Help planning attached garage on new home construction

[joshfcb]

Greetings,

My wife and I are in the process of working with an architect to plan our new home. I have explained to him that we drive larger vehicles, (Chevy 1500 crew cab and Tahoe) and wanted to ensure that the attached garage was adequate for pulling in and having enough walking room to be able to get in the house. I wasn't happy with his first drawing and wanted to see if the experts could give some size advice. I have looked up the specs on each, but how much additional room should I add?

Special Notes; The attached garage will have a third smaller bay to catch the kids toys, bikes, balls, etc and I also plan on building a detached pole barn for boat, UTV, tractor, etc. I am sure that I will be back during the pole barn stage.

 

[Nowater]

Don't overthink it, park the vehicle side by side with the clearance you want in between them. Allow clearance on each side and front and back. Get out the tape measure and measure your space. That is what you want.

 

[gnpenning]

Josh find a open space and park both rigs as you would want them in the garage. Leaving room for opening doors. Have measurements for tool box's, equipment , and anything else you will have along the walls. Then make this out with cones, rocks, stick, box's, etc, allow for the room you need to walk around carry things. This will give you your size for you.

If your doors are single wide go with 10' x 8'. If double wide go with either a 18' or 20' wide door. Keep your doors 8' high for your rigs or higher. A good door company will have no issue with those sizes.

Welcome and good luck. Let us know what you decide. And don't forget pictures.

 

[Ray-CA]

If you're just going to park in the attached garage, I'd add at least 6-ft (maybe 8-ft) to the length of the vehicles to allow walk around room front and rear and 10-ft to the width for exit room and space between the vehicles.

Ray

 

[lakeroadster]

240" = overall length of the crew cab truck
36" = workbench depth
24" = distance from bench to nose of truck
24" = distance from rear of truck to overhead door
10" = wall thickness
10" = wall thickness
_____
344" = 28' - 8"

30' building depth

 

[joshfcb]

Its really amazing how the mind works, we have been sweating the details of walkways, windows, furniture placement and it never occuring to me to place the vehicles like I want to park them and measure how much room around I want to allow.

GJ to the rescue again!

 

[Hilltopmasonry]

Whatever you do make sure your garage is wide enough! Narrow garages **** especially with larger vehicles where you cant open the doors enough to get out where you are banging your door into the other car or wall


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Viper98912]

If you want good space, do individual doors that are 9' wide each. Have 3 ft between the garage door and the exterior wall, and 3 ft between the two garage doors. That should give you plenty of space for vehicle door opening.

For the depth, I'd say at least 24 ft deep.

 

[Voi]

I agree with Lakeroadster's math.

Also want to emphasize distance between overhead door opening and the wall shared with the house. You want to be able to leave vehicle doors completely open while unloading groceries and have room for family to walk around in both directions and get inside. Ours doesn't have that much space and it's a problem. I did some re-arranging and park our UTV there now so it's not as big of a deal but if we build I'll have at least 48" there.

Also, when we bought our house it had a 32" door from garage to house. Was going to put in a 36" door but went with 42" and am very happy with it. Wouldn't want it any other way.

 

[CraigStu]

I will never go w/ individual doors again. I like the 18-20 ft idea mentioned above. And minimum 9 on the 3rd bay. Also, I would probably not go w/ a 3rd bay being smaller. Unless it is really needed aesthetically, just make it the same size. The extra work of a foundation wall w/ a step and side walls and roof the same, nearly covers the difference in materials to keep it the same size as the other two. If the $ start adding up, you could reduce width a little. Which vehicle is used for the shopping and the family outings? It would be nice if it could be in the garage w/ doors on both sides open. But the other vehicle could be pulled in so the passenger side is against the wall and it's driver door doesn't need to be open at the same time as the other vehicle.

 

[Dick in Wisconsin]

lakeroadster lays out the process perfectly. Couldn't have done a better job myself!

IMHO ... you should be able to open the doors of either vehicle without the door hitting the other vehicle (or side of garage or shelving along the sides of the garage). It would be nice to have an additional 18" of room so you can have the door open and still get around the open door without too much trouble to "load" and "unload" the vehicle.

To accomplish this you're probably going to have to have separate garage doors for each vehicle. Again in IMHO if you're going a nice house I think its a terrible mistake to try to park two vehicles through a one large garage door, there just isn't enough room ... unless you want to park a pair of golf carts side by side. If you follow my logic in the preceding paragraph, you'll end up with quite a bit of room between the garage doors which would be a perfect place to put a tall, narrow shelving unit, or a vertical air compressor, etc. (Suggest you wire outlets accordingly.)

The same logic holds true between the vehicles and the walls along the sides of the vehicles. Those walls are PERFECT for storage shelves say 12" or 18" or 24" deep. Again you should be able to open the doors of the vehicles without the doors touching the shelving units and ideally have another say 18" to get around the open doors for "loading" and "unloading".

I can't tell where you live. But if you live where you get snow and ice on the vehicles often, I would highly recommend a channel drain underneath each vehicle so when the snow and ice melts the water goes under the respective vehicle and into its own drain ... rather than making the entire garage floor wet.

Melting of the snow and ice will be accelerated by the putting in-floor hydronic heat in the garage and keeping the temps at least 40 degrees or more. Coat the floor with Rust Bullet from Justin and your garage floor will not only look nice ... but will clean up easily as well.

 

[rossddvm]

I'll throw in my thoughts on length. My truck is a Silverado regular cab, 6 foot box. As short as you can get a full size truck. Crew or club cab add length or a longer box. My garage is 24 ft. long. There is a 1 ft. wide shelf in front of my parking space. If I park centered I have plenty of room to walk around the truck both sides. If I want to get something out of the back [it has a topper] and have room to stand between the tailgate and the door I need to park too close to the front to walk around that way. So even with the shortest full size truck 24 foot is just big enough. If I want to get a crew cab truck I will have to move the shelf and still be short on space. I would prefer it to be 28 ft. There are steps going into the mudroom attaching the garage to the house in front of my wife's parking spot. Same thing as far as if you want to get stuff out of the back you need to pull too close to the steps to go around that way.

 

[rossddvm]

I can't tell where you live. But if you live where you get snow and ice on the vehicles often, I would highly recommend a channel drain underneath each vehicle so when the snow and ice melts the water goes under the respective vehicle and into its own drain ... rather than making the entire garage floor wet.

Melting of the snow and ice will be accelerated by the putting in-floor hydronic heat in the garage and keeping the temps at least 40 degrees or more. [/QUOTE]

This was a major mistake when my attached garage was built, improper drainage. Many gallons of water are carried in on a vehicle with wet snow stuck to it. Drainage is VERY important if you live in an area that sees much snow. I don't have it and it is hard to emphasize enough how important it is. The in floor heat is awesome though.

 

[Jeffksf]

Go at least 18' wide on the 2 car garage door, standard is 16'. It made getting in and out so much easier in my old garage. Keep in mind standard parking lot spaces are 9' wide.

 

[StevenMorgan]

I drive the same 20' crew cab Silverado, and my wife has a Buick Enclave. Garage is 26' deep pole barn, meaning that the finished inside dimension is 25' deep. Both vehicles share a single 18x8 garage door and fit well considering it was as big as I could make the building on my lot.

I've got 4' on each side of the garage door for ample room off to the sides for tool boxes and the random stuff. Now that the garage is full of stuff and finished, its about as small as I can stand... There is certainly room for all my stuff and two large vehicles, but if my wife parks too far into the center of the garage, the door cannot be opened fully.

Knowing your car sizes, I'd recommend two 10' doors or one 20' wide door based on my experience. 18' wide is ample room for smaller or even normal sized cars, but when both vehicles are full size or extra big, you will feel the "tightness" even though everything fits.