Jeff,
Stick to your guns! Don't let these guys talk you out of it! Your problem is
pretty simple and I'm sure you were hoping for a simple answer. Not "Go pay
an engineer."
#1 Do make your shop as tall as you can, especially with a hoist! I have a
30X40X10 foot pole barn shop and 10 foot ceilings are never enough! If I
were'd to do it again, I'd want atleast 14' ceilings!
Next, 24' is very short to park a car in and work on, but if that's all the
room you've got, you'll have to make it work. In all honesty, I've seen 20X30
shops that function 100 times better than 50X150 shops! So you can still have
hope if you set it up right.
As for a cherry picker, no, not in the size shop you have in mind. They take
up way too much room.
Now for the crane....
Go look at a huge industrial professionally built gantry crane. Our crane at
work is a 60 ton unit spanning 60 feet, a little to big to concieve ideas
from, but just today I was in a job shop that had 10 ton unit spanning 30
feet or so. It used 2 parallel I-beams each roughly 10"X24" and about 1" web.
So, you could safely assume 10X24 will support 5 tons in a 30' length. In
shooting for 2 tons in 24 feet, I'd go look in a job shops rem pile for
I-beam keeping in mind what 10"X24" will support. I think I would shoot for
about a 6"X20" and 5/8" web beam. I don't have my weight/measures book handy,
but big anything, be it I-beam, whatever, weighs a ton! Standard rem scrap
price is 20 cents/pound. A 24 foot peice is gonna run ALOT even at scrap
price. Off the top of my head, I'd guess around $500 just for the 24 footer.
You're also gonna need 3 uprights, they could be I-beam, tube, whatever. And
you're gonna need another I-beam to span across the top of your door. Don't
even think about setting the I-beam on the wood header! The weight of the
beam alone would snap your header! You're also gonna have to figure out how
to get the steel to your house and how to hoist it in place.
GOOD LUCK!
Dustin
50 & 53 GMC 1/2 tons
48 GMC 3/4 ton
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