Garage Layout Feedback (And How Do I Engineer a Mezzanine?)

It's nowhere near a sure thing, but I'm casually shopping for a commercial building to become my new shop. I've been playing around with a fairly crude little shop rendering program, and realize that I either need to build a mezzanine or double my budget, so it's time to learn how to build a mezzanine! Even if I don't buy anything, I've always been curious how these are built.

First, here's my rough plan. The software doesn't have any machine tool models, so that pile of tables in the back corner is a lathe, mill and grinder.

And here's the 14.5x22' mezzanine I'd need to build for storage. Again, no pallet rack models in the software, but the big shelves are the same dimensions as 8' pallet racks, and the small ones are those metal shelves you can get at Lowe's.

So here are my questions: 

1. Am I missing anything in this layout? Or is it a shop you'd be happy building cars in? 
2. How do I build a mezzanine? I'm assuming the answer is "buy a bunch of I-beams and weld them together" but I'd like to do some math or find a set of existing plans to make sure I don't wildly over- or under-estimate what it would take to build it. 

Look at deck plans, same thing. 

How much weight are you planning to put on the mezzanine?

DrMikeCSI said:

How much weight are you planning to put on the mezzanine?

This.

Our mezzanine at work is built with 10" square steel post and 10" I beams. It is 12'x36' with posts every 12' (eight 10" uprights). It holds a 450 gallon RO water filtration system, two 75hp Atlas Copco compressors and an air drier as well as a 450 gallon air support tank. 

We are at 50% max weight according to the engineering staff. 

I should probably weigh my stuff, huh? I'd guesstimate maybe 6,000 lbs.

The moto and cars by the man door next to the rollup door seems too crowded. It doesn't look like there's room to use the man door to walk in/out, really, let alone carry anything in/out the man door. And in a commercial space, you may run afoul of fire department regulations for emergency egress depending on the regs for your jurisdiction.

In reply to Tom Suddard :

I would seriously consider having a professional engineer the plans with that much weight.  Especially in a rented commercial space.

I have a small 'loft' in my shop that was added by some previous owner... It's just basic 4x4 posts with 2x6 framing and a plywood floor, and I don't trust it for anything heavy.  It is handy for getting some bulky but light stuff out of the way.

You might consider looking into a kit from someone like this. https://www.mezzaninesonline.com/

Pre-engineered and ready to assemble. Probably not as cheap as building it yourself. 

In reply to Toyman! :

Yeah, I think I've looked at every single thing on that site.  That's probably a better option, but I'd really rather find Mezzanine Plans Online for $100 .com or something like that. 

Pay a structural engineer or buy a pre-engineered kit.

You want to put a bunch of heavy stuff up there.  Stuff you wouldn't want to fall on your head.

Pay a structural engineer.

You should be able to find a small engineering office that won't charge too much.  It will be cheaper than over- or under-designing the structure.

Pay a structural engineer or buy a pre-engineered kit.

Unless you're going to try doing this without a building permit (hint:  DON'T) you're going to need stamped engineering drawings of the design.

Pay a structural engineer or buy a pre-engineered kit.

It will be cheaper in the long run.

I'm wondering about the lift location and how you typically utilize the lift.  I tend to use the lift for short term repairs and maintenance and do long term projects on the floor with jack stands.  Because of that I'd want the lift closer to the door so it's never blocked in.  I'd either angle it and put it where you've got the blue car or put it right in front of the door and drive through it to access the other bays.

As far as the mezzanine is concerned the realistic weight of what you're putting up there is going to be needed before you can think about construction.  I think you might be light at 6,000 lbs.  Car parts are heavy and tend to accumulate quickly.

I just went through this with my garage.  The engineering stamp/calculations on drawings I had was ~$1200.  

The more painful part was the lead time.  I was lucky that my contractor had a relationship with the firm to save me waiting 3 weeks for a bending moment calculation.

I put my tools close to my lift.  I figure if it's on the lift, I'm working on it and if I'm working I'll need tools and Lord knows I never have the right tool so I wanted to minimize the time and effort spent going back and forth. 
 

don't forget running electric and air where you want/need it. 

APEowner said:

I'm wondering about the lift location and how you typically utilize the lift.  I tend to use the lift for short term repairs and maintenance and do long term projects on the floor with jack stands.  Because of that I'd want the lift closer to the door so it's never blocked in.  I'd either angle it and put it where you've got the blue car or put it right in front of the door and drive through it to access the other bays.

The problem with putting the lift right in front of the door is that it basically blocks access to the side parking (red and blue cars). In fact, it would probably turn this from a four car garage to a three car at best. Also, as jfryjfry says, you want it close to the tools. I think Tom tends to do bigger projects on his lift anyhow, engine swaps and transmission replacements and the like.

I have to move a car out of the way to access my lift, and it's a bit of a pain. But putting it further forward would have handicapped the entire work space.

First: Thanks for all of the feedback on the mezzanine and getting a real engineer involved. Don't worry, I'm not about to start ordering steel or anything, just trying to figure out how big the rock is (and how much time and money it will cost). The feedback so far has been helpful. I built my last garage myself, so I'm fairly well-versed in permitting and stamps and all that fun stuff. So I know enough to know I need an expert, and I need the city to like my idea. 

Second: Yeah, I'm struggling a bit with where to put the lift, too, but think what I have is the best compromise. The lift is mostly for big projects, but it's positioned in a way that I could still cram 6-7 cars into the building when hurricanes come through. And it's far enough in that if I ever decide to paint a car, I can clear out the front half of the building and have plenty of room to walk around the car. 

Mezz is easy enough to DIY *if* you do all your homework, but don't expect to get any insurance pesos if it comes down and you didn't have any plans or approval.  Also need to read your lease and see if its gonna be OK.  That being said I do beam calcs all the time and still run them past other engineers when the chips are down so to speak.  A guy could easily enough build a floating platform with adequate crossbracing, all the span and beam calcs are available online.  Properly built won't be cheap though.  And yes you need weights, not approximate guestimates.  

Tools don't have to be right by the lift, thats what service carts are for.  

You are going to want at least 12 feet from the centerline of the lift to any obstructions both directions, 14 feet is better.  That would let you put up Superduties and other big stuff.  Thats what manufacturers tend to give as minimum clearances.  

Overall thot - the place is too small for both workshop AND storage.  Its the size of a 3 car garage.  

One other solution is going used. A quick search for used mezzanines in Daytona Beach yielded companies that were selling them. 

In reply to 93gsxturbo :

A three car garage? It looks like it's about 20x60 based on the assumption that the bathroom is 8x8. I've got a 30x40 shop myself and there are five cars in there, a lift and storage.

Service carts are great if you need a half dozen tools and have to work from multiple lifts. I have a rolling workbench/tool cart that's stocked with the stuff I use 90% of the time but I still find myself going back to the tool boxes for various things fairly frequently. There's no benefit in putting your lift far away from your tools unless you have to.

I mostly concur with the idea of having someone engineer it.  It's not impossible to do yourself with a high confidence in the result.. but the engineering is a good "someone professional made sure this isn't going to kill me" check.

I also suspect your readership of your magazine would enjoy and potentially benefit from an article series on designing, selecting, and installing a pre-engineered bolt together mezzanine for use in a garage condo type environment.   

If you are going to roll your own, I would start with pallet racking.  144" beams are available with a PER SHELF rating of more then 7000lbs.  I would see about making a layout that enables you to deal with some pallet rack uprights across the front of the mezzanine.  basically build a deck that sits on the pallet racking connecting 2 parallel racks.  

I would have the rear wall of pallet racking just go up to the ceiling so the shelves across the back wall of the mezzanine are just shelves actually resting on the floor of the garage not on a mezzanine.  I would do the same for the area above the span into the machine area in front of the car.  You could then have your little couch area just be the area directly above the bathroom.  The advantage here is all of your car parts and shelves would just actually be on really tall engineered pallet racks.  You would just have one of the shelves be a floor for people to walk on.  Engineering that would be simple, just use 2x whatever dimensional lumber is sufficient for your span table with some 3/4" subfloor on top.  

here is the worlds crudest Sketchup model to communicate my idea.  

If the bathroom already exists that's fine, leave out the vertical post in that corner and just have the deck sit on top of the bathroom.  Put as wide of a span as you can across the opening.  Since the shelves support all your load as engineered pallets your just supporting people.  who don't weigh much.

You could actually go as far as having the "walkway" be on some hangers attached to the shelves so the bottom shelf in your mezzanine is just more open pallet racking with wire mesh shelves.  That would make the height a little lower and you could just Send cut send some J channel joist hangers that sit on the shelf rails.. 

Pallet racking is very affordable and available new or used.

No construction knowledge, just a couple tips:

- It looks like you're trying to cram the maximum utility into a small shop, you should study Japanese auto shops for ideas.

- Consider having the underside of the mezzanine designed as a load-bearing structure - could be a good place for a chain lift crane for example.

Keith Tanner said:

In reply to 93gsxturbo :

A three car garage? It looks like it's about 20x60 based on the assumption that the bathroom is 8x8. I've got a 30x40 shop myself and there are five cars in there, a lift and storage.

Service carts are great if you need a half dozen tools and have to work from multiple lifts. I have a rolling workbench/tool cart that's stocked with the stuff I use 90% of the time but I still find myself going back to the tool boxes for various things fairly frequently. There's no benefit in putting your lift far away from your tools unless you have to.

1114 sqft per the drawing in the first post.  1144 sqft is barely bigger than a 30x36 and quite a ways smaller than a 30x40 considering a stairway will eat into that space....

Tool cart vs box is personal preference, when I had more space I had a real nice 40" Snap On roll cart that I could truck around, had all my 3/8" stuff in it, the bulk of my metric wrenches since that was what I saw 99% of the time, screwdrivers, picks, pliers, pry bars, etc.  It didn't have my snap ring pliers, my 1"+ wrenches, most of my 1/2" drive stuff, duplicate tools, electrical terminal kits, jewelry screwdrivers, external torx, so on so forth.  Made a lot more sense to have the  every day stuff be in a smaller box that was easier to move and leave the triple bay against the wall as a work surface and a place to keep my right handed screwdrivers and metric crescent wrenches that came out once every 3 weeks. 

Stupid question, would a mezzanine on the left wall with the stairs against the back wall work better for your use case? I made it 9' x 49', so you end up with 441 sqft and you have 13' open space for the lift.

I have seen these with spiral staircase also, but its a pain to move stuff upstairs ... maybe not?

Sort of like this:

Ah, I missed the size on the drawing, and you're definitely right about the bathroom/stairway. Still, I'm working out of 1200 square feet and I would characterize it as a whole lot bigger than 3 car garage even if you took out the area for a bathroom. Of course, I'm rarely working on Superdutys so my idea of how much space is required is influenced by the fact that an NC Miata is "the big one" :)

I use one of these for my roll-around, but given that I'm a private individual working in his own shop I rarely need to move it. All my work happens at the same place. If I were working in the Flyin' Miata shop with multiple lifts and I was moving from one to another, a roll around would be a lot more useful.

I do have a few of the larger version of that cabinet for the bulk of my work area, which is convenient because it allows me to reconfigure the area easily if need be. Not that I've moved them in a while, the shop has settled into a layout that works.

FWIW, the dimensions are 22x53.5'. So way more than a three-car garage (I've put four cars in my current 24x30' shop) but not a gigantic shop by any means. It would feel gigantic to me, though! 

I don't work on Super Duty trucks. The cars in the drawing are scaled to a Miata, a 350Z, a 981 Cayman, and an Isuzu Trooper. That's fairly representative of what I do. 

Just search "joist span calculator."  You'll find a ton of calculators that let you enter the size of the joists and the OC spacing, and it will tell you how far you can span.  That, plus a deck calculator, will tell you where to place a beam and post if needed to make your span.

Your local municipality will have its own codes, but most commercial floor ratings are 50 psf, most residential flooring is 25 psf.  If you use the 50 psf, you know you can put engine blocks or a whole bank of transmissions and be OK up in the loft.

Be aware that you are also limited by the engineering of the walls/posts that support it.  For the most part, if you frame up your bathroom walls with 2x6 on 16" centers, you should be kosher as long as both sides are skinned - one side with rated sheathing, and the other with drywall.  SVrex will know those stats better.