Garage size?

[rev]

Excuse me if this has been raised before but I have a theory that one of the important reasons larger car like the Falcon, Commodore etc. have given way to mid size care is the trend in all the new homes/apartments that are popping up all over the cities to build garages and carports that are so narrow you can't open the doors properly. Due to the small footprint on the suburban block most of these new dwellings skimp on space.

I see many each day that my FG would have trouble fitting into and opening the doors fully so that parents etc can access their kids etc.

I can't recall that mentioned along with the usual suspects like economy etc.

Bob

[homegrown]

That wouldn't bother me. Would park my car outside How many people with places like this use there Garage as a store room instead of their cars.
We'll always have a big car though. We used to have a Holden Viva and everytime we went out it meant folding half the back seat down because we couldnt fit the baby pram in the back.

[OffRoadFalcon]

I have noticed garages can be quite small... Many new housing estates are like that.
Our next door neighbours garage is quite small, a 4WD would never fit, and you'd be pretty squashed to fit our two Falcons in there as well!
They have a VE Commodore and a Mazda 2. The driver moves the car out of the garage first, and then they all get in.

We visited some family friends last year in Fremantle. They live on a sub-divided block and there was little parking anywhere so we parked the AUII wagon in their garage, and you couldn't close the garage door, the wagon was too long!

Our garage is reasonably large. about 3m to the roof, 6.5m long (JUST fits an F250!) and at least 6 wide. We store stuff in there along the walls, as well as shelves, and the cars both fit easily with room to open doors enough.

[Jim Goose]

The idea of a garage is to park your car in it...

Go through all these new suburbs with the same boring looking homes and everyones car is outside... now even better still is the fact these new estates dont allow front fences... then people cry when their cars are broken into or keyed...

This stupidity of leaving your car on the road only invites trouble, not to mention its exposed to the elements constantly, this again demonstrates our throw away attitude... meh the paints ****** after 2yrs... could it be because its left outside ALL the time?

Then of course you have storms, hail, cyclones etc..

New homes are built to budget and unless you have input in the design stage your stuck with a useless storeroom/ laundry.

[OffRoadFalcon]

Originally Posted by Jim Goose

The idea of a garage is to park your car in it...

Go through all these new suburbs with the same boring looking homes and everyones car is outside... now even better still is the fact these new estates dont allow front fences... then people cry when their cars are broken into or keyed...

This stupidity of leaving your car on the road only invites trouble, not to mention its exposed to the elements constantly, this again demonstrates our throw away attitude... meh the paints ****** after 2yrs... could it be because its left outside ALL the time?

Then of course you have storms, hail, cyclones etc..

New homes are built to budget and unless you have input in the design stage your stuck with a useless storeroom/ laundry.

Quite a lot of said house's garages are in a massive mess too! Often just filled with junk. We've organised ours and being a big space, we can use it for storage as well as for cars!

Unfortunately when I find and buy a Fairlane for my first car, I'm going to probably have to leave it on the driveway... my main concern about that is the car will be in the weather!

[neptune blue]

All valid posts
Next to your house your car is the next biggest investment so I am a loss to see people leaving them in the weather, using their garage for storage space

The size of a double garage used to be 6m x 6m. I think this has been reduced to 5.5 m squared. This doesn't sound like much of a reduction but if you drive a large sedan and the misses has a wagon there ain't no room for anything else

our last house and had a garage that was 6.5 x6.0 which was our speciation and we made sure the house had plenty of internal storage and we built a small shed for gardening stuff

The house we are in now as two double garages measuring 6.6m x 6.8m again specified by us when we built it.

We have the daily drives in one with heaps of space for racking and storage and the other houses my coupe all my spares work bench and tools

Anything not car related is in the shed

Increasing the size of a standard garage isn't a large expense so I don't understand why you wouldnt do it if you were building
You can never have too much storage space

[302 XC]

Originally Posted by Jim Goose

The idea of a garage is to park your car in it...

Go through all these new suburbs with the same boring looking homes and everyones car is outside... now even better still is the fact these new estates dont allow front fences... then people cry when their cars are broken into or keyed...

This stupidity of leaving your car on the road only invites trouble, not to mention its exposed to the elements constantly, this again demonstrates our throw away attitude... meh the paints ****** after 2yrs... could it be because its left outside ALL the time?

Then of course you have storms, hail, cyclones etc..

New homes are built to budget and unless you have input in the design stage your stuck with a useless storeroom/ laundry.

Some new estates you cant have anything parked forward of the dwelling,nothin,car,truck,bus or even a trailer,all nice n clean
Some councils are handing out fines if your car blocks a pedestrian walkway
That entails the footpath or that area of the driveway between the footpath

[Powdered Toast Man]

I just bought a new unit with a single garage and while my Falcon does fit you can't open the doors fully. The mirrors just clear the sides of the roller door aperture, it being narrower than than the garage itself. It fits though, the little old lady across from me routinely reverse parks her AU in hers.

But then I don't park my car in there anyway, too much hassle to do everyday. Plus I would have to organise the few things that I have in it to allow for space. I park in front, which is still between the wall of my unit and the neighbouring unit so its still a bit tight. I have many a scar on the doors edges, scraping the paint off on the bricks. The whole driveway of the complex is quite narrow really, only just over 1 car wide.

[OffRoadFalcon]

Originally Posted by 302 XC

Some new estates you cant have anything parked forward of the dwelling,nothin,car,truck,bus or even a trailer,all nice n clean
Some councils are handing out fines if your car blocks a pedestrian walkway
That entails the footpath or that area of the driveway between the footpath

Often you'll be asked to move anything that looks messy, or is on the verge, which is all the space beyond the letterbox line.

A neighbour of mine parked her Nubira on the verge, and left it there a week before the ranger asked her to move it. Somehow by that time she had lost the key, so we had to break into the car and take the handbrake off.

[Franco Cozzo]

Originally Posted by Jim Goose

The idea of a garage is to park your car in it...

Go through all these new suburbs with the same boring looking homes and everyones car is outside... now even better still is the fact these new estates dont allow front fences... then people cry when their cars are broken into or keyed...

This stupidity of leaving your car on the road only invites trouble, not to mention its exposed to the elements constantly, this again demonstrates our throw away attitude... meh the paints ****** after 2yrs... could it be because its left outside ALL the time?

Then of course you have storms, hail, cyclones etc..

New homes are built to budget and unless you have input in the design stage your stuck with a useless storeroom/ laundry.

We've left all our cars outside in the driveway or on the street since 1994 and nothing has ever happened to any of our cars.

Says a lot about your suburb and its inhabitants if you have property damage happening.

Personally I think we should build a massive wall around Melbourne and all its suburbs, and they can have their ghetto all to themselves .

[rev]

So for somebody with a smaller garage that wants their car garaged you agree that may rule out Large cars like the FG right from the start?


Maybe it's the housing industry driving the push away from large cars! LOL

[naddis01]

We built our house 2 years ago and made he garage 6x6 but now owning a new Ranger dual cab with tray, I regret not making it 7x7 as the Ranger only just fits in. I also have to park as close as I can get to the left hand wall so we can open all the doors of the car without hitting anything. If I have any passengers in the ute I have to back out of the garage first so they can get in.

[homegrown]

Try squeezing a 65 Ford Galaxy into these new carports like my parents do. They can close the roller door just missing the car by a bees .....

[Peter B - CV8]

I've got a triple garage for our 2 cars. The "spare" spot has my workbench & tool cabinets/kids bikes etc etc. Before buying the house, I measured the garage entrances, depth etc & even asked if I could practice park my car (at the time a Holden Statesman). Everything was fine - plently of room to open doors once inside. Quite a few garages failed this test however....

[UberKnee]

For whatever reason it always bugs me whenever I see a garage stuffed with junk/used as storage while the cars are parked outside. Just get a shed and chuck all your junk in there.

Originally Posted by neptune blue

All valid posts
Next to your house your car is the next biggest investment so I am a loss to see people leaving them in the weather, using their garage for storage space

The size of a double garage used to be 6m x 6m. I think this has been reduced to 5.5 m squared. This doesn't sound like much of a reduction but if you drive a large sedan and the misses has a wagon there ain't no room for anything else

our last house and had a garage that was 6.5 x6.0 which was our speciation and we made sure the house had plenty of internal storage and we built a small shed for gardening stuff

The house we are in now as two double garages measuring 6.6m x 6.8m again specified by us when we built it.

We have the daily drives in one with heaps of space for racking and storage and the other houses my coupe all my spares work bench and tools

Anything not car related is in the shed

Increasing the size of a standard garage isn't a large expense so I don't understand why you wouldnt do it if you were building
You can never have too much storage space

The average garage size has dropped down to 5.5 squared, 90% of houses I build thesedays unless the owner specifies otherwise are 5.5. When you consider that large cars are only getting bigger and 4x4s in particular are getting bigger and bigger and sell incredibly well it seems silly. Nissan Navaras for one only just fit into most decent sized garages and I'd imagine the Rangers/BT-50s would struggle to fit into most new garages. For whatever reason they've become an afterthought. I remember one house years ago when I was still an apprentice where after completion the owner found that his car was too long for the garage and wasn't too happy, always pays to check specs on a plan when you're building a new house and check things like that.

[sneaky]

my last place was in a new suburb and we had an oversized garage at a massive 6.0 x 5.5, i think the oversize bit came in with the storage under the stairs and a 2x2 area at the back of the garage.

it was just big enough for the ix35 (medium suv) and a VE commodore. for the 2.5 years we lived there before i got the commodore the garage was half full of crap and had the old AU then the ix35. took getting me new car to motivate me to clean the shed up.

and also with the cars parked out the front in new estates, pretty much every house in our street and suburb had at least 1 car parked in the driveway. my theory was that there wasn't enough room in the garage for storage/workbench/etc and 2 cars, so the second car got left out.

[Jim Goose]

Originally Posted by Big Damo

We've left all our cars outside in the driveway or on the street since 1994 and nothing has ever happened to any of our cars.

Says a lot about your suburb and its inhabitants if you have property damage happening.

Personally I think we should build a massive wall around Melbourne and all its suburbs, and they can have their ghetto all to themselves .

I wasnt referring to my area at all..... I live in a house with a fence and a shed out back. Only once ever parked my car on the street because it had broken down and someone tried to break into it.

I am referring to all the new suburbs popping up where there are NO fences out the front and garages which are too small to park two large cars in it.

100s of cars parked on the street or in driveways... all of which are targets for people with nothing better to do at night then to vandalise/ steal/ break in etc...

This isnt the 1970s anymore where you had little chance of having your car trashed or stolen.

"exclusive" suburbs arent immune from break and enters, in fact here in Townsville this is where the most vandalism/ breaks in occur.

Time and time again the paper reports dozens of cars in nice expensive suburbs have had their cars vandalised because they were left out on the street... all because the garage is too small... or like someone else posted, their garage is full of junk they will never use.

[302 XC]

Originally Posted by UberKnee

For whatever reason it always bugs me whenever I see a garage stuffed with junk/used as storage while the cars are parked outside. Just get a shed and chuck all your junk in there.

I turned the rear section of my shed into a games room,pool table arcade machine,laptop ect in there
The XC sits outside ,ive got 2 quads where the AU should be, and the daily is outside while i use that space to work on the dub rag top

What i find funny is people will leave that 40 grand new car outside while they use that covered space for a clunker that usually never gets finished or is in reality worth a few hundred or a grand at most .......

[Kometes]

My FG fits through the door with about 3 inches either side of the mirrors... then it's a precise swing (the missus has had issues with this & the wall recently) to the left to allow the driver door to be open. Luckily only the bike lives in the 2nd car space otherwise passengers would have to get out before going in the garage.
Black car does NOT live outside, a garage is a deal breaker when I'm looking at places.

[new2ford]

Most garages I'm seeing nowadays seem to be used for storage and the car/s is outside.

I can only speak for NSW but I imagine it would be the same in other states, but minimum sizes for garages are set out in development codes - it's not up to the developer except that they may choose to have larger sizes. As I recall the minimum requirement in NSW for a single garage is 3 m wide x 5.5 m deep. For a double it is same depth and 5.6 m wide.

These dimensions were set in days of yore when the Falcon/ Holden was the common car and have not changed since then so there is no "small car" conspiracy. I do agree that the minimum size is a squeeze for a bigger car. Fortunately our own house design came from a more generous builder (or maybe the batteries in his calculator were flat and his bank account was good)!

[XP6]

My garage is to small too, currently there's 3 falcons and a Mitzi canter truck with space for another 10 or so falcons

[neptune blue]

Originally Posted by Big Damo

We've left all our cars outside in the driveway or on the street since 1994 and nothing has ever happened to any of our cars.

Says a lot about your suburb and its inhabitants if you have property damage happening.

Personally I think we should build a massive wall around Melbourne and all its suburbs, and they can have their ghetto all to themselves .

I live in great suburb , substantial land and house, in a court that only has 3 properties in it , very low crime rate but I still wouldn't leave our cars outside to let the elements take their toll on the finish and interior

I often hear abut cars being vandalised on mass in some prestigious suburbs here in Melbourne

It's not the residence in your suburb that will vandalise your car, it's the ones that don't live in your suburb that you have to worry about

[Pedro]

I bought my current house (built 1980) in 2004. It had a standard 2 car garage.
When I renovated I include expanding the garage 2 metres in width. This allows me a side work bench plus I can park two cars inside and still open the doors.

You can see here, when I had the Mach 1, the bench off to the right side with room to open the Mustang doors either side and my wife's car along side also able to open it's doors. You can see the unpainted concrete where I expanded the width.

[Silver Ghia]

Standard 6m x 6m garage is too small. I have a 7m x 7m garage which was great initially, but now wished I made it 10m wide x 7m deep when building the house.

[Franco Cozzo]

Originally Posted by Jim Goose

I wasnt referring to my area at all..... I live in a house with a fence and a shed out back. Only once ever parked my car on the street because it had broken down and someone tried to break into it.

I am referring to all the new suburbs popping up where there are NO fences out the front and garages which are too small to park two large cars in it.

100s of cars parked on the street or in driveways... all of which are targets for people with nothing better to do at night then to vandalise/ steal/ break in etc...

This isnt the 1970s anymore where you had little chance of having your car trashed or stolen.

"exclusive" suburbs arent immune from break and enters, in fact here in Townsville this is where the most vandalism/ breaks in occur.

Time and time again the paper reports dozens of cars in nice expensive suburbs have had their cars vandalised because they were left out on the street... all because the garage is too small... or like someone else posted, their garage is full of junk they will never use.

Wasn't particularly referring to you but just in general, this particular reason is why I like small out of the way country towns, there is a sense of community and generally people look out for each other, barely any of this stuff goes on.

Originally Posted by neptune blue

I live in great suburb , substantial land and house, in a court that only has 3 properties in it , very low crime rate but I still wouldn't leave our cars outside to let the elements take their toll on the finish and interior

I often hear abut cars being vandalised on mass in some prestigious suburbs here in Melbourne

It's not the residence in your suburb that will vandalise your car, it's the ones that don't live in your suburb that you have to worry about

The good thing about my small country town is that everyone else knows what you're doing before you even do and everyone is busy minding someone else business.

Doesn't matter if its Bentleigh or Broadmeadows, its still Melbourne. The problem with Melbourne is its full of Melbournians ;)

[Cambo351]

Garage size is always a problem for a car enthusiast.

At the last townhouse I rented in Perth I had to stick some foam rubber on the back wall of the garage, reverse the NC Fairlane in right up against the passenger side & actually touch the back wall with the bumper in order to get the roller door down & have space to walk down the side of the car.

When i moved to Melbourne I looked at a 1/2 dozen places, where the garage was simply too short to fit the TE50.

Garage I have at the moment just fits the Jag through the door, less than an inch clearance on both side mirrors, but once inside I can't get the doors open all the way.

When we move back to Oz the 1st criteria for a new home is the garage...

[66 STANG]

When we built our new house a couple years ago, I made sure the garage was going to be big enough for now and in the future. I can park 10 cars, all with open doors easily (not that I have that many...yet). If I was to "store" them, I reckon I can fit around 14 in. The property valuer thought it was a waste of time, and that nobody wants more than a "double" garage these days............all the tradies who worked on the house, along with alot of visitors we have say they would love to have a garage this size! I must say I enjoy every sq. metre of my garage!!

This is the back "half" of it.

[OffRoadFalcon]

Originally Posted by 66 STANG

When we built our new house a couple years ago, I made sure the garage was going to be big enough for now and in the future. I can park 10 cars, all with open doors easily (not that I have that many...yet). If I was to "store" them, I reckon I can fit around 14 in. The property valuer thought it was a waste of time, and that nobody wants more than a "double" garage these days............all the tradies who worked on the house, along with alot of visitors we have say they would love to have a garage this size! I must say I enjoy every sq. metre of my garage!!
image
This is the back "half" of it.

Wow! Doesn't get much better than that!

[UberKnee]

Originally Posted by 66 STANG

When we built our new house a couple years ago, I made sure the garage was going to be big enough for now and in the future. I can park 10 cars, all with open doors easily (not that I have that many...yet). If I was to "store" them, I reckon I can fit around 14 in. The property valuer thought it was a waste of time, and that nobody wants more than a "double" garage these days............all the tradies who worked on the house, along with alot of visitors we have say they would love to have a garage this size! I must say I enjoy every sq. metre of my garage!!
image
This is the back "half" of it.

Yeah it seems alot of developers and the like dont think much of garages, but in the real world most people do to some degree, even wives like having somewhere the husband can hide all his toys and spend hours in.

[In Focus]

Originally Posted by 66 STANG

When we built our new house a couple years ago, I made sure the garage was going to be big enough for now and in the future. I can park 10 cars, all with open doors easily (not that I have that many...yet). If I was to "store" them, I reckon I can fit around 14 in. The property valuer thought it was a waste of time, and that nobody wants more than a "double" garage these days............all the tradies who worked on the house, along with alot of visitors we have say they would love to have a garage this size! I must say I enjoy every sq. metre of my garage!!
image
This is the back "half" of it.

I guess you can even play chess in your spare time.