frost walls

[OIIIIIIIO]

Hi

So, my garage plan is too big for village ordinances (1200 sq ft vs 900 sq ft limit)...so I'm going to attach it to the house with a breezeway. Because I'm attaching it to the house, the building inspector says I need them to be on frost walls.

Now, I think the part of the house I'm attaching it to is just a floating slab (a screened in porch). Would I want to ask the inspector to take a look at that in effort to get around putting the garage on a frost wall and to just put the garage and breezeway on a floating slab or will that end up badly in that he would then make me put some kind of frost protection on the screen porch too?

On a side note we have very sandy soil in this part of the state and the building inspector has in the past told me he would have no trouble having the garage I'm building be on a floating slab...

Thanks for any input!

Patrick

 

[ForceFed70]

It's not so much the slab that has to be frost proof, but the structure for the roof. If you have posts supporting the breezeway roof, they will likely need to be placed on a concrete footing that goes below the frost line. In my neck of the woods, they consider that to be 2.5' it might be different in your area.

The garage itself will need to have frost walls.

Talk to your inspector. Every inspector and location has a different set of rules.

 

[Gary S]

Hopefully your screened porch isn't currently attached to the house because if it is, it is already a code violation. If you bring this fact up to an inspector, he could make you change that and add the frost walls under it before you would be allowed to build the garage, and the garage would still require the frost walls too.
It might make the best sense at this point to build the garage against the screened porch and not attach it. Let things float separately so you can meet code.
Unless your codes require a set distance between the detached garage and the house, you might be able to leave just a small gap between them and not attach them.
Here, my building codes require 10 feet distance between a detached garage and the house. Check your local codes.

 

[nehog]

Yes, agreed, be very careful about what can of worms you open there with the inspector. But, if you attach to the porch's slab and roof, you may want to make 100% sure that things won't move with the frost...

 

[Justanoldguy]

Gary S
The point of attaching it was to allow it to be bigger.
I guess you missed that one.