[GD73]

Hello all, great forum, tons of information here.

I'm going to be fixing up a 20' x 12' garage, and I was wondering what size of floor joists that I should use. Right now, there is a dirt floor, and I was initially looking at pouring concrete, but I think that I'll go with a wood floor instead.

Some more info: I live in Canada, so we do get cold winters and our recommended footing depth is 4ft. The shed is sitting on a concrete block foundation that appears to be just placed on the ground. My plan is to dig out the shed enough so that the joists could be fastened to a ledger on the inside of the concrete blocks, and have the level of the joists with plywood on top even with the top of the concrete block.

My basic plan is to run a water line underground from the house to the shed, and insulate the floor, walls etc so that it can be used year round.

So, if anyone could answer a couple of questions, that would be great:

1. What size floor joists should I use? is 2x6 minimum? I was planning on pouring a few concrete footings running up the middle of the shed that will support a beam for the joists to rest on. So that way, the maximum span without support would be about 6'.

2. Can I simply insulate the floor and put some sort of strapping underneath the joists so the insulation won't fall out? Is there another, better/easier way to insulate a floor?

Anyways, I'll stop there, and see how things go for now. I've been doing a lot of reading, but there are still many things that I'll need to know as this project gets going.

Thanks a lot for any help/advice/opinions anyone is able to give me.

 

[Termite]

Garage? Or shed? What's it getting used for...A shop, storage, etc?

I'm assuming you wouldn't consider parking a car in this "garage" with a framed floor.....

If it has a dirt floor now I think you'd be wiser to go with concrete. It makes for a stronger floor and there won't be the issues of wood rot due to close proximity to grade.

 

[GD73]

Garage? Or shed? What's it getting used for...A shop, storage, etc?

I'm assuming you wouldn't consider parking a car in this "garage" with a framed floor.....

If it has a dirt floor now I think you'd be wiser to go with concrete. It makes for a stronger floor and there won't be the issues of wood rot due to close proximity to grade.

It is currently a small, separate building that once was a small woodshop with a dirt floor. It has 2 x 4 framed walls, and a fairly low-pitched, shingled roof. And the building is just sitting on concrete blocks around the entire perimeter for a foundation. It's quite old, probably over 50yrs, but the wood is still good. It's covered in tin siding.

It will be used as storage area, but I'd like to make it nice enough so that it could be used as a guest house as well. I do plan to extend this current 'shop' later on, but that's another project. So the floor would only need to support 'regular' loads like people, furniture, etc.

There is already electricity out there, so the only thing I'm going to add is a water line and plumbing for two sinks, but no toilet or septic system.

The one thing that kept me away from choosing concrete is that this little addition that I want to add on later is on a bit of a slope (maybe a 2ft elevation change). So, considering that, I didn't think that a slab on grade foundation for that would be practical, or even possible.

So for the small addition, I was going to use a concrete post and beam type foundation. So since I would be making a framed floor for the addition, I figured that I'd just make the whole thing a wood framed floor. I'm not against concrete, but another reason I was thinking wood was the framed floor would be cheaper to build as well.