269ft2 Max - Best Layout??

[E34]

Hi, just joined GJ after plenty of reading and inspirational lurking!

I'm building a house and unfortunately do not have permission for a garage.

However, here in Ireland you can build a detached garage once the internal floor area does not exceed 25m2(269ft2) and the height does not exceed 4M(13.12ft) for a pitched roof structure.

I'm not sure what form 'the box' should take, long narrow, wide short, or more square?

I currently have a BMW e36 hobby car, but plan to replace it with a Lotus Elise if I've any money left after the build!! The garage will store my hobby car and the daily driver will live outside. I want to have a good work bench and plenty of cabinet storage, do people find this more useful on the side wall or on the rear wall?

I would like to incorporate a scissor lift and will probably design the roof trusses to allow the hoist to raise into the roof space.

If anyone has had experience of similar sized spaces, any advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

E34

 

[IlliniJeeper]

269 ft2 is a 13' x 20' structure. Essentially an oversized single stall garage. If you have to keep the peak of the roof under 13.12', a 2/12 pitch roof would allow you to have a wall height of just under 12 feet. That's not a bad little workshop and would allow you to have a two post lift. At 13 x 20, you should have plenty of room for tools and workbenches, but the easiest way to figure it out may be to throw something in SketchUp and see if everything you want fits.

 

[Falcon67]

Cars are longer than wider. The best way I found to lay out my shop was to use sticks and string on the ground. Sketch a few layouts on graph paper, then go outside and stake it out. On the ground can tell you quick what may work and what won't. You can park your car in the stick layout and see real quick where the squeeze is. I drove my car through the "door" and parked it in the "shop" well before there was anything but grass and weeds.

 

[Voi]

In Ireland you can build a detached garage once the internal floor area does not exceed 25m2(269ft2) and the height does not exceed 4M(13.12ft) for a pitched roof structure.

I currently have a BMW e36 hobby car, but plan to replace it with a Lotus Elise if I've any money left after the build!! The garage will store my hobby car and the daily driver will live outside. I want to have a good work bench and plenty of cabinet storage, do people find this more useful on the side wall or on the rear wall?

So that's interior floor space? If you build the wall with wider lumber the exterior footprint can actually be bigger than if it were built with less wide lumber?

Do you know the shallowest roof pitch you're allowed to build?

If I were in your situation I'd want a swing door on either side of the overhead door and I'd want it on the driver's side of the car. If I were mostly pulling the car in forward I'd want the swing door to the left of the overhead door since the driver's side is on the left in the US. If I were mostly backing the car in I'd want it on the opposite side.

Then I'd want enough room on the opposite side for the door to open all of the way. Then I'd figure out what length was left.

I like my cabinets and bench on the rear wall for the most part.