Our farm shop design blog series, written by Dan Nyberg, the Sales Training Manager at Morton Buildings, focuses on a variety of farm shop design ideas to help you in planning your next agricultural building.
Deciding where to place floor drains in your new farm shop may depend on your operation and how big you plan to build. But it is money and time well spent to go to the extra trouble to do this when you are putting in the floor. It doesn't have to be horribly elaborate, just someplace for the water to go and drain in the lowest spot of the floor. However, be sure to check with local regulations about any waste disposal issues.
You will want to think about if you need a triple basin separator and what type of floor drain you will need installed. You can put your drains close to your doors, approximately 2-3 feet in, but this may not be practical if you need to skid anything in or out. You can put your drains in the center of the floor, but it can make the floor slippery. Or you could put the drains in along each side about two feet in, so that you won’t drive over them and they are out of the way. Consider the location of the floor drain and the challenges it can create for equipment with rollers for moving around the shop such as an engine hoist. In most cases the drain needs to be separated from the areas where equipment assembly / disassembly takes place. Nothing worse than watching that nut you just dropped roll through the grate into the drain.
Some farmers will want a separate area for doing equipment wash down, like a wash bay with a curtain. With frequent washes a FRP liner is popular.
One final recommendation is to make sure you have a dirt/debris trap in your drain system. Letting any dirt into your sewer pipes will eventually build them up to the point of being blocked.
Browse more completed farm shop projects!
About Dan Nyberg, Sales Training Manager, Morton Buildings
Dan Nyberg has been employed with Morton Buildings for 28 years, where he held a variety of positions such as sales consultant, regional manager, and director of sales. He has also served as a board member of the National Frame Building Association for nine years. Dan has been involved with farming most of his life, from living on a dairy farm as a child, moving back to a mixed livestock and grain farm in high school, to managing a personal farm in Colorado focused on horse-drawn events. He has experience with beef cattle, dairy cattle, bison, pigs, sheep, chickens, ducks, geese, horses and mules. Dan currently farms 72 acres with a herd of 23 Devon/Hereford cattle and owns three Morton buildings.
