!
Wierdly I really liked the grey one I was supposed to buy but people seem to prefer the white one. clearly I have s
t taste!
I'm an enthusiast first though. Must, not, drive, it, must, not, drive, it!
Garage build starts 22nd Jan. Wahoo!
I'll be very surprised if the new RS comes with flappy paddles, a poor show IMO from Porsche if it does.Wierdly I really liked the grey one I was supposed to buy but people seem to prefer the white one. clearly I have s
t taste!I'm an enthusiast first though. Must, not, drive, it, must, not, drive, it!
Garage build starts 22nd Jan. Wahoo!
Edited by _Leg_ on Thursday 15th January 17:02
RichB said:
actually prefer to see your example of a garage like yours with oil, polish, tools and maintenance stuff in it. The pristine examples are too sterile for me and look more like car showrooms than interesting garages. 
Same here; some of these "showrooms" are all very well and nice, but wouldn't work for me what with leaves getting blown in, oil or paint getting splashed around etc etc. They're not "homely" - you can't hang around in them with your mates drinking tea and hitting stuff with hammers.Mk - bought built, engine blown, car rebuilt (pretty much everything from engine to electrics to dashboard and instruments, suspension, wheels, aero etc to what it is now.
Garages - these ones are for storing the cars, oily stuff goes on else where. I'm no use with oily stuff and have a good friend who is (Ex Ginetta engineer, 35 years in the trade) who has a large garage at home where he looks after my classic and track cars. He inspected the cars below before I bought them today. He calls me Mr Shiny, I call him Spanners. You get the idea.
That's it though, no more posts here apart from when the garage is finished and to reply. Ill start a specific thread for the garage. I apologise for hijacking, it wasnt my intention.
Lotus Esprit V8 Turbo. In superb condition, loads of paperwork. Mk2 Jag in concourse condition. Tons of paperwork. Fully rebuilt with receipts over £35K. Not buying owt else until the garage is finished though! Honest.
Garages - these ones are for storing the cars, oily stuff goes on else where. I'm no use with oily stuff and have a good friend who is (Ex Ginetta engineer, 35 years in the trade) who has a large garage at home where he looks after my classic and track cars. He inspected the cars below before I bought them today. He calls me Mr Shiny, I call him Spanners. You get the idea.
That's it though, no more posts here apart from when the garage is finished and to reply. Ill start a specific thread for the garage. I apologise for hijacking, it wasnt my intention.
Lotus Esprit V8 Turbo. In superb condition, loads of paperwork. Mk2 Jag in concourse condition. Tons of paperwork. Fully rebuilt with receipts over £35K. Not buying owt else until the garage is finished though! Honest.
I'm afraid my minimalist garage is purely for display only and will probably offend many people with proper working shops. I used to have quite a few tools, but as I progressed up the scale to increasingly more complex cars, the mechanics and time to learn it all become more difficult. Now I put it into the dealer for anything that needs doing and reserve my valuable time for driving.
kensilver said:
I'm afraid my minimalist garage is purely for display only and will probably offend many people with proper working shops. I used to have quite a few tools, but as I progressed up the scale to increasingly more complex cars, the mechanics and time to learn it all become more difficult. Now I put it into the dealer for anything that needs doing and reserve my valuable time for driving.
I can't argue with that. I would probably do the same. It looks nice!Dog Star said:
RichB said:
actually prefer to see your example of a garage like yours with oil, polish, tools and maintenance stuff in it. The pristine examples are too sterile for me and look more like car showrooms than interesting garages.
Same here; some of these "showrooms" are all very well and nice, but wouldn't work for me what with leaves getting blown in, oil or paint getting splashed around etc etc. They're not "homely" - you can't hang around in them with your mates drinking tea and hitting stuff with hammers.My humble offering is more workshop than anything. I have an old brick milking shed that I've used for the last few years but it's pretty dark and confined
It's OK to work in with the ramp (2nd hand bargain 12 years ago and still working fine!) but damp and cold and generally lacking space for the increasing number of vehicles I seem to have about the place
.So I decided on a new workshop, the idea was it would be enough for max 4 cars but wide enough that they would all be able to get doors open etc.
I'm an occasional self-bulider and I've done oak, steel, brick constructions before and fancied trying something a bit different so I came up with this -
Block walls for speed and cheapness then timber clad to match another building we've already put up, cavity with insulation to keep things nice and warm. The roof is supported by curved steel beams then insulated panels, membrane and finally a green roof. The sloping roof is partly just because it can be done and I love the look but it also works well on the site as it drops from right to left and the roof helps to follow the line of the ground.
So we put some foundations in
prepped for the slab
and poured and power floated it
Very scary how small it looks at this stage!
The brickies got cracking on putting the side and rear walls up while we had the steel prepped.
Got to say that this was one of the most interesting parts of the build, I went down to Barnshaws in the Black Country so see how it all worked and had the tour of their factory. These guys will put bends in pretty much any kind of steel beam, pipe etc, ours counted as a small section!
Our original design is in the picture and used a fairly tight bend in the centre of the steel with horizontal sides but they had problems in getting the right consistency across the five beams that we needed so we adjusted the design to flow the curves all the way across to each side. Got to say that Barnfields were superb and dealt with the difficulties extremely well - if I had the chance to use curved steel again I wouldn't hesitate to use them
.The curved steel then went back to the fabricators who welded various bits on and then they went up on the walls -
The longer curve really works well, looks good and made other parts of the build easier as we went along
These photos were taken in late November but the weather and my smooth running build was about to get scuppered
The build was being done under permitted building rights but the busybodies on the local Parish Council decided to stick their noses in and rather than asking me why I was putting it up they asked the Planning Dept to pop by
.I won't detail the tortuous process that I had to go through from there but suffice to say that by the time they decided I had been right all along it was Easter and the building had spent five months absorbing water
. Anyhoo, moving on.
With the steel on we could get the front wall up and it started to take shape
The roof was next so we used marine ply to fill the steel sections on the overhangs
Then we laid in the insulated panels, these were ordered to length to fit snuggly inside the steel and blockwork, single lengths are tricky to manoeuvre at height but they add a lot of strength to the structure -
The ribs on the roof were filled with more insulation to form a fairly flat surface then we fitted a rubber EDPM membrane, a protective "blanket" layer, a drainage layer and a filter layer before getting 15 tons of substrate up there!
Typically, it was a windy day while we were doing this so we had to wet everything down to give it some weight and stop it blowing away
The substrate isn't soil, apparently soil is too fertile and would encourage weed growth so the recommended is a mixture of compost and crushed brick, you can spec the level of crush (alters the drainage/water retention) and % of each item to suit the type of roof you are looking for. There was a local place that supplies this stuff so I bought direct; it seems that there are plenty of green roof companies that would love to do a complete roof for you but the costs are eye watering, I managed the whole build for little more than some of them wanted so sourcing components and avoiding middle men is key if you are on a budget!
For speed I was looking to turf the roof but there was a national shortage of the stuff so I ended up seeding it which proved to be a good way to go and another huge saving so I'd go that way again.
I didn't want a moss roof, I think that's more of an urban solution so I went for a hardy slow growing meadow grass which just needs mowing or strimming once a year.
After a month -
and one year later -
The cladding on the outside went on OK and after much indecision I went for red for the doors, I think it works OK -
The silver/grey on the overhang (and on the gate to the left) is the colour that it will all end up as, I used old timber for the overhang as shrinkage would have caused gaps etc whereas the walls were overlapped with the green timber to allow for this.
Inside I decided on an epoxy paint for the floor, not the most pretty compared to some on here but that takes me back to the showroom/garage/workshop question and it is very tough which is what I needed.
New ramp has gone in along with a bit of decoration on the walls, small log burner keeps it cosy to work in
The photos on the walls were all taken by Nick at Xtreme Photography, he does the camera work at our Trackaction-Online trackdays
Finally (!!) a shot from this summer when the latest resident arrived -
Sorry for the exxxxtra long post! Hope it was of interest
Steve H
Obviously it must be right if the busy-body council agreed, but doesn't look like it should be (or more likely I just fundamentally don't understand the rules properly 
)Bungle, it was closer than I'd intended in the end but the size/footprint isn't an issue, height can be tricky but comes down to where you measure from and to etc.
At it's highest point the building is over 4m tall from the slab but interpreting the planning regulations a particular way meant it only came out at something like 2.5m.
At it's highest point the building is over 4m tall from the slab but interpreting the planning regulations a particular way meant it only came out at something like 2.5m
.Gassing Station | General Gassing | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff