Morris Minor Owners Club

Hi everyone

I’m planning to replace my tiny garage with a double, which will be an opportunity to create my ‘dream’ garage (within reason!), so I’d be interested to know what my fellow classic car tinkerers would recommend!

Brick built, the size will be limited to approx 16-feet wide by 18-19 long. It will probably have to have a pent roof to match neighbours’ garages, and will have windows and personal access door along one side only. Apart from that I’m free to shape the design.

I’m thinking it would be a good idea to include an impermeable membrane in the concrete base to stop dampness.

However, I’d be interested to hear your recommendations for insulation. I plan to insulate the corrugated roof with polythene/felt plus fibreglass and plywood, and line the walls with plywood with either fibreglass or that reflective bubble wrap stuff behind.

I know good ventilation is recommended to keep the car dry, but I wonder if that would also let in damp air in the winter? Should I fit airbricks at the bottom of the walls, maybe with a hit-or-miss vent that I can close?

And what is the most practical type of main door? Side-hung so you can open just the section you need? Two single up-and-over doors, or one 14-foot up-and-over?

I also wondered about installing an inspection pit, but I’m thinking this would be a lot of expense for something that would be used only very rarely. What do people think?

Anything else? Your suggestions and advice would be much appreciated!

Thanks all

Consider cavity walls. Brick outside, thermalite blocks inside, helping reduce condensation.

A very nice thread to think and dream about.

I would definately go for the pit and the concrete base would be laid on Styrodur insulation and then have on top what we call a schwimmender Estrich which I think is a self levelling screed. To that apply a dust sealer. Walls would be 24cm thermal block and the outside to have a 10cm external reinforced insulation. (Armierte Wärmerdämmung) This can be covered with a clinker brick simulation to appease planning approval. Bricks themselves and especially the cavity walls are thermically useless as befits most houses built in that way.
The roof would be high enough to allow a four column lift to be installed such that you could work underneath the car standing up - not so necessary with an inspection pit. The roof to be insulated with a 0,035 Rockwool or similar, at least 140mm thick + diffuser layer and lined with airtight membrane.

Storage shelves at the end and sides , plenty of power points - also in the pit. adequate strip lighting on the ceiling. Special shelf or wall fixed Radio/Television and Video player. Walls to be tiled up to ca 1m. Perhaps the floor as well over the screed. Hot and cold water supply to a sink unit and compressed air outlets available.
Heating system, itself if not directly connected to the house, by wood burner, because it looks so nice or a Nanoblockheizkraftwerk system which I am myself soon having installed in the house - it produces electricty and has heat as a side effect and runs off gas.

My actual garage is too low, too narrow too short and cold......but dreaming is nice.

My garage has double side-hinged doors. They're about 7 years old. Made of aluminium cross-braced frames with UPVC skins. Sufficiently lightweight that they easily get caught in a breeze but heavy enough that they're already dropping on their hinges.
I don't like up-and-overs since I had one go up, over, right over and off its runners onto the roof of the car inside.
I know they're not cheap but powered roller-shutters look like a good idea to me.

We have a double width electric roller shutter. Sometimes I only open it enough to get in or out (although I also sometimes forget this when going the other way....). Useful if you want to start the car and let the exhaust out but don't want the door fully open.

We also run a dehumidifier in the garage to combat damp. With careful planning you could arrange to run a drain pipe outside rather than having to empty a container every week.

Don't forget power sockets at convenient points to plug in conditioning battery chargers for any cars you don't use all the time.

I also wish we had painted the floor whilst the garage was still empty, and having seen the plastic inspection pits at the Classic Car Show at the NEC I wish we had one of those.

High garage door, steel lintels with carriage for a 2-ton chain hoist, Pit, dust curtains on runners, big built-in CO2 fire extinguisher system, outdoor compressor, powerful LED lighting, decent clock that didn't get affected by the MIG and TIG welderd (Atomic updating clocks get killed by them!), telephone and intercom connection with the house, fireproof paints cupboard...all paid for by someone else.

This is my garden workshop which was originally going to be a small house, hence the cavity walls, double glazing, water etc. This was my main reason for buying the property.

And be sure not to forget the Pirelli calendar.

Yep I guessed we’d be going ott but then it is a dream rather than reality !

My first workshop sic. was a large chicken coup - to get the height I lowered the earth floor.

Nearly as bad as living in a cardboard box in the middle of the road.

Now that I have a reasonably decent workshop the thing lacking is time and I am retired so should have plenty - you just cannot win

Phil

So far as I understand and subject to where it is (Not in front of the house for example) up to 30m2 is a permitted development, that doesn't need planning permission.

My garage is (Internally) about 26 feet X 18 and I had planning permission for it. It is made of rendered concrete blocks (The rendering keeps out the rain) under a trussed slate roof. There was a problem with things sweating (If you had cold weather followed quickly by warmer, moist weather), until the plasterboard ceiling went in. If my house ever floods, Noah will be back BUT I had been told about a previous episode involving a culvert and the lane behind my house. My house is higher than most in the street, so water would tend to flow away but I took this incident on board and the garage floor is about a foot higher than the lane. I have a chain operated, industrial roller shutter door (About 13.6 wide), that could be converted to electric but I have never seen the need.

The window is barred and the personal access door is steel covered and has three locks.

A purlin roof would allow a higher ceiling, for any given wall height (Which is stipulated within permitted development regs) and with extra height, a double garage can become a triple, if you have a four poster ramp (Hamer make a DIY ramp - http://www.hamercarlift.com/ ). Whatever you have, you'll tend to fill it .

Good luck with the project.

philthehill wrote: ↑Mon Dec 31, 2018 5:06 pm My first workshop sic. was a large chicken coup - to get the height I lowered the earth floor.

Nearly as bad as living in a cardboard box in the middle of the road.

Now that I have a reasonably decent workshop the thing lacking is time and I am retired so should have plenty - you just cannot win

Phil

Oh, we used to dream of a large chicken coup....

Funny how you never seem to have any time once you retire. Where does it all go? Anyway, must go - time to put the kettle on and have slice of Xmas cake.

However large and palatial a garage,it will never be big enough... we had a huge modern agricultural building at our last place and I filled it in no time

Steve
The same rule must apply to large agricultural buildings as it does to retirement time - space and time expands to fill the available space and time.

My dad warned me that it would happen but a much younger me just tut tutted and got on with getting old and now I have arrived at the old.

As the rabbit in Lewis Carrol's Alice In Wonderland said looking at his watch "So much to do and so little time to do it in".

Phil

This comes close...

My garage was originally a stable for pony and cart ( a small pony so not very high!) so has solid walls, no dpc in the walls. The floor was cast by the previous owners, mass concrete on a polythene damp proof membrane. It stays very dry, which I put down to the membrane under the floor, the lack of insulation in the walls doesn't appear to be a problem. Painting the floor with garage floor paint has been very effective and highly recommended. The only other thing I would recommend would be a correctly designed power supply with sufficient rating - if you want to weld you want at least a 20A supply with type C MCBs, for most hobby MIG welder, with the cable correctly sized for the volt drop- otherwise it can lead to nuisance tripping.

It is interesting to read that it seems British houses are still using cavity walls. It was a great idea in the 19th and 18th century and still works after a fashion just like steam engines do but modern building technology and materials has overtaken it. The original idea was to keep out damp by having circulating air to keep the inner walls dry and for that air must have access to the outside. When it does, although air is normally a fine insulator, it loses all its insulating properties. In other words the outside wall does not do anything except look nice. Thus you need a very thick inner wall or one with high insulating properties or both and in doing so, you do not need the cavity any more. Also in the past , heating was by open fires, wet heat which condensed on the cold walls. Nowadays we all have central heating or similar.
Some firms can fill the cavities with PU foam but the standard cavity is 5/6 cm and thus the insulating value is not increased that much. Also when an outside wall does get wet - the standard bricks used are fairly porous - the PU foam allows mildue or mould to develop.

When I worked in the British construction more than 30 years ago, we were all convinced that the large well known brick company lobbied continually for traditional building methods to keep its sales volume up.

As a complete antithesis to the modern fully fitted workshop- here is my workshop (located behind the steam engine) years before the advent of motorised vehicles.
The workshop machinery was driven by the vertical boiler steam engine seen in the picture via line shafting.
The house and workshop both have a lot of history.
Phil

Nickol what would you suggest if you were building a garage from scratch ? a membrane maybe

Definitely not cavity walls!!!

Most definately not if you are going to heat a garage. But this is a fantasy thread to build a garage where money and space are limitless.

The membrane you mention , I suppose is meant to be under the concrete base? It will do no harm and costs almost nothing. Let it lap up the outside walls above gound level.