Garage-Apartment in Eastern NC

[BlackDogFarms]

Garage-Apartment 30x40 in Eastern NC with vehicle lift capabilities

My wife and I just purchased 11 acres in eastern NC on a small creek that leads to a large river. We have about 900ft of creek frontage, 2 acres of wetlands, and the rest heavily wooded hardwood trees. No one else has ever built on this property and I am the first owner since it was deeded in 1934. I purchased the property from original owner about two months before she passed away at 85. The entire area was once owned by this family and folks have ever so slowly began moving in the area. We are at the end of a dirt road with about 12 other houses on it ranging from 2-11 acre home sites and surrounded by either creeks or National Forest land. Pretty unique and we are very excited as it is close to town but is far enough away to be out of city zoning laws.

The downside is there are no utilities and I have to bulldoze trees/brush to get a building lot.

Our plans are to build a 30x40 garage 1.5 stories with about an 800sqft 1 bed 1 bath apt to live in for 5 years until we build the house adjacent to the garage.

My dad is a general contractor so most of the work will be either subbed out or DIY. Myself and many of my friends and family including her father are all well versed in DIY construction. Both of our parents have made careers out of the construction industry. We have all the tools to DIY this project for the most part. So between the years of experience and construction (to include electrical) knowledge we are hoping to save quite a bit on construction. As an engineer I have my own knowledge as well as licensed PEs that I work with that can help with any structural sign offs. I am not a structural engineer however and am not proficient with CAD enough to draw my own blueprints in a short period of time.

Garage Specs:
30x40x10
3 car garage 9ft x 8ft tall possibly 9ft tall garage doors and one man door on the front. Interior stairs leading to the garage apt. with full bath (shower) under the stairs. 2x6 construction on 4inch concrete slab. 2ft block/brick with walls on top. See attached photos. We have decided to go with Hardy plank siding. I plan on adding more windows and a few more French style doors on the garage level. Light colored gray or white roll seam metal roof and most definitely gutters.

Apt:
10/12 pitch with 6 foot knee wall - 5 foot from exterior walls. 2 foot heel wall - allows us to have 6 foot knee walls with a 10/12 pitch roof given our overall footprint. two 16 foot dormers that will house the master bed room and the living room. Roof will be stick built without trusses to allow more width for the garage apt. Floor trusses will be used from the local truss manufacturer.

2 bed (one bedroom really small for guests) one bath. Open kitchen and living room with a 16x16 deck off the living room with exterior stairs. 9 foot ceilings where allowable. A walk in closet I could live in for her. We plan on finishing the spaces at all four corners where the roof slopes for storage. Basically four small rooms that are 4ft wide and go from 6ft to 2ft based on roof slope. Recessed can lights throughout, as well as, ceiling fans.

We plan on using a mini split HVAC system with a small wood stove for the apt. Haven't thought this out thoroughly yet. We may intend on doing a regular HVAC unit vs. mini-split. The Apt will have the highest R value insulation and U value windows as we can afford to ease the high electric bills in this area.

Garage will be finished with insulation. Eventually we will attaché the garage to the house with a breeze way so I have to keep that in mind. The garage will look over a 40ft wide creek at about 18ft elevation above the water level.
Drinking well will be installed on the property.

Things I am struggling with:
1. Do I install a 4th garage door on the back of the garage to give me the ability to pull through the garage with truck/trailer/boat etc?
2. HVAC system; mini-split or Florida style heat pump - open loop?
3. How many feet of concrete to pour in front of garage door entryway.

Met with the drafter today, everything is good to go except clarifying my floor trusses with point loads for the rafter knee walls.

We are open to any ideas, comments or suggestions from each of you.


Thanks for looking.

 

[drivesitfar]

Bdf: again welcome to the forum. Id probably put two dormers on one side of roof and maybe a full length deck on the view or river side if you can position garage that way. Would give you and your bride some nice evenings on the deck instead of always in small space. I like the door on other end of garage if only for extra air flow.

Sounds like a great piece of property.

Good luck

 

[BlackDogFarms]

We do intend on building the "Dream House" of approx. 2000sqft in 5 years, in which we are saving the "Best" view for the home.

 

[TheEquineFencer]

I'd talk with the local health department about the septic system, if you want you can probably go ahead and size it for the house and garage now and save down the road when you build the house.

 

[BlackDogFarms]

The attached pictures are of the property taken 2 months ago when we first purchased. There is a good driveway pushed to the end of the property that is about 650ft long, which is where the water views are. Not that is a large body of water but it is navigable by a 22 foot boat drafting 2.5ft. I have since done bush hogging and had a contractor come in and mulch some of the smaller brush which I will post later. The majority of the home and garage lot will be pushed by Dozer and Excavator around December. We can't hardly wait. Most of the trees range from 18" diameter up to one massive poplar tree that is a whopping 48"+ diameter. Really unique piece for this area of the state where pine trees are rampant.

 

[BlackDogFarms]

A few more pictures of the dirty creek that goes to the river.

 

[BlackDogFarms]

TheEquineFencer:

The septic is for a 4 bedroom now. I will have to take finagle the health department on the house by somehow eliminating the garage portion when comes to building the house in the next few years. Good luck huh. Stupid Government.

 

[drivesitfar]

BDF: good luck with getting the powers at be to turn a blind eye when you build the house. They'd probably make us here in my state build an entire new system or tear out the kitchen and bathroom in garage.

Best wishes and any more questions?

 

[BlackDogFarms]

Okay all I have a few issues I am trying to workout.

One based on the building inspector I have to get my front wall with the three garage doors engineered due to the 9 ft width garage doors. Sounds like LVLs over each garage door. I was hoping to use 3 - 2*12s as the headed but if an LVL is requires then so be it. The other issue on the front walk is the shearing requirement which I believe coincides with the LVL calculations somehow. This is where I am confused.

Two I would like to have 12-13' ceilings in first story for lift. Based on my calculations and the manufacturers does a 2 post lift for 10,000 lbs requires 4" concrete at 3000psi. If that is so my slab would be equal to that and have enough height clearance for the lift. I can have 10' stud walks I too if 3' of block to achieve my 13'. Then my 30' span engineered trussed onto of that equals 15' plus my 2' heel wall totals a whopping 17' of wall before my 10/12 roof pitch begins.

I am open to comments and recommendations. Thanks.

 

[BlackDogFarms]

See the attached image for the front of building to understand garage door, header, and shearing requirements.

 

[BlackDogFarms]

Scratch the 9' doors I meant 10' doors and moving the man door around the side of the house so that gives me 2.5' on the corners and in between each door

 

[drivesitfar]

BDF: i've never seen roofs that raise like that so will it open and shut or is it jusr your design program's way if showing a dormer?

I'd probably save the money and just put in a couple skylights since it looks like you have a wall of windows on the end.

Maybe a glass slider with a deck on the side with the wall of windows? And extend the roof?

 

[BlackDogFarms]

Added 4 ft to overall dimensions to assist in stair placement 30x44.have a guy at work that's a structural engineer designing my garage door beams/LVLs, wall sheeting, and possible beams in the garage instead of floor trusses. Just weighing my options.

 

[BlackDogFarms]

Side view

 

[padroo]

If you use floor trusses you can't have load bearing walls, meaning the roof load should not be on the floor trusses.

I spent some time in Eastern N.C. when I was in the Marine Corps. I had the Croatian National forest in my back yard. I always wanted to return there for retirement.

Good luck on your dream home, I was lucky enough to be able to build mine in Indiana. I don't have another one in my dreams. Lol

 

[CNGsaves]

+1 for balcony walkout with sliding glass doors or french doors so that you also have easy way to get sheetrock and large furniture up into the upstairs apartment. Dragging that stuff up interior stairs is real PITA.

Plus the balcony gives you a fire escape under worst case scenario.

 

[BlackDogFarms]

Yes the Croatan butts right up to our property. The roof line d will go to the exterior walls and the truss designer stated we could have point loads engineered into our floor trusses where our knee walls mount.

Yes the main reason for the exterior stairs is to assist with materials and furniture not to mention our local ordinance requirement for emergency egress

Looking forward to finishing the design and having it completed to begin the building process. It always takes longer than anticipated.

 

[drivesitfar]

BDF: are you getting the drawings for the last design you posted or have you made a few more changes? there is a member that just built his home on top of his garage and here's Jeopardy's link. he might not be too far from you so maybe you could ask to buy his plan or maybe he'll ship you a copy?

http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=290696&highlight=jeopardy

 

[BlackDogFarms]

We are making progress... attached are pictures right before the lot was cleared. We started the 29th of January and finished on the 8th. Only took them 4 days but the rain showed its ugly face.

 

[BlackDogFarms]

BDF: are you getting the drawings for the last design you posted or have you made a few more changes? there is a member that just built his home on top of his garage and here's Jeopardy's link. he might not be too far from you so maybe you could ask to buy his plan or maybe he'll ship you a copy?

http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=290696&highlight=jeopardy

We have made changes. We are sticking with our original design, we did make it a 30 by 44 instead of 30 by 40.

 

[BlackDogFarms]

Attached are pictures of the lot after it was cleared. It ended up being a lot bigger than we expected. There was a lot of brush and fallen trees that prevented us from being able to judge the actual lot size. We are estimating about an acre and a half cleared.

 

[BlackDogFarms]

More pictures of the lot and of the Hickory Flooring. We harvested 4 hickories and 2 beeches to provide us with Hickory hardwood flooring and the beech trees for the cabinets. It will cost us 3000 after the flooring and cabinet wood is kiln dried tongue and grooved and planed into 5 inch wide flooring. Typically would cost $12k for 1100 sf to get hickory flooring.

 

[BlackDogFarms]

More pictures including a sunset last week. Will post updated floor plans soon. We dropped the plans off at the drafter on Friday and should have those within two weeks.

Now our decisions are hardie board or the vinyl siding that has the wide face.

And we have decided to use regular metal roofing rather than stand and seam roofing due to the cost of the latter. Shingles still aren't out of the picture but would really like to have a light colored metal roofing for energy efficiency. And we love to hear the rain on the metal roof.

 

[Richard Cranium]

looks good so far, good luck. Please keep posting pictures

 

[BlackDogFarms]

+1 for balcony walkout with sliding glass doors or french doors so that you also have easy way to get sheetrock and large furniture up into the upstairs apartment. Dragging that stuff up interior stairs is real PITA.

Plus the balcony gives you a fire escape under worst case scenario.

We are going to have a walk out porch/deck on the back of the house. That walks out of the living room/rear dormer to a 16ft wide deck 14ft long. We will also have French doors on the deck to get furniture etc in and out of the house easier. Our bed room will be where the windows are on the front of the house, so no porch or balcony will go there.

We were hoping to put a wood stove in the living room up stairs but instead are going to most likely do gas logs and throw the wood stove in the garage.

Any comments or opinions anyone has is welcomed.