My thoughts on the workshop layout & design

A few subscribers to my blog have asked for some details about my workshop - specs of various items and how I went about determining the layout and fittings in the garage. Well, a surprising number of hours went into planning the layout and I feel that a well planned and well organised workshop is easier to work in, less fatiguing and less frustrating. So this post is just a (big) brain dump of the thought processes that I went through in designing the workshop. The entire design was close to 100% planned out before I even started setting up the interior.

To start with, I chose the largest shed/garage kit that I could fit in the corner area of my property with the main decisions being the door types and wall height. I chose a 2.7m wall height as when I went to view some display sheds, that extra height over a standard 2.4m wall height in combination with the open portal design (no trusses) gave the garage a much more open feeling. The apex of the garage roof is actually ~3.5m high! I also had the choice of two roller doors or two sliding doors. I did not want roller doors for the garage because they take up valuable overhead space resulting in the door opening height shorter than sliding doors.

Note : There are some layout and other pics of the end result / design at the end of this long post.

Interior Layout :

The garage is situated at the rear corner of my property and the interior layout plan was restricted on the car access I had to the workshop. Because of my kids’ huge cubby house I have in front of the right hand side of the garage, it would be difficult to steer a car around the cubby house and through the right hand door. Due to this I chose to have the right hand sliding door to access two shelving units (facing out of the garage) that would store gardening equipment, lawnmover, whipper snipper (so I don’t leave grass & crap through my workshop), and also the tent, chairs, tables and other camping gear we have. That means access to the main area of the garage (the “workshop area”) would only be the via the left hand sliding door.

The layout of the machinery & storage in the workshop area was designed around what I felt was the most efficient and convenient use of space. Because the shelving behind the right hand garage door blocked access to the workshop, it seemed appropriate to install the workbench behind those shelves.

I imagined myself step-by-step doing many of the basic and technical fabrication tasks which I had already done a lot of in my old house. If I had to make a custom bracket for xxx … I would need easy access to the grinder, grinding discs, cut off saw, hand drill, die grinder etc which should be stored under the workbench, my MIG welder trolley stored close, bench grinder and linisher on top the workbench. So I figured I’d want 90% of my tools to be stored on top of or in drawers under the workbench, which meant it had to be long. Working on large items like the Mini subframes also meant it had to be deep, so I planned it to be 3.5m long and 800mm deep. If I required use of an air tool, I need convenient access to compressed air outlets but wouldn’t need the compressor itself to be close to the workbench. Having a sink close to the workbench would also be useful for any quenching of welding work or access to water for wet sanding.

Then consideration had to be made to what items should NOT be near others. Any angle grinding or bench-grinding should not be performed near the lathe and its machined surfaces, nor should grinding and welding should be done be near paints, oils & aerosols. Flammables should be stored away from the workbench area. The air compressor should be hidden where it can reduce background noise and prevent fatigue (on me);

The least frequently accessed items can be stored away from workbench – shelves with various car parts, the paint booth and painting materials, and car servicing materials. The oils, filters, greases, car ramps, trolley jack, axle stands etc should be in stored in shelving close to the front of the garage as I figured I would probably just stick the nose of a car into the workshop area to perform a service or repair.

Space :

Even though it’s a reasonably big sized workshop area which I only currently have a small Mini in, how much space would I need to reserve for just the car and moving around it without bumping into other things? What if I move onto a build for a bigger car in the future? Do I need to consider the possibility of requiring space for one car, two cars? Or just one car and the nose of a second for servicing? What if I needed to have a WHOLE other vehicle in the workshop temporarily? If I need two cars in the workshop, I could put some things on wheels and move things around to make space e.g. The Starlet engine stored on a dolly, engine crane (already has castors), a movable spit for the Mini shell, Mini front cut on castors.

Use of storage space weighs in heavily here as well, as the more efficient the storage, the less floor area I would use. This would involve using tall shelves for storage of car parts, vertical oriented storage for fasteners & steel offcuts, and making use of the top of the paint booth to store dashboard and door trims & excess timber. Designing a workbench to have mostly drawers is also a much better use of storage space than doors.

Power / Electrical :

In my old house, I was limited with what power outlets the builder had installed in the small workshop area I had (10m2) and often found it frustrating of having to use extension cords to where the car was stored, and having to unplug and plug in new appliances and tools (ie. unplug the bench drill to use the bench grinder). This time around I wanted every single fixed electrical item (lathe, compressor, pedestal drill press, paint booth fan, pedestal fan, radio/clock, bench grinder, sink water pump) to have its own outlet so to never have to unplug it. I wanted to have additional outlets at the workbench for items like drill/torch chargers and more power outlets for where I would be standing and working, so two or more tools could be plugged in at any one time. Around the perimeter of the workshop, I ended up with space for more machinery if it was ever purchased (e.g. a sand blasting booth next to the lathe, a belt sander or linisher on the workbench) so additional power points were planned for those. The paint booth also needed a power outlet in it in case I wanted to use a heat gun.

My MIG welder is 15Amp so cannot use standard 10Amp outlets, so which outlets would be 15Amp? The width of the garage is 6.2m so it would be very useful to have overhead (pendant) power outlets in the centre and make those 15 Amp outlets so the MIG (on a trolley) once plugged in, could reach anywhere in the workshop to weld something without the use of an extension cord. I could then also use the pedant outlets for anything with a standard 10Amp plug.

What if I purchased a higher horsepower (3hp+) piece of machinery that required 415V 3-phase instead of standard 240V single phase? 3 phase supply cable to the garage switchboard would be required.

In total, I had planned 13x double 10Amp power outlets (5x double outlets were planned for the workbench alone) and 2x 15Amp single pendant power outlets. I have a 3-phase power supply to the switchboard and a 3-phase breaker, however the breaker is for future provision only and not currently used.

Air :

I didn’t want to have only a single air outlet straight off the compressor and have to run long air lines across the floor to use air tools as that has the same potential trip hazard as power extension cords. Like the electrical, I wanted dedicated outlets for air tools at the workbench, air gun/rattle gun/sander near the car, air gun at the lathe, outlet for a possible sand blasting cabinet and another outlet right next to the front door in case I needed air outside of the garage.

So I planned for 6 outlets around the perimeter of the workshop plus one in the paint booth. I talked to a local compressed air system supplier and they recommended using their smallest diameter pipe (20mm O.D.) for my home based workshop which could handle approximately 30CFM free air delivery at 80psi – more than enough for my needs even with a sand blasting cabinet. Two adjustable pressure regulators would also be needed – one for the main system to adjust pressure for air tools and one in the paint booth for the few paint guns I have (HLVP, putty, touch up)

Lighting :

Apart from the natural lighting provided by the two rows of polycarbonate sheets in the roof (semi-opaque colour as it can get pretty hot in summer underneath clear sheets), I needed to calculate how much light I would need at night. Firstly I wanted a higher colour temperature instead of a yellow based light so fluorescent lights suited that requirement. Some web research (http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/light-level-rooms-d_708.html) found that 750lux (lumen/m2) would be required for mechanical workshops. With LED replacements for the fluoro tubes still very expensive, modern fluorescent T5 tubes seemed the way to go as they are cheap, efficient and apparently do not have the flickering and stroboscopic effect as older style ballasts in fluoro lights. Luminous efficacy of most T5 tubes is ~100lumen/Watt for and I would need 30,000 total lumen (750lux * 40m2). 40m2 is the useable floor area of garage. If I had fluoro light fittings with 28W tubess, I would need 30,000lumen/(28W*100lumen-Watt) = 11 tubes. Having 8 tubes (4x twin fluoro tube fittings) over the main workshop area and another twin fluoro tube fitting directly above the workbench would achieve somewhere around 650lux. I ran with that figure and the end result turned out to be a really good level of brightness to work in at night, without any eye strain.

Plan & Result :

I created a Microsoft Word document with a frequently evolving annotated plan as a result of the thought processes detailed above and only had a few minor layout changes while everything was being fabricated over the last 7-8 months. The plan below shows the final position of all machinery, storage/shelving, lighting, air lines/outlets and the abundance of electrical power outlets. As you can note, fitting the front of a second car on a diagonal would easily be achieved by moving the Mini on the spit and Mini front cut towards the rear of the workshop area. Fitting two whole cars in would be a squeeze but it could be done for short periods of time.

(Click on pic to enlarge)

I still have a small amount of organising and clean up to do, however I’ve taken a few photos of the workshop as it currently stands before I get back into the Mini build, which will probably become messy pretty quickly. I’ve taken a series of photos of the left hand side of the workshop and used some photostitch software to get a pseudo-wide angle shot, as well as a shot of the workbench / main work area. The photos don’t give a realistic indication of how much space there is to move around but it’s certainly not cramped. The second photo does shows the 2.5m space between the workbench and the white Mini front cut. I am extremely happy with the final outcome and attribute much of the feeling to the forward planning. Now I can enjoy many years of builds, fabrication and tinkering ahead of me.

(Click on pics to enlarge)