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Residential Garage

A Place for Storing Automobiles, Garden tools and Sporting Goods

A residential garage is part of a home, or an associated building, designed or used for storing a vehicle or vehicles. In some places the term is used synonymously with "carport", though that term normally describes a structure that is not completely enclosed.

United States residential garages

A modern one-car garage, in the USA. In most American single family and town houses featuring a garage, the garage has a door on the side of the building for vehicles to enter and stay. Most garage doors open upward using an electric chain drive, which can usually be remotely controlled from the resident's vehicle with a small radio transmitter. Garages are connected to the nearest road with a driveway. Interior space for one or two cars is typical, and garages built since the 1960s typically have a door directly connecting the garage to the interior of the house (an "attached Garage"). Earlier garages were often detached and located in the back yard of the house, accessed either via a long driveway or from an alley.

In the past, garages were often separate buildings from the house ("detached garage"), almost resembling modern sheds. On occasion, a garage would be built with an apartment above it, which could be rented out. As automobiles became more popular, the idea of attaching the garage directly to the home grew into a common practice. While a person with a separate garage must walk outdoors in any type of weather, a person with an attached garage has a much shorter walk inside a building.

Garages are often where the attic entrance is located. Used also to store tools, bicycles, lawn mowers and other such items, most garages have unfinished concrete floors. Since they are heavily used for storage, and as work space for home improvement projects, garages sometimes cannot be used to protect the automobiles for which they were designed. Many two-car garages only have one usable space. Some garages contain a separate storage room to partially alleviate the problem.

British residential garages

Up-and-over garage doorThose British homes that have a garage have a single or double garage either built into the main building (thus subtracting from the living area), detached within the grounds, often the back garden, or in a communal block. As the typical size of a family car has increased significantly over the past thirty years some garages can no longer be comfortably used to park a car and increasingly the garage is used as a general storage space.

Traditionally, garage doors were wooden, opening either as two leaves or sliding horizontally. Newer garages were fitted with metal up-and-over doors. Increasingly, in new homes, such doors are electrically operated.

Traditionally a small British single garage is 8 by 16 feet (2.4 m × 4.9 m), a medium is 9 by 18 feet (2.7 m × 5.5 m), and a large single garage is 10 by 20 feet (3.0 m × 6.1 m). Family saloons are bigger on average than was the case 3 years ago, so the larger size is now preferred. A typical large family car like the Ford Mondeo is about 15 by 6 feet (4.6 m × 1.8 m), so even with the larger size garage it is necessary to park to one side to be able to open the driver's door wide enough to get into it.

External links

Further reading on concrete sectional garages

Notable garages

Hewlett-Packard, in the Silicon Valley, started its business in a garage, that is now a landmark.

Residential Garages for Car Collectors and Enthusiasts

Historically these garages have been hidden from a lot of people due to a combination of factors, including the private nature of valuable car collections and the real estate industries tendency to ignore such spaces as being places that people would be interested in living in. In the last couple of years a effort was started to help make these garage properties, sometimes called car property, visible and easily attainable for more people. That effort has been cultivated on a website called CarProperty.com. This Detroit News article and other major and mid level market media companies have documented the fact that residential homes with incredible garages, otherwise known as Car Property are here to stay. The fact is though that they have been around for a very long time. These car property garages are found in many countries around the world, not just the United States. References: Tom Torbjornsen, notable host of America's Car Show on XM Satellite Radio on November 23, 2008 Detroit News Article Major and Mid Level Market Media Articles