What would your dream garage look like?!

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philthehill
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Re: What would your dream garage look like?!

Post by philthehill »

Whilst you can have as much fantasy and spend as much money as you like - in reality you will still be tied to planning regulations and local bylaws.

Nickol
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Re: What would your dream garage look like?!

Post by Nickol »

unless it has changed in the past 30 odd years it used to be building regulations and planning approval, i.e in the latter case to fit in with guidlines. It meant in the south-east of England to usually have a brick face - easily made using cladding material. If the building ergs demanded a cavity wall - then you know the brick mafia is at work - my favourite hate topic you notice! :D
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les
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Re: What would your dream garage look like?!

Post by les »

I’ve got cavity walls, so that makes my dream garage a nightmare!! :D

Oldmogman
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Re: What would your dream garage look like?!

Post by Oldmogman »

Thanks everyone - there was some very good advice among your descriptions of your fantasy garages that I can consider for my new (fantasy-meets-reality!) garage.
irmscher
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Re: What would your dream garage look like?!

Post by irmscher »

Nice white traveller
Blaketon
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Re: What would your dream garage look like?!

Post by Blaketon »

My house is 100 years old this year and is a cavity built brick house. My parents' house is older (Not sure but somewhere between 1815 & 1860) and has solid stone walls of between 18 & 24" thick. My house is smaller but my parents' house is only 400 feet above sea level to mine at 1000. The inside walls of mine are always colder to touch than the old stone ones. One of the biggest worries with cavity is rusty wall ties but I think you can fit new ones, that work like sleeve anchor bolts. When my father extended and renovated an old stone barn, the new bits were cavity block, with stainless wall ties and stone outside the outer layer, to match in with the old walls. That is a very cosy garage/workshop but it's divided by doors in the middle. It makes a big difference to the workshop if the middle doors are kept closed.

A lot of new houses seem to be timber framed, with a single block outer wall. I'm told they are only meant to last 25 years, which seems a bit short term. Plumbers have told me about the false economy of plastic water pipes (Though which mice can chew), which rubber seals on the joins. Perhaps they match the short life houses.

Maybe a 9" solid wall, suitably skimmed, is a good idea.
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Nickol
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Re: What would your dream garage look like?!

Post by Nickol »

What a lovely looking wall!

The cold inner wall you describe is exactly the problem. It is probably too thin to be insulatory and often is a cementious material which is notoriously bad insulator. The 9", 22,5 cm wall is about the minimum to get away with but it has to be a material with high insulation properties. Normally you are looking at 25cm.

It is interesting the philosophy behind various builing regs. In Britain all doors and windows open outwards due to fire regulations. Here they all open inwards to make then easier to clean the outside. In Britain, two storey houses can have wooden floors. This is not allowed here due to fire regs. Likewise in Britain there are no "naked" power points in bathrooms whereas here, subject to certain conditions, it is allowed.

As mentioned before, cavity walls do work but just like steam locomotives, there are better options these days.
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Blaketon
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Re: What would your dream garage look like?!

Post by Blaketon »

Glad you like the wall. It was done in 1985. The original building was symmetrical, though the wall, to the right of the building (Right of the picture) had been bodged up when old stable doors were blocked up and garage doors put in the pine end. It was decided to remove said wall and widen the garage, so that two cars could go in side by side (Beyond it is a workshop but that is still about ten feet wide). Looking at the photo, the wall to the left of the door is original 18" thick stone wall and the rest is what we built of concrete block, with stone facing. The main bit of old wall left is the left side of the building. Above the right side of the garage door, you may notice a stone which looks a bit too big, compared with the others. There is a Catnic steel lintel over the door and the purlin, which supports the roof, rests on top of the big stone. My father can just be seen to the right of the building and he is responsible for the work, with assistance from me. He is a toolmaker by trade but can turn his hand to many things and I seem to be the same.....the garage project was good grounding for me when I had a place of my own.

As to rules and regulations, there is an old saying, that "Rules exist for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men". As an example, lots of local councils don't like roof drainage going into the drains. They must go into soakaways. There is an exception (Or at least it was this way), that of Merthyr Tydfil council, who, like many plumbers, feel it helps to keep the drains clear.
Last edited by Blaketon on Sat Jan 05, 2019 3:17 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Nickol
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Re: What would your dream garage look like?!

Post by Nickol »

Many thanks for the interesting details. I am quite jealous of the double garage - mine is quite narrow but I have recently put a workbenchand shelves at teh end so that I do not have to keep going up and down the steps to get tools and bits. If it works here is apic taken in high summer.


I do not have a dream garage but I do have a dream workshop which I had specially built on top of a block construction in 2011. This is the outside visible through the snow-
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Gott schütze mich vorm Sturm und Wind und Autos, die aus England sind.
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Nickol
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Re: What would your dream garage look like?!

Post by Nickol »

workshop Bild
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Mark Wilson
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Re: What would your dream garage look like?!

Post by Mark Wilson »

Being a pedant and a retired construction professional a couple of minor factual corrections/amplifications, none of which have the slightest relevance to Morris Minors! Cavity walls, in the form most people are used to, were introduced in the 1920's and were first found in cheaper housing in the north of England, spreading southwards by the 1930's. They weren't initially intended to improve thermal performance, rather for improved resistance to rainwater and also to save on expensive facing bricks by using cheap breeze blocks, made from blast furnace by products, for the internal leaves. (There were earlier stone walls with a sort of cavity known as rubble construction, where the "cavity" was filled with small loose stones and the two leaves joined at intervals with longer stones.) Thermally improved cavity walls came in the late 50s or early 60s with the introduction of aerated concrete blocks, aka Thermalite, and later still with the introduction of insulated "batts" glued or clipped to the inner leaf.

Rainwater, or surface water drainage, going into the public sewer was fairly universal until the 1960s, but it then became a requirement to provide separate foul and surface water systems. There are many newer buildings with separate systems which then discharge into a combined public sewer, the theory being that eventually the public sewers will all be upgraded. The Merthyr plumbers are correct in that rainwater gives the system a good flush through, but unfortunately this overloads the sewage treatment plants. And we are now in a new regime known as SUDS (Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems) where most surface water has to be retained on site in attenuation tanks with hydrobrakes which release the water slowly into the public surface water drains. The idea being to reduce the sort of flooding we have seen in many locations in recent years.

There. Wish I knew as much about Morris Minors!
les
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Re: What would your dream garage look like?!

Post by les »

Morris Minor or not, An interesting read!

Nickol
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Re: What would your dream garage look like?!

Post by Nickol »

Yes, very interesting read. I have a vague memory of demolishing rubble walls but that was a long long time ago. I am intrigued by the usage of these "batts" you mention. Fixing insulation of any sort to the inside of an external wall is not such a good idea due to the build up of mould. But perhaps that is not what you meant?

My village has a combi system but I cannot imagine it ever being upgraded and if it were to be I and others would barricade the street because under some strange law introduced just after the war, the householders have to pay for any such work rather than it coming out of the community purse. At a cost of ca. €5mio by my reckoning that would be about €8K for every householder.
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Mark Wilson
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Re: What would your dream garage look like?!

Post by Mark Wilson »

The insulation "batts" are fixed to the inner leaf facing into the cavity. Longer cavity ties are used to maintain a 50mm cavity between the insulation and the outer leaf. The insulation is usually either mineral fibre or polyisocyanurate, so not susceptible to mould. British building regulations these days allow a great deal of flexibility in how you achieve specified performance requirements, so many different approaches are found. The last project I worked on before retiring used solid block walls with external insulated render, so perhaps we are slowly catching up with Germany!
philthehill
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Re: What would your dream garage look like?!

Post by philthehill »

Solid 45cm thick cob walls - warm in winter, cool in summer.

Nickol
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Re: What would your dream garage look like?!

Post by Nickol »

Mark Wilson wrote: Sun Jan 06, 2019 12:08 pm The insulation "batts" are fixed to the inner leaf facing into the cavity. Longer cavity ties are used to maintain a 50mm cavity between the insulation and the outer leaf. The insulation is usually either mineral fibre or polyisocyanurate, so not susceptible to mould. British building regulations these days allow a great deal of flexibility in how you achieve specified performance requirements, so many different approaches are found. The last project I worked on before retiring used solid block walls with external insulated render, so perhaps we are slowly catching up with Germany!
Many thanks for the update info again. I am not sure there is any catching up to do. It all depends on availability of materials. In the north of Germany, Schleswig- Holstein, there are many brick builts houses , many also with thatched roofs. The further south you go, the more prolific the Fachwerk construction. I am told this is "wattle and daub" in englisch. I live in a Fachwerk house and have repaired loose or holed walls by mixing clay with water and straw and literally pushing it in with bare hands. Lovely stuff! It has very high natural thermic insulation properties. As Phil has observed in thick stone walls - cool in summer and warm in winter. New houses here probably have the same or similar regs as in Britain - we tend not to have sprawling estates however as home ownership is one of the lowest in Europe. Most people rent. We have strayed from the topic a bit but interesting none the less. As my Traveller is in winter storage, there is nothing to do on it other than dream......
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Blaketon
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Re: What would your dream garage look like?!

Post by Blaketon »

Sorry if this is taking the subject further off topic....maybe not.....but I've only been to southern Germany in more recent times (Have been to the Rhineland but that was in 1977), as part of my trips to Austria. There I see that roofs are flatter, presumably to hold the snow, in order to act as insulation. Being a bit of a garage freak, I tend to look at the garage first (Or at least where it would go if there isn't one) and I noticed that lots of Austrian houses (I stayed in St Johann, Kaprun and I saw the 1999 solar eclipse at St Wolfgang) have garages under them. They were not quite basements but were slightly lower than ground level. In fact, under one of the hotels, in Kaprun, there was a car museum.
burnham28
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Re: What would your dream garage look like?!

Post by burnham28 »

My friends garage in Cape Cod. The stairs at the back lead to a viewing gallery. He belongs to The British car club in the USA. I' always very envious when i go to visit him. He has two other garages with post lifts and a series one Landrover.
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Shropshiremoggie
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Re: What would your dream garage look like?!

Post by Shropshiremoggie »

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Tried to post this before , but failed 😡 Garages built thirty odd years ago but due to a dispute with the builder no pit was dug . As has been mentioned no garage is ever big enough and mine is full. Racking down both sides and loads of sockets and lighting . A wash bason with hot water ( electric heater no problem ) would be a welcome addition but coupling up the waste to the septic tank is an issue . My house has stone walls eighteen inches approx thick. Any infill is rubble with bits of stone . Cool in summer and very cold in winter !
irmscher
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Re: What would your dream garage look like?!

Post by irmscher »

Very nice garage :D
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