Garage width

[FlavortownPublicWorks]

I'm about to start construction on a planned 20x30 garage. (Apparently I'm not the only Michigander right now planning to build a 20x30) Walls will be 2x4, door is on the 20 foot side. My lot is narrow (50ft), and has big old trees on the side opposite the garage. There's not a lot of back yard as it is, and the city is making me put the building 4 feet off my property line (current garage is 2 feet off property line), so basically it's taking up half the width of the lot. I need some back yard for the kid to play in. I really really don't want to go wider.

Is a 20 ft (exterior) wide garage useable as a 2 car garage? There will be nothing on the walls to the sides of the car. The cars parked in the garage would be my 1962 Ford Falcon, which can be very close to the wall most of the time, and my wife's car which would typically be some mid-sized crossover.

Also, am I going to hate life if I go with a 16 foot door? I can do either 16 or 18, but a 16 footer LOOKS better.

 

[jwh]

I had a 20'x22' years ago. My door was on the 22' side. I had a 16' door and a man door on that side. With a truck, a mid size car of the '70s AND stuff on both side walls it was tight but doable. The way you are describing what you're planning with nothing on the walls and your Falcon pulled over it should be the same as mine - tight but doable.

Good luck!

John

 

[BruceMc]

I've mentioned this in other threads, but you don't have to guess. Just get the tape measure out, figure out the length and width of the two vehicles, and you'll know exactly how much room you are left with. A pencil, piece of papaer and a ruler and you can get a visual to work with. Or if you're working off of plans, simply draw it out on a copy of the prints.

 

[Monte406SS]

My old house had a 22' wide garage, new house only 20'. That 2' made a big difference to me. I was able to keep the wife's car in the garage in the old house, now it gets a little too tight with the door swing.

 

[icthruu74]

Mine is 24’ wide and it seems snug. But then again it’s rare we can park a car in there anymore too...

 

[6768rogues]

A lot of parking lots have 8 foot wide spaces. If you park in the right spot and you don't drive something that is as big as an aircraft carrier on wheels, you can make it work just fine.

 

[James-W]

You can also get some string and some metal stakes to make this easier. Mark off 20X30 with the stakes and string. Get a rattle can of paint and paint the grass where the string is. Then take down the string and the stakes and park your cars as if this were the actual garage. Now you have a much better idea if this size garage will work out for you or not.

 

[Hilltopmasonry]

Wider is better but if you keep the sides clear and you can back one car in you can park both cars close to the side walls leaving plenty of room in the center for at least the driver to fully open their doors it’s not too bad. Any passenger will have to get in/out outside the garage thought but that’s not too bad

I would go with the wider overhead door, you won’t regret that because it ***** catching your mirrors on the trim


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[kelchm]

I think 22' is the minimum I would be happy with.

 

[BIG-BRO]

Not sure what you plan approval or inspections are, but if you have only one foot or two foot walls on each side of one big door there may be “shear wall” concerns. Not much resistance to wind / side loads with the very short return walls.
If you google “shear wall garage door” a bunch of Garage Journal threads will come up in the results.

May be some extra considerations of how to build those small wall sections...or may sway your garage width and door size decisions.

 

[[memphis]]

I'm currently planning something similar... a 12" drainage pipe is making me offset my building and I don't want to eat up the yard.

I was thinking about an 18x40 to give me some width but double deep parking. 1.5 car lane anyway so I have to pull a vehicle out to move onto the street regardless.

Reviewing shear walls now...

 

[CombatNinja]

20' is too narrow. It will continuously annoy you that it is not the size it should be. Your 30' length is awesome, it is a shame to cut the width down like that. I have no reference point of how this thing is sitting on your lot but is there any way to get a variance to build it where the current one sits (two feet off the property line)? Some municipalities won't let you build new in a certain place but you can 'repair' the old one where it sits by leaving up like half a wall and building the whole new thing onto it. Seen it done in those 'historic' districts and it is an awesome way of getting around stupid rules.
I almost want to say you would be okay giving up a couple of feet of depth if you could get the width back to 22' depending how it sits in your yard and how much can manipulate the open space for the kids. Bah, I never see kids playing outside these days anyway, take 2 more feet of the yard and build it right. Just for reference, those terrible cookie cutter subdivision garages are all 20' and 20' deep. It is just so they can advertise it as a "two-car garage" while they know it will just hold a lawnmower and a bunch of bikes and junk while the cars sit in the driveway.

 

[sleek98]

I have a 20’ wide by 29’ deep attached garage with a 16’ door. We took a 3 car front entry and made it a 2 car side entry. If you back the falcon in 2-3” off the wall she should have enough room to pull in and not door ding you but it will be tight. If she’s going to get a bigger suv it won’t work with both cars.

That’s my biggest regret is not bumping it out 2 foot wider to get my truck in there.


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[CraigStu]

20W is really minimal. But, if that is all you have room for, that is all you have room for. If possible I'd go for the 18 ft door.

 

[isb cornbinder]

The kid will grow up in a few years and not be interested in playing outside.

 

[Homerr]

A 16' wide door is fine if you are approaching it head on. 20' wide with a 16' door leaves 2' on either side, really a bare minimum structurally in most cases. Your building department may have minimum prescriptive ways to build this without getting an engineer involved.

Going with 1'/18'/1' is really getting in to steel portal frame ($$$) territory in a lot of instances.


I have a 20'x30' garage area with an 18' door (but one side also has a 12'x15' room attached to provide 13' (12'+1') of lateral shear). Mine is on an alley so there's a 90 degree turn-in. The extra 2' of door width really helps out. The interior width is tight for the daily driver but doable with the weekend car all the way to the side. I even have vertical dowels on base stands with an orange construction ribbon between at a height that can be seen from within the DD which I place at the corners of the weekend car. My wife has been known to misjudge distances!

 

[Falcon67]

Ours is 22' wide with a 16' door. Fits a med size Ford Fusion and an F150 Super Crew. Crew parks on the right and has to fold the right side mirror in. 20' is doable with the Falcon, but will still be a big tight. My preference would be 24' exterior if at all possible.

The 16' door is plenty, I can fit two mid size race cars in through a 16' with a two post lift in the way.

 

[finn]

I had (if I remember correctly) a 21’ wide garage for over 25 years. I restored a 69 Boss 302 Mustang in there while a mid sized GM sedan was parked. The fact that one stall was the full depth of the house helped.

Later I parked an Expedition and a 70 Road Runner in there. That was too tight. A 65Falcon or Fox body Mustang fit ok, but I did hit the mirror on the door frame once squeezing in.

If you live in one of the hot suburbs like Royal Oak, you’re going to have to live by the rules, so good luck. My experience suggests you will be ok with small cars.

 

[FlavortownPublicWorks]

Thanks for the discussion, guys. I measured the parked cars, I think i'll be OK with the 20ft width and 16 ft door. Measuring out a 19ft 4in area around the cars still provided room to partially open the doors on both cars. Not too worried about the Falcon's paintjob, since this is what it looks like:

Anyway, not ideal, but it'll work. It's not my forever home or forever garage. I think I'd really have to battle the wife to get another 2 feet into the yard, and 4 feet is entirely out of the question. I'm just happy to have the space to work in the back. Sadly, there is no room for variances, my city building department is full of zoning zealots on power trips (don't get me started on my opinions of zoning...).

 

[BillK]

20 ft is going to be tight but if you can back the falcon in on the left side close to the wall then your Wife can pull in on the right and should be ok. We have a 16 ft door and we get my 99 Tahoe and my Wifes 84 Riviera in just fine but I have almost 5 ft to the left of the door so its easy for my Wife to open the door on the Riv on that side. We have to watch the mirror on the Tahoe but it still fits ok. With a smaller suv/crossover and the Falcon up against the wall it should work ok.

 

[Lelandwelds]

You can also get some string and some metal stakes to make this easier. Mark off 20X30 with the stakes and string. Get a rattle can of paint and paint the grass where the string is. Then take down the string and the stakes and park your cars as if this were the actual garage. Now you have a much better idea if this size garage will work out for you or not.

I did this when I built my house. Electrical cord and water hoses are best for the stuff you arent sure of the placement. Paint can be covered with dirt and leaves if needed.

Put your benches and tool chests at the back wall and keep the clutter down. It will be annoying but doable. Can you add an overhead door on one side? Open it when working for instant elbow room.

 

[PCMusicGuy]

It really depends on the cars. For two later model Corvettes side by side, I would want 28' wide. For two Nissan Rouge's, 20 to 22' wide would be fine.

 

[CombatNinja]

So you would want an additional 6 to 8 feet of width for a couple of cars that are literally 1" wider than a Nissan Rouge? WTF

edit: and please don't say you need 6+ feet because the Corvette has longer doors. You simply are not grasping the scale of a Stingray relative to a new family CUV. Corvettes look rally wide because of the proportions. Take a tape measure to them and they are relatively tiny by today's standards.

 

[daveindenver]

I see you mentioned 2x4 walls. What height are you going with? You might want to consider going with 2x6 walls - at least check what it would cost for the upgrade. I have 9' walls on a new 24x21 garage and that is one thing I would do differently if starting over. My house is all 2x4 as so many are which was part of my reasoning to go 2x4 but keep in mind that there are interior walls adding to the structure of a house and there are not for a detached garage. So, it will not be quite as solid.

Another thing I would do differently is I would have had it wrapped with house wrap before the siding went on. Also would have spent more time thinking about the options for how the roof is constructed - stick framed - ridge vs beam, trusses, storage, will there be a ceiling ever, etc.

All tough things to change later on. Are you building it or having it built?

 

[BigEd]

Is it possible to leave standing the wall that is 2 feet from the property line and then build the other three walls?

We had a similar issue with property line setback and built a three car garage, using one original wall that was two feet from the property line. Less than a year later the original wall "had issues" and was repaired.

 

[FlavortownPublicWorks]

Is it possible to leave standing the wall that is 2 feet from the property line and then build the other three walls?

Not really. It's a 70+ year old construction. The foundation is crumbling, slab is very broken, there are a lot of issues. It would probably cost me double to do something like that. Maybe if this was my forever home, I'd go through that kind of fight, but I'm paying someone to do it, and that's definitely would complicate things.

 

[CombatNinja]

Flavortown, any way to show us a schematic of the lot and proposed garage? I think the collective here could come up with a great solution if we could see what you are working with.

 

[FlavortownPublicWorks]

View media item 84635
View media item 84634
There are some large trees on the left side of the back yard that are not shown in this drawing.

 

[Flargen]

If you have any storage needs, take every extra inch of width you can get.

I have a 20' wide attached 2-car garage with a 2001 Cherokee and a 2001 M5 in it. The moment you allocate even 16" on each side for shelving, things start getting cramped. If you can count on the long walls being bare, you can probably live with 20'.

 

[RaGiN Z]

Any chance of getting an ordinance from the town being that you are replacing an existing building to get those extra two feet back?

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[CombatNinja]

Easy solution: make it a 25' x 25' and you get 5 extra feet of driveway, which is where the kids will actually end up playing most likely. You get a bigger driveway and 25 square feet of additional garage space. I would also have the roof pitch the opposite way so that if you ever want to do a lift or anything, you have the head room where you want it. If the wife starts balking at this, show her an elevation pic with two 10' doors instead of one big door and throw a couple of dormer windows on the front. This will dress it up and it will seem 'cute' to her and not like a big 'shop'. The dormers are great for letting in natural light while still providing security.

 

[CombatNinja]

One ting to keep in mind about my proposed solution above is to strongly resist the demands of your spouse that you add a room above the garage as a 'rec' room for the kids. This will kill your headroom and the stairs will eat up a ton of floor space in the shop below. That is one risk of going with the dormers on the outside, it gives wives ideas.

 

[theoldwizard1]

First, appeal the zoning set back to the zoning board. They really should allow you to keep your 2' set back. Take pictures of the current garage, lot line and fences. Have them printed on a full size sheet of glossy "picture" paper using the highest wuality settings on your printed or have them done at a place like Kinkos.

If they still refuse, is it possible to so a "remodel" by knocking down 3 walls and leaving that wall alone ? I have seen some remodels down this way where they have more than DOUBLED the floor space of the house (looks odd compared to the other houses in the neighborhood).

Last and more importantly, I would never build a garage that wasn't at least 24x24. 28x32 would be even better.

 

[CombatNinja]

The OP has already replied to that suggestion and said it is not feasible for a variety of reasons, foremost being that he is paying someone to build this garage and that would probably drive his cost through the roof paying a crew to carefully graft a new garage onto and old wall. That and a lot of contractors would be very leery of putting their name on something so clearly designed to skirt setback rules. Remember, the homeowner builds maybe one or two garages in his lifetime. The contractor builds 15 every year and does not want to give code enforcement and local government the idea that he is facilitating the skirting of their rules. So that is a non-starter I think.
I do agree that he should at least apply for the variance. The worst they can do is refuse ti grant it and he is back at square one.

 

[Stevie-Ray]

My 16 foot door is all I've ever needed, so I doubt you'll regret that. My garage is 24x48, but the 24' side is where the large OH door is. On the adjacent side there is a man-door and a manual 8' OH door. My 2000 Lightning in on the right, and it's NOT very close to the side, as there is a bunch of **** on the floor next to it, and I can still get my 2016 Taurus in without issue, for most of the year. The Taurus sits outside during the summer, so I don't have to park my PWC in it's hole, and rather use the T's parking space to keep it ready to go at a moment's notice. The garage also houses my snowmobile, my ATV, and my tractor, along with 5 tons of **** that I need to get rid of.

 

[Jamie V]

What about the height? Can you go high enough to put a 4 post lift in there to put the falcon on and park the other vehicle under it?

My garage is 24’x40’. The 24’ width is too tight for two full size vehicles (with stuff on the side walls). I wish I could have gone 30’ but not an option. The 40’ depth is a weird depth. It’s not quite deep enough for two full size vehicles with anything on the back wall. In hindsight 44’-48’ deep would have been a huge difference.

 

[CombatNinja]

I agree on the height being important. Build it about as high as your zoning will allow without making it look stupid in relation to the house and use scissor trusses to give yourself lots of headroom. That is why you want to switch the orientation of your roof pitch from the picture you posted. They way you have it, even if you use scissor trusses, you will only have good clearance in the very center of the garage, which is NOT where you want to put a lift. Turning the roof 90 degrees gives you good clearance in the middle portion of the whole garage which is infinitely more useful.
Listen carefully to the guys here that are telling you that the measurements are important. Look at the guy above that is basically saying that his 40' deep garage is kind of pointless. I pretty much guarantee that he pulls a full size truck waaaaaay in just because he has the space, has workbenches and stuff on the back wall and STILL has 10' of wasted space in front of the truck that is kind of useless. He probably feels like he could've built a 32' deep, saved a bunch of money in materials and labor and ended up with functionally the same thing at the end of the day. Everyone here is trying hard to tell you that 20' wide is not going to work for your needs the way you have described them.

 

[PCMusicGuy]

So you would want an additional 6 to 8 feet of width for a couple of cars that are literally 1" wider than a Nissan Rouge? WTF

edit: and please don't say you need 6+ feet because the Corvette has longer doors. You simply are not grasping the scale of a Stingray relative to a new family CUV. Corvettes look rally wide because of the proportions. Take a tape measure to them and they are relatively tiny by today's standards.

I grasp the scale just fine. My Rouge is just over 12' wide with both doors open. My Corvette is 14' wide with both doors open. Why is that not relevant? If I were building I would want room to have a door open and to be able to walk around it without closing it.

 

[FlavortownPublicWorks]

A lot of good ideas here but ultimately I think I'll proceed with my current plan. I have the permit for the current plan, I feel it's a good compromise between what the city will approve, the wife will approve, and what I have money for.

As stated before, the zoning board and building department here in town are a bunch of blowhards. They basically told me there would be no variances unless I met four very strict criteria, and that I could still apply, but basically it would be a waste of $350 dollars.

Mean building height restriction is 14 feet. Never mind that half the garages in the area are grandfathered two story and have not been an issue... Did I mention that I despise zoning, and think it is making our towns ever less livable and fuels needless suburban expansion? Nevermind, I gotta shut this tangent down before it makes me go to bed pissed off again.

Changing the direction of the roof ridge, adding dormers, etc are all good ideas, but ultimately going to cost a lot of extra money. This needs to be a budget build. As much as I'd love to have the falcon on a 4-post, or a 2 post in here, it's not happening. At best, I'll get some MaxJax in here someday. Someday I'll build my dream garage, this is just going to be a nice in-between.

Demo of the current garage starts tomorrow, wish me luck!

 

[jhrodd]

This is a 20x30 garage works fine for me but I don't park 2 cars in it. I converted it from an unfinished shop building that was already on the property. Got a nice 600 sq.ft. apartment above it.