I am curious how other professionals are dealing with building shops.

Are you building an actual timber framed shop or having the standard metal warehouse put up, because it is more cost effective?

What do you think the pro's and con's are of having the business located on your own land vs. a seperate commercial site?

What about outside timber storage during a project?

I can keep smaller projects in my shop during fabrication, but usually the project is to large or I am doing multiple projects at the same time.

My situation: I rent a shop that has about 3200 square foot shop space and another 1000 office space. I have a good compacted yard area but no covered outdoor storage. I have an outdoor forklift, but no indoor crane(I rent the space and the ceilings are to low anyway).
-Collin

what a topic... 3200 sq ft sounds great to me, I just moved into a 1000 sq ft shop.. but it's an old timberframe and will suit me fine.
outside storage is a pain. a building of some kind with a permanent roof is so much better.

I lease my space.

Pros: If I decide I want something larger, smaller, or just different, I'm not stuck with a huge investment - I can just walk away after the lease is up (OK, it's a LOT more work than just walking away). Also, If the roof leaks, or the furnace breaks, etc, I call the landlord, who takes care of it. That makes the expenses easier to predict. I think the up-front expense is smaller also, as there was no down payment, just the shop set-up.

Cons: It's not yours, so you need permission to make major modifications. You have to be prepared to walk away from any large investment you make in improving the space when you do leave. And you build no equity.

Then there are the intangibles: You mentioned the appeal of a timber framed shop - this would certainly be a selling tool when you have prospective clients visit. On the other hand, I'm not sure that I could timber frame a 40 x 80 clear span space like I currently have.

I also have a 25 x 80 side bay for a total of 5000 sf. But I'm in the city with no outdoor storage, so only some of that space is used for cutting. The rest is for piles of cut and uncut timbers. In my opinion, 3200 sf is plenty big for a cutting floor, but I guess that depends on the size of your operation. I usually have 2 or 3 full time employees in addition to myself, so there are rarely more than 16-20 timbers on the cutting floor at a time.

Indoor timber storage has it's drawbacks besides the expense of a larger space. If you've got green timber in a cold climate, then the heat and low humidity indoors can dry the timber too rapidly in the winter, leading to excessive checking. I run a industrial humidifer at night to combat this (it's too loud to run during the day). It's actually a greenhouse fogger, and I have it pumping 2 gal/hour into the air when it's really dry. In the summer, you have the opposite problem. There's no breeze to dry them out to keep the fungus at bay. We set up big banks of box fans to create an indoor breeze, and keep the doors and windows open as much as possible. Proper stickering is crucial.

If I did have outdoor storage, I think 3-sided pole buildings would be excellent. I would investigate some sort of trolley system for bringing timbers in from the storage yard. You could set the timbers on the tolley car with the foklift, open the doors, roll the car into the shop, and then close the doors. If the top of the car were at sawhorse height, then you could roll/slide them around, and not have to lift them. These are not my ideas -- I once saw an outdoor shop with this kind of setup, and it worked really well for them. CB.

We too lease our space. I've got a good deal on an old creamery building with a 20' x 60' warehouse, and about 1500 sq.ft. of shop space, plus a nice office. We've got plenty of space outside, although not that flat, to store enough raw wood for about three frames. The warehouse is used for oiling and finished piece storage until we ship to jobsite. We had to invest in this space to make it truly functional i.e. insulation, sheetrock on ceiling, boards on walls, running 220 power from other end of building. I can store an entire frame while working on the next one, all protected from the elements. We have similar issues as Daiku, although have not gone so far as to humidify in winter.

We just bought an 8,000# capacity forklift for moving stock. It's really the cats behind, but one problem we just realized is that we need chains for outside, but they really scratch up the cement floor inside the warehouse. Not the best of both worlds. Unloading wood from the mill is much faster, safer, and less painful than before. We organize all our stock by dimension, stack it up about 12-14' in two foot lifts, and cover all piles with extra wide tin, securing them with dog chains wrapped around top section of pile. Looks a lot better then a bunch of graying timber cut-offs holding the tin on. We have a lot of standing seam roofers in the area who seem to have a regular supply of old tin they've taken off of their jobs.

We've thought about building the perfect shop on my land, which is just 6 miles from the current shop. My wife thinks it might be an intrusion on our sense of privacy. But the thought of having pole barn storage outside is very appealing, and better material flow patterns inside would definitely improve productivity. I would build it to allow the forklift to drive straight in with at least 20' material, and have a backup system like Daiku's for longer stock.

The benefits of having a showcased building right where you ply your craft are clear. But until then, I've given some breaks to clients whose buildings are very nearby to allow us to use them as models for prospective clients. This has worked out well, and allows the new customers to see more then one example of our work.