Bus Garage

[cattfuu]

Thanks for copying me on this thread. I haven't been on this site in a long time. We had planned on building a garage on our property for our bus and trailer, but then we checked into the continued property tax liability of this new giant edition even after we will have to give up traveling in ten years due to age, and decided to pull the brakes. We found a brand new facility with individual 15x50x14' non-insulated metal storage garages. (There is no income tax in Tennessee, but they sock it to you in property taxes and sales taxes.) As the garages were still in the construction stage we convinced the owner to install a 50amp plug for us. It costs us $425 per month inclusive power usage, but keeping the refrigerator/freezer running and being able to run a plug-in small forced air heater, with the Webasto as an emergency back-up during winter kept the interior in the 58-65 degree range, the bays never dropped below 52, the garage itself never dropped below 40 and the block heater stayed on all winter. We just started running the center roof air set at 79 degrees three weeks ago. Used a large water-heater drip pan with water-hose connected to garage door so it drains to outside. Probably will have to run it through middle of September. The garage door is a roll-up with gab at top and as it is an end unit the side-wall has natural gabs from the corrugated sheet metal along the roof top to dissipate the heat from the sun burning on the roof and the a/c running. So far the outside temps reached 93, but it gets up to 108/112 occasionally. So far so good, even thou I worry it might burn out the roof air sooner. We believe it will be less expensive to replace roof unit than pay for the tax burden. Oh, did I state that the city and county taxes on our property just went up again? Ugh! Need to build many new schools.
Regarding the width of our garage it is tight and it only barely works because we bought a bus without slides and all the bay doors lift up vertically. When sliding out the joey bed we have to move either to the front or back of it to be able to get to stuff and unload the outside cargo to get to center. Doors swinging on hinges horizontally would be a nightmare, so make sure you have plenty of room to walk around your bus with all the doors open with at least two feet walking space while loading. The 50' length works well for us as our Prevost is 40'. We can get the engine doors(hinged) open with garage closed and there is enough room in the front of the bus to store seasonal stuff that we don't need to drag with us all the time. It also allows one of us to stand in front of the coach and do the safety light-checks prior to movement while the engine warms up. What we especially like about our unit is that the concrete floor is raised approximately 2" above the perimeter walls construction base. The outside paving also is well sloped so we have no worries during our torrential downpours. No pooling water, no musty smells, no mold, no BUGS! I only lived in Arizona for three months (May-June 1977) and have no idea about what your climate might be during the rest of the year, so please excuse my remarks with a shrug as from someone that doesn't know what she is talking about
Please keep us posted on your progress.