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Steel vs OSB on shop interior walls ?

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AC Diesel

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I'm in the process of getting bid's on a new stick built shop. I'm wondering if any of you have all steel lined walls and ceiling or OSB on the side walls with steel on the ceiling.

I can see advantages to both, if I put OSB on the walls it would save $1200. To me its not enough of a savings to steer me one way or the other.
I prefer the look of all steel, but I am a little concerned of the noise level it might make my teeth rattle when I'm banging around in there.It's going to see a lot of welding so I can see the advantage of having the steel for fire safety reasons.

I would appreciate all thoughts and opinions!

Thanks AC
 
The shop, when I worked for the fertilizer outfit in Kansas, had steel on the bottom half, white painted insulation above 8 feet. Worked good
 
Big Muddy rancher said:
What about steel on the bottom and plastic higher up
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We are going to use unfaced batts of insulation so I'm not sure what I would use for plastic that would work. I'll have to think on that :?
 
AC Diesel said:
Big Muddy rancher said:
What about steel on the bottom and plastic higher up
Click to expand...

We are going to use unfaced batts of insulation so I'm not sure what I would use for plastic that would work. I'll have to think on that :?
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I'd go steel but when we built ours we used sheetrock it was cheap and I was poor. My shop is insulated with unfaced bat insulation and I'm thinking of taking off the outside steel adding 3/4 inch foam, new plastic than put the sideing back on Its a cold S.O.B My new shop and house will have as much of the spray on insulation as possible. My shop is 30' wide my new one will be 40' I don't think I'll heat either one with wood I'll be 53 years old by the time they roll around and in my wonder years I don't want to be filling wood stoves.
 
I was planning on heating with wood, thats what I heat my house with but I don't think I want to lose the floor space a stove would take up. My brother has me talked into one of those radiant tube heaters and I think it would be nice to just turn up the thermostat when a guy gets off work and be warm :nod:
 
Put the pipe in the floor, heat with wood outside or put in a gas or electric boiler. the floor is warm and it dries equipment off real quick.
Friend of my son put up plastic sheets the size of steel. It's white,bright and light to install.
 
Steel washes nice with a pressure washer. Never needs re-painting.
If your doing much welding get some of those big plastic pig barn heat exchangers to get rid of the smoke without loosing all you heat.
Tube heaters keep the floor warm with lower cort.
 
Big Muddy rancher said:
Put the pipe in the floor, heat with wood outside or put in a gas or electric boiler. the floor is warm and it dries equipment off real quick.
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this is an absolutely lovely way to do it! you will be amazed---we keep ours at 50 f. ceiling fans are part of the process. farmtek has a foil/bubble/bubble/plastic that you can put under cement that is equivalent to 2" blue Styrofoam for heat loss and way nice and cheaper to work with.

do NOT put the foil side next to cement---it will eat up the foil.

you want to run this up edge of slab next to frost walls to stop lateral heat migration. you can lay the pipe yourself, we tied ours to the rebar to keep it in place---1/2 or 3/4" plastic, don't remember for sure--you want to use up entire roll, every time, even if it means going out 5' and coming back---that way line resistance is the same and heat is even. leave ends run wild where it comes outa slab and leave plenty--don't short yourself for pluming zone tie in. we ran pipe a foot apart, which may have been overkill.
 
If you are going to use a outdoor wood boiler you better get it purchased like yesterday EPA is banning their sale here in the states due too the emissions they produce. I've heard March 15th to May 15th as the last date to purchase them. The wood boiler companies are working hard to get one to pass emissions but what I've been told is so far the wood boxs is so small you'll be filling it hourly.
 
I built 2 small factories about 5 years ago.

We went with steel inside and out with 10" unfaced bats and the interior steel was perforated in the second one ( supposed to keep noise down ) with the first one the customer went with LP hanging heaters and the second went with heated floors. Both buildings are 45' X 90' with 14' sidewalls and the heating unit in the second factory is a 240V on demand water heater with a 10 zone manifold. We ran all 10 zones under the office as the wife does the paper work and wants to be much warmer than the rest of the building. This way if any zone calls for heat her office is getting heat as well. The system is filled with distilled water and permanent anti freeze with a small circulating pump and a 5 gal expansion tank. I do not notice a great deal of difference in the noise level between the two buildings.

In that building they keep the production floor at about 60F and her office stays about 72F We used 2" thick Styrofoam insulation with interlocking edges and round bumps to hold the pex. Loved the ease of instillation. We have about 30" of blown in insulation in the ceilings of both buildings.

The first customer keeps the building at about 65F and has space heaters they move around to keep the employees warm. Heating cost about $20.00 per day. There is no insulation under the floor.

The second customer with the does not use supplemental heat as the employees seem comfortable and they report heating cost about $3.00 per day.

My son keeps saying he is going to build another shop and we will absolutely build it with heated floors and steel inside and out like the second factory I built. We were going to build last fall but a 38 acre patch came up for sale that we owned on both sides of so we spent $6,500 per acre for it and decided to live with our old shop another year. We might build it into the side of a hill like the shop I have at home 10" thick poured concrete walls and the earth really makes it easy to heat - - - downside is no windows to see out. I wish I had experienced the in floor heating prior to building it as I have a 94% LP furnace and I can have it 70F and still be cold when working under vehicles and the floor stays wet if something is spilled.

When you start pricing out you will find that concrete walls are very cheap and they would be very hard to destroy!
 
I should have clarified what I meant by radiant tube heater, I was talking LP. I've heard a lot of good reports from people who use them, they heat all the objects in the building so when the door is opened the building won't lose its heat all at once.

I don't have any experience with radiant heating the floor first hand but I do know of several electric customers that we have at our REA that use it and their electric usage is absolutely horrible. We've done some studies to show them that it really is their heat that is making their bill ridiculously high. I could see that a wood boiler would be the cats meow for heating the floor!

No matter what I use with the exception of wood it will take some money to heat each winter :wink:

Thanks for all the suggestions guy's!
 
AC Diesel said:
I should have clarified what I meant by radiant tube heater, I was talking LP. I've heard a lot of good reports from people who use them, they heat all the objects in the building so when the door is opened the building won't lose its heat all at once.

I don't have any experience with radiant heating the floor first hand but I do know of several electric customers that we have at our REA that use it and their electric usage is absolutely horrible. We've done some studies to show them that it really is their heat that is making their bill ridiculously high. I could see that a wood boiler would be the cats meow for heating the floor!

No matter what I use with the exception of wood it will take some money to heat each winter :wink:

Thanks for all the suggestions guy's!
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Oh don't dispear wood heat is far from free. You'll earn every bit of heat but it does help keep you free of foriegn oil some what.
 
Our shop has in floor heat and that part of it is very nice. I bought a cheap electric water heater to run it but that's where the "cheap" part ends - the operating cost is sky high even though I only run it at nights when the electricity rate is about 1/2 price of daytime usage. So I only keep the floor temp just above freezing.

I intend to install a boiler next summer - likely oil fired. We don't have natural gas here and LP is far too volatile in price.

I also have a LP space heater that warms the shop up really fast and it's actually quite reasonable, especially for quick and short term heating.

So I'm thinking that even once I get a cheaper heat source for the in floor, it might not be a bad idea to have a 2 source heating system.

And cutting since firewood is more of an enjoyable hobby than a chore for me, it might even be a wood stove!
 
A few more thoughts:
One thing I havn't seen mentioned is waste oil heaters. I've probably got 10 barrels of it sitting around, if a neighbor used it, I'd give it to him.

With floor heat, you'll need to buy a dandy push broom. Unbelievable the amount of mud, etc, that falls off vehicles when they're dried out from bottem up.

Doors---we looked at 3 avail suppliers, one was by far the best, we went top shelf.

Openers---door guy explained to me that if same guy was manually opening door, he quickly got the 'feel' of it---with several people coming and going, it tended to occasionally get slammed down, pushed up way too hard--he said power openers would would eliminate about all door and adjustment problems. Sold me and never regretted it.

Thermal mass: with a heat loss barrier under and up sides of slab, entire slab stores heat. We can have power off for a couple days and building really don't cool off near as much as one might expect. No windows in overhead doors, walls very well insulated, ceiling double insulated. Used kind of blanket insulation with tough fabric that's probably washable on inside.
 
I feel many of the people having high heat bills with in floor radiant heating did not get a contractor who knew what he was doing or just tried to get by cheaply.

You need a good thermal break from the foundation ( a minimum of 2" Styrofoam ) on the inside of the foundation down to the footer and a minimum of 2" of insulation under the floor. This must be designed for the purpose so that it will hold up to the weight placed on it and will not have areas where cold can migrate in. You will need more in colder areas.

http://www.barrett-inc.com/creteheat.php This is the company I have been buying from and while I have only put up one building with it I can give it nothing but rave reviews. I went to several people who had used it and I tried to take the best ideas from each.

Yes they can be heated with outside boilers, conventional water heaters, on demand water heaters and probably other things I have not heard of but the bottom line is when we build the new shop we will use radiant heating as our main source of heat.

The insulation has interlocking edges and in central Indiana we went with an R10 rating - - - we also have 10" of fiberglass batts in the sidewalls ( between 2 metal walls ) and 30" blown in the attic. With an on demand 240V water heater we are seeing $3.00 a day average in the winters here on a 45' X 90' shop with 2 pass thru doors and 3 overhead doors ( all good insulated doors ).

Quality materials and quality installation will give you good results.
 
Thanks for the kind words about our business and the CreteHeat product. We sell it factory direct along with many other insulation products for ranchers. The Barrier insulation is also used for under concrete as well as under greenhouses, crawlspaces and more. The Solex is an excellent wall/ceiling insulation also. http://www.barrett-inc.com
 

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