Thoughts on my floorplan

[His200HerScout]

My building inspector told me that he accidentally told me, months ago, that my limit was 1200 square feet for a detached garage. He thought I was in a residential area. He told me yesterday that I'm unlimited because it's an agricultural area.

So I withdrew my building permit application and have redrawn it as 32x52 instead of 26x46.

This garage will be for storage. If we're going to be working on anything, it will be in the other garage attached to our house. So I'm not too concerned about having plenty of workspace between vehicles because there won't really be any work being done in this garage.

I like this idea of having 3 small doors on the east side and 1 bigger door on the north side because I think it will let me get stuff in and out with the least amount of juggling.

Anyone have any thoughts or suggestions?

Thanks!

 

[sammerdog]

One thing to consider might be putting an overhead door on the back side of the shop if you have some land back there, giving you a pull-through stall. I think e-tek or one of the other guys out west called it a "Boat-door".

That term "unlimited" can get you in a lot of trouble buddy! I'm jealous.

 

[hblock72]

8' wide garage doors can get a bit tight with bigger vehicles. Especially trucks with wide mirrors. If you may be putting something like that in there (now or in the future) you may want to go with 9' wide doors. It'd be an easy upgrade with the space you have on that wall.

 

[pattenp]

8' wide garage doors can get a bit tight with bigger vehicles. Especially trucks with wide mirrors. If you may be putting something like that in there (now or in the future) you may want to go with 9' wide doors. It'd be an easy upgrade with the space you have on that wall.

I 100% agree. I think you'll be sorry later if you put in 8' doors. Go 9' as a minimum.

 

[His200HerScout]

Thank you for the suggestions -- I definitely don't want to regret anything in the future.

I changed the spacing between doors from 48" to 32" to allow for 9' doors.

I read at http://www.wallbracing.org/ that the spacing could be as low as 16" between doors by using the narrow wall bracing method... But I wonder if the inspector would frown at me (a DIYer) designing a garage with narrow walls.

 

[PurdueSD]

Trust me, you will find a way reason to work on stuff out there. Its too tempting.

Dont forget attic trusses, especially if you are concerned about storage. They only cost me a couple hundred bucks more and Ive got storage out the wazzoo, if i ever can get it organized.

Also, id step up to 8 x10 doors in the front.

Here is my floor plan to give you some other ideas.

 

[Kevin54]

I would not put a garage door in that is less than 9'. My car trailer was loaded one night so I wanted to pull it in the garage and unload it later. I literally had 2" on each side of the fenders. That was with a 9' door. I see you have a truck, so an 8' door would be tight with it if you would ever want to pull it through one of the other doors. If I had it to do over again...personally....I would not go less than 10' in width on a door. All for the fact that it makes it easier when backing in.

 

[SportFury59]

I would consider another door on the south side directly across from the north one if you have the land access. Kind of what I did. I'm building 30x48 and have a 16x8 on east side, 16x8 on north side and a 9x9 on west side.

 

[flesburg]

I agree with the wider doors. With my 12' doors I can back my car trailer inside, even without a straight shot at it. I have one 8' H x 12' W and one 7' H x 12' W. My third door is for lawn mower and wifes garden stuff and it is 7' H x 7" W.

 

[His200HerScout]

Maybe I went about this wrong. I started with "where do I want my cars to be parked?" and positioned them in the garage. Then I inserted doors in front of them so that I could drive them in and back them out without having to turn much.

I wonder if this is a better design because it has much wider doors.

And thank you for all of your suggestions.

 

[usa#1]

+1 on the wider doors as suggested earlier. (I would go at least 8' ft tall on the doors) I would double check the length of the Merc . You need to leave room behind it for the door to close and for you to possibly walk behind it. The current layout may not leave enough space to allow the truck door to open without hitting the Merc. (looks like you only have 16' to the truck door opening. I would probably make the garage deeper, say 36' just to have more space. Not trying to spend your money but it's cheaper to make it bigger when you first build it.

 

[e-tek]

Have you considered a "pull-though" shop style? You can park four cars in there and get any of them in/out anytime you want. With the 32x52 size you'd also have room for storage (shelves, cupboards, etc) on both sides.

Here's mine, it's 24x40: