flooring for detached garage

[Ralph Mowery]

What kind of material could be used for the upper floor of a brick detached garage ?

I was thinking of some something like laminate wood or similar,but much of the stuff says not for unheated buildings. This garage is built so that it sets back against a hill. The front is where two cars can drive in and at the back there is a upper floor that is going to be built up as a nice looking room. Can not use carpet as I need something that is easy to clean mud and dirt from.

The upper floor will not be heated or cooled except in a rare ocasion that I might put a portable electric heater out there for a few hours.

This is in the middle of NC where it sledom gets below 10 deg F (but has reached -8) and above 100 deg F.

[Dean Hoffman]

Outdoor plywood with linoleum over it?

[Jim Joyce]

Way back in the day I did something similar to that with vinyl flooring, but after a couple of years I had a reason to lift the vinyl and found the floor underneath was wet and moldy. Would linoleum have a similar problem?

[Frank]

My garage is attached but unheated. I just use the upper part for attic storage and it has laminate flooring which has held up well.

Might point out I had trouble with the county over it. Ceiling is about

10 ft and just had a push up panel entry and I put in a pull down stair. County inspector noticed it when coming over for something else and increased my property tax for having an extra room. He never even looked in it to see it was just attic. I had to get his boss out to inspect it and remove the tax.

[Clare Snyder]

Under the dame conditions, the likely answer is yes. What about G1S plywood and a few coats of floor and porch enamel?

[invalid unparseable]

On Sun, 23 Aug 2020 12:04:14 -0400, Ralph Mowery posted for all of us to digest...

Ralph, is the structure able to support a floor? I am just putting this out as a consideration.

[Ralph Mowery]

Yes. It was designed to have a floor. This is a funny for most type of a garage. It is at the end of a driveway against a hill that is several feet higher than the frount of the garage floor. The ground was doug out so that the back half of the garage is below ground level about half way up. There is a house type door at the back and you go down about 4 steps to get to the ground. There is no access to that room from inside the garage.

The upper floor is enclosed with sheetrock and insulated. You might think of it as a bonus room if it was built on a house as an attached garage. At the present time there is no plans to heat or cool it. This might change,but even at that it would only be for a short time. The garage may not even have a car in it as there is an attached garage to the house and only 2 vehicles and 2 people in the house. It was built mainly to store the lawn tractor and other items you would normally find in a shead.

There is already a floor that will support the weight,but was wanting to put something like laminate flooring over it to make it look nice but easy to clean as the ground around the garage is mostly red dirt or clay. I think it is the same stuff they make bricks out of as across town there used to be a company that dug dirt out and made bricks out of it.

Someone said vinal but another said that they had tried it and afew years later there was mold under the vinal.

[Frank]

I meant to say composition board. Cheap stuff. Holds up just to support the junk I store on it.