"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
I have a double garage. I measured the new car. It's too wide to fit
either side.

It doesn't help that many so-called double garages are just two single
garages joined together - ie they still have single-garage apertures and
separate doors, with a huge pillar between, rather than a double-width
aperture and door. I suppose the advantage of two singles is that the doors
are not as heavy (though any reputable garage door should have its weight
almost compensated by springs or counterweights) and they can use two
shorter RSJs rather than one longer RSJ - at the expense of losing the
advantage of having a double garage.

At my last house, there were two garage blocks, allocated to different
houses in the development. The other block was fine, but my garage was
barely wide enough to fit my car (a Peugeot 306, so not as wide as many
cars) and the doorway was about 20 mm wider than the car on each side, which
made it almost impossible to drive the car through without the risk of
scraping the side of it. One guy had an old-style Mini (ie not the modern
BMW clone which is wider) and he was the only person in our block to use his
garage for storing his car, and he said it was a tight fit.

If the builders had added an extra metre to the width of the garage block
(*), it would have widened all the doorways by 250 mm - enough for the
garages to be usable. As it is, they were used as overflow loft space.


(*) There was space between the end of the block and the access road to do
this.