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Inner city garage

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ertman

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Jun 22, 2011
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A couple of years ago my wife and I started looking for a new house. She had all sorts of requirements, including being a lot closer to downtown than our current place. I only had one requirement, the garage had to be bigger than what I have now (a 22x20 attached garage.)

It turns out that such a house doesn't really exist, or at least not in our price range. So we bought an empty lot and started building about a year ago.

The most important part of the build has progressed a lot in the last few months...

Start off with a hole in the ground last October. We had planned for a thickened-edge slab. The city approved a thickened-edge slab. The city changed their mind at the last minute and we scrambled to put in a 4.5' deep foundation before the ground froze.

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Pour some footings, build a wall.

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And then winter hit hard and fast. Got the backfill done, but the slab was going to have to wait until spring.

But when spring finally did arrive, it was time to install some zoned in-floor heating.

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And finally, FINALLY pour the slab.

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With the slab poured, cured, and sealed, it was time to put up a garage! (I'm not sure if I can embed a video here, so clicky clicky to watch a time lapse of the framing, roofing, doors and windows.)


With the building up, the roof on, windows and doors installed, it's practically a garage. Sadly is relegated to storing stuff for the house build right now, but soon it shall be filled with cars and bikes as it was meant to be.

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ertman

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Jun 22, 2011
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The roof is built to match the house, plus the steep pitch faces SW which gives me a good place to install solar panels eventually. The hope is that I can use solar for the in floor heating.

This is located in Calgary.
 
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ertman

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Jun 22, 2011
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The city does not feel the need to explain their actions. They justified it by saying the slab could heave and the drywall could crack. Considering that the slab was to be built on flat ground that has been undisturbed for 60+ years I call B.S.

I could have had an engineer draw and certify the slab and force the city to accept that, but we were trying to get it poured before winter. Missed it by about a day...
 
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55cadillacking

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Apr 26, 2012
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Calgary
I was pretty sure this was Calgary from the pics, but I knew it was Calgary when you mentioned the "city" dicked you around. Looks like a charming and mature neighbourhood. I would venture a guess it is Rutland Park. What are your dimensions it looks quite massive.
 
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ertman

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Jun 22, 2011
Messages
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We're actually in Renfrew. When we were looking for a house or a lot this odd-shaped property came up for sale. It was only 10m wide at the front, but over 19m wide at the back and had an alley.

The house was designed specifically to fit on this lot and the architect was told to make the garage as big as possible without going over the "45% lot coverage" rule so we could stay within the contextual permit process.

(I don't know if it is the same elsewhere, but in Calgary there is a set of rules that you can follow to design and build a house that doesn't require extra permission or community consultation. Stay within the guidelines and you can build whatever you want. Stray slightly outside of those guidelines and you need to go through a different process called a discretionary permit. Every single detail of the project is up for negotiation with the city, you have to go through a community consultation process, and it costs several thousand dollars extra.)

Of course after making a bunch of compromises on the design to fit within the contextual permit rules, the city changed their interpretation of the rules and made us go through the discretionary process. At that point it was too late to redesign everything to take advantage of that process so we just coughed up several thousand more dollars and proceeded with what we had! (Oh, the city demanded a few more stupid changes, but we didn't make any changes of our own to the design.)

In the end, the garage is 24x48 with 13' ceilings at the peak. Room for 5 cars. It's not the biggest garage in the neighborhood (there are some bat-cave style garages in the area that are built into the hill UNDER the houses, fitting up to 6 cars tandem-style) but it will do!
 
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rixtrix1

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Aug 25, 2013
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Chandler, AZ (from west NE)
Nice sized garage. Did you consider hi-lift tracks to allow the doors to follow the roof line for useable more room inside? Amazing that you could build it so close to the edges of the lot.
 
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ertman

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Jun 22, 2011
Messages
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I completely bailed on providing any updates as we were building. Oops :)

The garage is what I would call 95% complete now. All the electrical is installed, all the insulation and drywall is complete, workbenches and storage is in.

I had in-floor heat in mind for the space, but after installing the pex in the concrete floors, I was shocked to learn how much it was going to cost to install a boiler and the related plumbing to make it all work. Around $6000 to go the boiler route (and that's on the LOW end of the possible costs!) vs. $1500 for a forced-air furnace. No heat at all just yet, and maybe not for a while since the space never got all that cold over the winter.

I'm patiently waiting for the new "green energy" rebates program to kick in here in Alberta before going any further with solar. The evacuated-tube solar systems look promising, and work out to around the same price as a traditional boiler set-up. That's a future project.

A couple of pics that I dug up. I'll need to take some proper photos and post them in the future. (Promises promises...)
 

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ertman

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Jun 22, 2011
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16
rixtrix1 said:
Nice sized garage. Did you consider hi-lift tracks to allow the doors to follow the roof line for useable more room inside? Amazing that you could build it so close to the edges of the lot.
Click to expand...

I looked into hi-lift tracks, but it almost doubled the cost of the garage door install (commercial tracks vs. residential tracks.) I plan to do a DIY hi-lift modification to the existing set up in the future.

We actually had to cut 8" off of the roof overhang on the one end of the garage after we built it. The biggest issue (no surprise) was with the city inspectors each having their own interpretation of the building code. The biggest issue wasn't with the distance from the property line, but the empty space around the gas and electric meters on the end wall! The code requires the building to be 1m from the property line, but a different part of the code requires the meters to have 1.5m of clearance all around them. When there is a fence right on the property line that becomes an issue...

The city passed all of the inspections as we built (foundation, electrical trench, gas trench, meter installs, framing) without a peep about the 1.5m clearance rule. Then on final inspection they wanted us to move the garage or move the meters.

Being a smart guy, I refused to do either. Instead I removed the fence (with the neighbors blessing.) Presto, 1.5m clearance around the meters. The inspector was FURIOUS but he was forced to pass us because there is nothing that says the 1.5m has to be fully on my property...
 
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rixtrix1

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Aug 25, 2013
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Location
Chandler, AZ (from west NE)
Sounds universally typical of building inspectors. Awesome workaround on the meter clearance issue! Good luck moving forward, and thanks, of course, for sharing.

Sent from my SCH-I435 using Tapatalk
 
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ertman

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Jun 22, 2011
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TomcoPDR said:
Wow this is so cool. The shear size of this thing, being inner cgy.
Click to expand...

Thanks. A lot of the neighbors assume there is a duplex on the lot, as the attached-double-double-garage is pretty common around here. When they see one of the doors open and realize it's all one garage they often stop to chat :)

A friend is building a house across the street on a steep hill - the alley is 20ft lower than the front street, so the garage will be lower than the basement. It's basically going to be a Batcave - under the back yard and connected to the house with a tunnel. He's trying to get the city to allow him to build it to be at least as big as the one I built :beer:
 
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