L-shaped garage

[LawnDart79]

Good Evening Everyone:

I am in the planning stages of building a new garage and wanted to ask some questions.

A little info first...I want to build an L-Shaped garage, 10' sidewalls, 36' long and 26' deep at the two car end. I want the one car end to be 30' deep. This end (the L part) will be 14' wide, have scissor trusses to accommodate a 10,000# lift and have a 10'x8' door.

I'm wanting to build this way (L shaped) because I want the garage to have some character and don't want it to look like I just built a huge shed in my backyard (as this thing will be fairly close to the house). I still want to have a decent size building to work in though.

Questions I have are...

Does anybody see anything wrong with this idea?

Does anybody have any suggestions to improve my plan?

Does anybody have a better idea?

I attached a picture as an example of what I'm talking about.

Thanks!

 

[thisoldcrackhouse]

The garage I put up is a smaller, mirror image of the one in the photo (30' wide, 22' deep with a 2' bump on the front). Like you I wanted a little more character than what a garage having the whole front in a single plane offered. It's a little more trickier/expensive to frame and roof but not all that bad. The major difference between the photo and mine is the bump-out has a 3' entry door with that 1/3 serving as a dedicated 10'x24' workshop. Only suggestion I can think of is make the single-vehicle door a 9 foot wide unit, the 8 footers are a little narrow IHMO.

 

[jkeyser14]

Do you have room to stick the single car section out 10' further instead of 4' and make it a bit wider? Then you could have all three doors open towards the inside of the "L" and you would have a nice space in the corner of the L so you could put your tool boxes, workshop, & whatever else there. In otherwords, here's my C (car) and W (workshop) idea:

WCC
C

 

[LawnDart79]

I'm planning to have the single car door be 10' wide by 8' tall. That way I will be able to pull in 1 ton pickups with wide mirrors if I need to. I have a 1/2 ton Ford that barely fits into a 9' wide door now.

As far as the size of the structure, I'm already about as big as I can go. Actually, at 36' wide, it's bigger than what I originally measured for, but I know it'll still fit. My wife is already ticked off that this thing is going to take up lots of yard space. I do really like the idea of having all the doors open into the "L", but unfortunately I don't have the room to do so.

 

[stingry]

I am also building an L shaped shop for the same reason as you. I want it to somewhat mirror the architecture of our house and not have it just be a big ole box. Mine will be on a somewhat larger scale (3700 Sq ft). One problem I can see is that using scissor trusses on the 14' wide section will not gain you much add'l headroom for the lift. Have you consulted a truss company yet?

Cheers
Steve

 

[ket-tek]

Stingry makes a good point, that only 14'w isn't gonna get you much pitch in the center of the trusses.

And 14' wide is tight for a stall to work in with a lift, especially if your talking about working on 250/350 sized trucks. If you can't get any bigger overall and have to contain your footprint I would probably go 18'w on the single and shorten the double from 36'w to 32'w. It would be much nicer when taking off wheels, pulling axleshafts, and give more room moving welders and tool carts around the lift and the vehicle.

I have a 12' flat ceiling and I really wish it was 16' or so and I'm mainly working on cars and minitrucks. I do service my 2500 express van on the 4post and it only goes a couple feet off the ground before it's into the ceiling. I'd go as tall with the side walls as your local code will allow.

Otherwise I like the L shape, I think it looks good having a roof line change, and also separates work areas inside nicely.

 

[dougmac]

Here is mine.... it is a bit bigger than the one you are proposing. The shorter bay is 20X30 and the taller bay is 17X35.

 

[LawnDart79]

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I had to cut the proposed garage size down to 26x30 with reverse gable.

Not what I really wanted, but still better than the 12x25 garage I have now.