Drywall Vs. Plywood For Shop Walls?

Hi.

I have another project in the planning stages and was hoping for some opinions from the members. My home shop consists of a little over have of a extra deep two car garage. The situation I've run into here in California's Central Valley is that it is either too cold or too hot to work in there except for the five or six seasonal days we get. It was 115 degrees in the garage today. There is no space on our lot to build another structure so the the garage is my only option.

I am planning on intstalling a insulated roll up door on the side of the garage which would lead to a coverd welding/gringing area. Our garage doors are nearly forty years old and I plan on replacing them with insulated models. The current drywall on the walls is coming down so insulation can be installed, There is do drywall on the ceiling rafters so the plan is to insulate and install insulation in the ceiling along with some canned lighting and some moveable, ceiling mounted surgical lights that I scrounged from a clinic that was being gutted. Eventually I would like to install a central air system in order to keep the inside temperature between 45 and 90 degrees. I have a roll-around swamp cooler but I don't like the effects of the moisture on my tooling plus I am very susceptible to sinus infections and end up with pounding headaches every time I use the cooler.

The electrical outlets will be run via conduit over the walls and ceiling as will the pipe for the compressed air. My question now is should I cover the walls with 5/8" drywall or just go ahead and cover the walls with plywood? The drywall would obviously be less expensive while the plywood would be less susceptible to damage and provide a better anchoring surface.

Any thoughts?
Fire says drywall; convenience says plywood, decide where you will mount
Stuff on walls, layerDW over plywood. ........BLJHB
 
I have a pole barn shop so metal exterior walls. It has the white faced insulation typically used on pole barns then I skinned the inside walls with 1/2" shop grade plywood. I did this over 20years ago so each sheet was only $19. Even then I could only do a few at a time, took about a year to do the whole thing. The ply only goes up 8' with the white insulation above that. I like how easy it is to hang things where you need them. If I was to do the job today I would frame the inside using 2x4's and add insulation before the ply.
 
Metal building (Mueller) R-30 throughout and 3/4" BC plywood 8' up. One bunk did the job at $33 per sheet.IMG_0413.JPGIMG_0509.JPG
 
Back
Top