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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1556 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 19, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

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Why on earth is a detached garage a good idea? Just complicates electrical service and makes the house insulation less efficient.
I really regret having so many shitty outbuildings, but it's optimal for property tax purposes. The only one I wouldn't rather be connected to the house is the wood shed.

Unless the house has a very wide and/or particular facade, attached garages are ugly. (And, if you have a large enough lot that you can spare the outdoor area, the indoor area might be put to better use.) In every other way, attached garages are superior, though he believes that most garages are unnecessary and detached garages are a lesser evil, more precisely.

An attached garage lets you enter your house directly after getting out of your car, which is rather practical whenever it rains/snows, or whenever you need to wipe your feet.

This has nothing to do with attached garages and everything to do with garages being the most prominent part of house facades. The latter is indeed bad, but an attached garage is neither necessary nor sufficient for this to happen.

There's also a section on other ways to utilize the interior space. I disagree that attached garages are a net negative, but the argument is not purely aesthetic.

If we're arguing against garages, period, that's one thing. Detached garages are still a utilization of interior space, though, so they don't get a pass there.

I think this has to do with the lots getting narrower and narrower in the US. You can no longer build your house next to a garage without violating various bylaws about setbacks. Look at "Walter White's house", a two-car garage takes up literally half the frontage. You would need to replace the house with a two-storey one to be able to get rid of the garage on its façade and even then it would be a squeeze: the lot is 72 feet wide, with two 6-foot side setbacks it's just 60 feet, a nice two-storey house is 40 feet wide, which leaves just enough space for an attached two-car garage that doesn't crowd the facade.

Front setbacks are bullshit, no doubt about it. However even in this case, plenty of Mista White's neighbors are parking their cars further back. Seems it should be trivially possible to put a garage where that car is and move the main house closer to the curb to compensate. There's no windows on the side facade of the house anyway. I am not aware of setback requirements treating houses and garages differently, but I may be unaware.

Are lots getting narrower in the US? It is my impression that they are getting wider.

I have seen US houses built on agglomerations of four 25′×110′ lots. Obviously, a 25-foot-wide lot would have approximately zero buildable area under most modern zoning codes (example). But such a lot was perfectly buildable back when the lot was originally laid out, one or two hundred years ago.

This video I watched says they are: https://youtube.com/watch?v=b8wnnFUazOY

I think you’re both right but looking at different time periods. Two story houses built on deep, narrow lots were the rule throughout much of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in what were often called the “streetcar suburbs.” As the name suggests, residents originally relied primarily on public transportation and so didn’t need lots large enough to accommodate stables, carriage houses, or garages. That changed during the post-war era, when modern suburban neighborhoods with their one story houses on relatively large lots became the norm. Most newer subdivisions these days seem to contain relatively large houses on lots that are smaller than those of the 1950s but wider than those of the 1910s (though not necessarily much larger in terms of total square footage).

That article appears to have been written by someone who doesn’t work with his hands… or drive a nice car, for that matter.

You put the nice car in the garage so you don’t have to spend a bunch of time brushing off the car when it snows. If it’s a ragtop, you don’t have to worry about vandals slicing it open; if it’s a truck with a tonneau cover, you don’t have to worry about leaving it open lest the tweakers break it open to see all the nothing inside.

You also have a garage so that you have room to do things to maintain the house. Need to paint a door, or space to marshal furniture, or maintain the car? You can’t do that if you don’t have a clear workshop… which is what the people in those pictures with their cars outside are using their garage for, and dedicated shop areas are even rarer than garages are.

Detached garages are still ugly for the same reasons attached ones are, but if your lot’s on an incline there’s usually no place to put one. With an attached garage that’s not a concern, obviously.

Oh yeah, and you can just put another storey on top of an attached garage. Sometimes you can even fit two floors, so you have rooms on the second storey with a better view.

You can’t do that if you don’t have a clear workshop… which is what the people in those pictures with their cars outside are using their garage for,

I like attached garages but realistically speaking 3/4 of garages I've seen open in my neighborhood are stacked floor to ceiling, wall to wall with various garbage. Only about a quarter are usable shop spaces, gyms, etc.

Also, even if you don't have a particularly nice car or live where it snows, your car is probably better off not sitting in the sun all the time.

Also it's really nice not to have to go outside to get a tool from the garage.

Glad to know I'm politically unbiased and want to punch nrx architecture nerds in the face just as much as /r/yimby-communist ones.
I'd love to have a giant shed extension on my house instead of having to haul everything out to the workshop(s) in the rain. Even better if it's like a portcullis defending my house from the barbarians on the street. Having a two car garage was the only thing I liked about living in Texas.

How do you know he's a NRXer?

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