<HTML>In a message dated 3/3/2002 4:00:30 PM Pacific Standard Time, rrg@unlv.edu writes: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">  Hi Robert</BLOCKQUOTE>      Building your dreams are always the most exciting and stimulating times of life. And I celebrate with you on your latest expansion. I know Las Vegas is booming, as my friend Dave Chadwick R.P.T. has said, and this should be a great business move for your family.      For the past six years My wife Trix and I have been expanding our shop in stages. In 1996 we moved to 1.66 acres outside Modesto Ca. so that we could expand and not bother our formerly residential neighbors. We are now in the county.     Our property came with a 2200 square ft. Home (1960s style Oh boy) and a 900 square ft. shop that was our everything rooms. It was divided in two pieces. About 150 square feet was a separate room that we used as a spray booth and a room for the stringer to pound away in without driving the others insane with pounding. After about a year of solid rebuilding growth and very hard work we were so jammed that we had to add a 1200 square ft. addition which we added onto the back of the existing shop. This is now primarily the woodworking room. Belly work, etc., and our dirty room. Meaning we try to keep it relatively clean but sawdust is a problem. Hey dust in general is always a problem.     We found that steel buildings are way more economical than traditional wooden construction.  Our building has 4 skylights, and six windows what a great decision that was, and high output fluorescent lights which are soo much brighter than the garden variety. There is no substitute for natural light especially as our eyes start requiring more as we age. Our building is insulated R-30 in the ceiling and R-11 in the walls. It was professionally wired. It has central air and heat which is comfortable even with 14 ft. ceilings. I highly recommend at least a 12 ft. ceiling to mitigate the klunk factor. I think you can figure that out.  Roll up insulated doors. This part of the addition cost approx. 22 K. the other plus is this is very quick construction. You can have your shop built, wired plumed and whatevered in 30 days or so depending on the speed of your contractors. I did none of the physical work myself.but did all the subcontracting.     Our zoning is called Agriculture 1 or Ag 1 zoning and because of that handy little blessing we were not required to get a permit providing that the new building was an addition to the existing one. NOOO problem. A year after that I added another 900 square feet to house the finish room. which I built the same way as the first. With explosion proof fixtures to satisfy osha (there never satisfied)  and huge fan sparkless exhaust fan ,additional heat/air ducting it's quite nice. The whole shop is now about 3000ft. and frankly I wish it was 5 thou. as every piece of it is working space with little room for parts storage.   By the way there is no perfect shop system and you'll find yourself refining it as you go along but for now for us this is  finally a fairly refined and workable system that allows for efficient divisions of labor, reasonable dust control, excellent lighting and environmental comfort for us/pianos and about 10 projects in process at a time in various stages of repair.  Yes, it's still a little tight but I'm not complaining at ALL. And I'm not adding on again.    I lied I forgot we just bought a pre-fabbed little office 10 by 16 ft. to remove the office from a remote location ..... the house,, to just in front of the clean/ action reassembly room of the shop.   There are three of us that work in shop full time. Roy the finisher/friend, wife also still best friend and me. One last thing when no ones in the shop the shops not making money. I've had to delegate tunings to friends and family which is by design as I'm most at home as a shop mole.     Ask any questions you wish and glad to help. Happy building!!      >>>>>>>>>>>>Dale Erwin>>>>>>>>>>>> <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px"> Hello folks, I've been intentionally delaying any announcement for quite some because there have been so many details and questionable resources, but I believe that this might be the appropriate time.  I am now well underway at building a full scale rebuilding shop. A couple of years ago my wife and I began searching for a property. After six months of Realtors and driving all over Las Vegas we finally found an absolutely perfect location on 3/4 acre.  The house was only built in 1998, although it has needed numerous improvements thanks to an independent home contractor who apparently has a reputation for building nice houses with cheap features, (such as poor plumbing requiring me to re-plumb the entire place last summer).  Now that this and a variety of other nonsensical details have been addressed, we can turn our attention to our original objective. We are building this facility from the ground up to our custom specifications.  This first step was to bring in exactly 100 18 wheel truck loads of dirt to level the property.  I got it super cheap, ($20.00 a truck), after hooking up with a dirt contractor who had over 300 truck loads to haul away.  Having leveled that out, we are ready to begin.  I am rapidly learning how expensive this will be, although I had a pretty good idea already.  We are required by the county to have a grading/plot plan. Last week we forked over $1,800.00 for that. Yesterday our architect was here to get property information and go over our specifications. Fortunately we are saving major money on that because we are using an architecture student from the university  He is serving an internship for a firm and should be able to get the required signatures and stamps.  Normally this starts at about $3.00 per square foot and up, so we are really lucky to have him.  He also has to get a structural engineer to design the pad/slab and roof requirements, and we need an electrical engineering plan as well.  Then we need two independent soil tests to prove that the ground is stable, (stupid). The facility will measure 2,000 Sq. Ft when completed, actually larger than our house!    It will include an office, a separate dust free room for rebuilding actions, and a rest room.  The remaining space will be open shop area.  There will be multiple windows and skylights for natural light.  The interior will be fully insulated with textured and finished walls.  We will have both 110 and 220 volt power via multiple outlets.  There will be a large compressor and vacuum system  located outside the building for noise reduction.  These will be plumbed throughout the shop for easy access. There will be a 10 ft. roll-up door on one end, a side entrance, and an outside entrance directly into the office. There will also be a utility sink.  Machinery planned includes: a large table saw, a full size drill press, a jointer,a  large band saw, a large buffer, and a combination vertical/disk sander.  We will also have the only soundboard press in Nevada.  Along with that goes the hot box and, eventually we hope to have a small spray booth.  Of course there will be LOTS of bench space and work tables. We will be building the entire structure ourselves with the exception of the slab, (too big a job), and exterior stucco, (too big a mess).  My brother in law is a licensed contractor in California and has agreed to help us frame it.  We are using a truss design so the roof should be easy.  Eventually I hope to build a patio outside for additional work space for when the weather is nice, and we will have a concrete driveway that goes around the house to the roll up door. When completed I believe that we should have a heck of a facility.  Alan Meyer and I will be running it as business partners under the name "Southwest Piano Technologies", (we already have embroidered shirts with a cool logo).  My wife will be our esteemed action rebuilder and official secretary.  Then of course to round it off is our black lab Joplin who will be the official "shop dog", (no piano shop should be without one). So that's the official announcement.  We have a very long way to go, and by building it ourselves, the process will take quite some time.  Having said all of that, I would now like to open the floor for discussion.  If anyone has any suggestions or ideas before we finalize the blueprints, I would appreciate hearing about them. Rob Goodale, RPT Las Vegas, NV </BLOCKQUOTE> </HTML>