New Garage Brain Storming

[cloves]

Hi everyone, glad I came across this site, found a lot of useful posts.

I am planning on building an attach 4 car garage to my house. I wanted to add 1 lift so I can do work on my cars. My buddy told me that the height of the garage needs to be at least 12 feet. Now I have a few books on framing and it seems they all show ways to do framing, but it seems that they all show the floor joists running across. Now that leaves me thinking if I build a garage and have the floor joists above that would mean the top of the car would hit the top of the joists unless I make the garage super high no?

In reality I would just need one of the spots for the lift, the rest of the garage could me the standard 8' or 9'.

 

[Stuart in MN]

What is your intent for the second level / attic space, and what roof pitch are you planning? Will there be living space or storage space up there? Assuming you won't be storing your collection of lead ingots up there, prefabricated trusses are the common method of construction, and you can get them with a raised or cathedral style lower chord which will allow the extra headroom needed for a lift. You would use the conventional trusses for the majority of the garage, and then throw in a few of the raised style ones over the stall where the hoist will be located. You can do a google search on 'roof truss styles' to get an idea of different types that are available, and/or talk to your local lumber yard.

 

[cloves]

Thats a good question Stuart. Since I am in the early planning stages I am not even sure about whether (based on cost) I will be able to put a living space up there or just leave some sort of crawl space. I am going to research roof truss styles see what I can up with. Thanks for the suggestion! I am going to try to figure out the pitch of my current roof. Since its attached I think we want it to match that as well.