[cmperry4]

Very impressive, Rob - I'm looking forward to seeing the completed premises.

You'll have to check out the workshop on the property I just bought near Austin some time. The place is the former townsite of Worby, aka Arizona, on the abandoned CNoR/CNR line from Portage to Brandon. I now own a 2.5-acre ghost town. The front half of the workshop is the former blacksmith's shop, to which a big old farm shed was mated up some years back. Tons of room for the toys.

Heat (in theory) is from a wood-fired outside boiler,cobbled from the firebox and boiler of an old steam tractor. Hot water is circulated from from the 'boiler' via buried lines by electric pump to a big radiator in the building (there are lines to the house in the opposite direction, with the rad mounted in the wood/electric furnace plenum. If you haven't considered a wood-fired outside boiler, check it out as an alternate/supplement to all-electric. (You don't have to find an old steam tractor - there are manufactured systems available for $$$). Have you also looked into a hydronic or geothermal heat setup?

I'm taking the Land Rover out to Worby on Monday for the winter, and plan to move the whole HUP project out there in the spring when my rental deal on the River Heights garage runs out. It's a two-hour drive, but I'll have all the weekend projects in one place (including the Ferguson TEA-20 tractor I'm hoping to grab on Monday if someone else hasn't already bought it.)