Why do houses have garages?

[pdxstreetcar]

This is not a stupid question. Why do houses have attached or detached garages? Why do people store their car(s) inside? Whats wrong with parking on the street or having an outdoor parking space on one's property (even a carport)? Probably half the people that have garages dont even keep their car(s) in them anyway (why not have specially designed workshop or storage room instead?). Some places I can understand more for climate reasons, but even then people still park their car outside for shopping, work, visiting other people's houses etc. Cars wear out faster from everyday use (8-15 years) than due to deterioration from weather if stored outside. Why are home builders building low cost housing including attached garages? Garages are almost assured in houses built in the last 50 years and people expect them. I can certainly see the reason for garages in dense locations for multi-story multi-family residential buildings where you can build above and also efficiently pack a lot of cars in, but I am talking about low density single family housing. Why are garages deemed essential for a house to have?


vs.

[Busy Bee]

I think you already sort of answered your own question. Aside from the obvious logistical advantages: convenience, security, climate control - there is a great deal of psychology at work here and as you know home builders have been exploiting this in a number of ways for decades, maybe since the dawn of urban and suburban commercial residential development. Higher bracket homes have nice features and finishes. Through natural human behavior, medium bracket home buyers start requesting and expecting similar or same features and finishes for their market level. And it continues to filter down. Just like how many urban low-income developments now feature large bathrooms and solid surface countertops when a generation ago this would have been unheard of, the low end housing market and the low end housing buyer have come to expect an attached garage as a standard feature on most homes, unless specifically designed without and marketed as architecturally such. This process will continue to evolve with new up and coming housing trends, i.e. energy efficiency, open concepts, etc.

So what started as a unique feature on nicer homes slowly trickled down through a process of a buyers' conscience or even subconscience psychological desire and the builders' market response to that desire to a point where, in probably a majority of the country, a major or minor 'entry level' single family residential housing developer would be taking a major gamble in offering a product that was an alternative to the attached garage single family home because of this enormous built-up expectation on the low-end buyers side for an attached garage.

You can say that most people really don't know what they want in a home though beyond simplistic basics. This is why the residential building community has such a huge responsibility of weening buyers off the concept of an assumed attached garage, as we have seen many times in all areas of the country with 'traditional' styled developments. This will only continue to improve as more of the public responds positively to 'throwback' traditional home design and neighborhoods, which really just means 'good' design, and will accelerate as more and more buyers will come to desire and expect this new 'old' form.

[bnk]

Sun, Heat, Cold, Snow, Rain, Hail.... Would you like more reasons???

Do you even have a garage or a car for that matter? If you do and live in the south do you like getting in to a car that is over 120 degree F. or if you live up north do you like havng to warm your car up for 20 min before you can even get into it????

I do not understand this thread. Why would people have garages and waste the sq footage if it was not a positive factor in their life...

[Doady]

Garages aren't just for cars...

[Busy Bee]

Originally Posted by bnk

Sun, Heat, Cold, Snow, Rain, Hail.... Would you like more reasons???

Do you even have a garage or a car for that matter? If you do and live in the south do you like getting in to a car that is over 120 degree F. or if you live up north do you like havng to warm your car up for 20 min before you can even get into it????

I do not understand this thread. Why would people have garages and waste the sq footage if it was not a positive factor in their life...

One thing you are missing BNK is that the vast majority of attached garages are NOT heated and cooled. They are protected from the elements, but a garage on a 90° day is between 80° and 90°, if not hotter, and a garage on a 10° day isn't much warmer even with an insulated garage door. So, this argument about car temperatures being the ultimate reason for convenience doesn't hold water. Not covered in snow: yes, not getting rusty from rain: yes, not scorched by the sun: yes; not cold: no, not hot as hell: hell no. Regardless your arguments seem to have to do with having a garage, not necessarily having or not having an attached garage, which is what this thread is about.

Oh and HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!!!

[bnk]

Originally Posted by Busy Bee

One thing you are missing BNK is that the vast majority of attached garages are NOT heated and cooled. They are protected from the elements, but a garage on a 90° day is between 80° and 90°, if not hotter, and a garage on a 10° day isn't much warmer even with an insulated garage door. So, this argument about car temperatures being the ultimate reason for convenience doesn't hold water. Not covered in snow: yes, not getting rusty from rain: yes, not scorched by the sun: yes; not cold: no, not hot as hell: hell no. Regardless your arguments seem to have to do with having a garage, not necessarily having or not having an attached garage, which is what this thread is about.

Oh and HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!!!

Well my garage is attached and well only slightly heated but not cooled but the temp extremes you talk about does not happen to me nor does it make much sense to me to get so mad about it.


I think those that have garages are not idiots nor do I see a sea of change where the suburban house will rid themselves of them. But if you live in let’s just say Portland OR and it may not make much sense there....But to have one from where I live, well I appreciate mine immensely thank you in advance.

I will talk more about this latter. Happy 4th....

[Busy Bee]

I feel this thread is veering a little off course. No one is angry here - just having a nice intellectual argument, nothing could be more healthy. I unfortunately won't be taking part for the next 24 hours The day off means the day away from being a forum drone

[rockyi]

If you spent 30 minutes or more of your morning chipping ½ inch of ice off of your cars windows then being late for work, you'll know the reason for garages.

[rockyi]

Originally Posted by Busy Bee

One thing you are missing BNK is that the vast majority of attached garages are NOT heated and cooled. They are protected from the elements, but a garage on a 90° day is between 80° and 90°, if not hotter, and a garage on a 10° day isn't much warmer even with an insulated garage door. So, this argument about car temperatures being the ultimate reason for convenience doesn't hold water. Not covered in snow: yes, not getting rusty from rain: yes, not scorched by the sun: yes; not cold: no, not hot as hell: hell no. Regardless your arguments seem to have to do with having a garage, not necessarily having or not having an attached garage, which is what this thread is about.

Oh and HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!!!

It's not about your car being hot or cold, it IS about them getting direct hot sun, snow, ice and other outside elements continually bombarding it and, like I mentioned above, delaying your commute when you have to clear it of ice or snow. But who cares if your garage is 90 degrees inside, when your car sits outside on a 90 degree day, it gets up to 170 F inside. That really plays havoc on your cars interior. A car parked in a garage in winter is protected from the wind which makes a big difference if you want it to actually start.
But I do think architects could do a much better job of blending a garage into the house and not make it look like your living quarters are stuck behind this enormous garage like much of the houses and condos that mar our landscape.

[Uptowngirl]

They (garages) shouldn't face the street. Your house should look like people live inside it, not as a resting place for cars.

[vid]

Most houses in my area have garages in the back alleys where the driveways are, but people don't use them anymore because it is too much trouble manoeuvring the car through a back alley. Unlike in the US, our back alleys are very narrow dirt lanes.

[seaskyfan]

They really don't make much sense in Western WA/OR/BC.

If there's snow on your car the roads are likely impassable anyway.

[Don098]

Originally Posted by pdxstreetcar

This is not a stupid question.

Yes, it is. Garages may not be necessary in new housing developments in California where trees cannot be found for hundreds of yards and it never rains, snows, or does anything really. But if you live in a home that's surrounded by 13 oak trees on the east coast where you get the full effect of weather like I do, I don't think you would have asked this question. My 1992 Honda Civic's red paint is so sun damaged from not being parked in a garage that it looks like a dull, drab maroon now.

Your picture of a three-car garage is definitely sickening, though. That home is a monstrosity.

[denizen467]

Kind of a low-m.p.g. question. Instead, how about a thread discussing ways to design houses so that garages don't dominate the streetscape ("snout houses", etc.). Or ways to leverage them for unrelated benefits (extra space to affix solar panels, etc.).

[glowrock]

People are also forgetting about a little thing called security. A car parked in a garage is much less likely to get broken into, damaged, or otherwise molested as a car parked on the street or in a parking lot.

Aaron (Glowrock)

[sopas ej]

Homes in California have always been built with garages, even before cars, there were carriage houses. What's changed is where the location of the garage is/how it's accessed (driveway or back alley) and whether it's detached or attached to the house. Typically, pre-WWII houses have the garage in the back, whereas starting in the late 1950s or early 1960s, it became more common to see garages being built attached to the house, and then in the later 1960s, you started seeing direct access into the house from the garage. I grew up in a 2-story California tract house built in the late 1970s with direct home-access from the attached 2-car garage with garage door opener (some houses in my neighborhood had the 3-car garages); this of course meant we hardly ever went into or out of the house using the front door; for instance, we carried our groceries from the car in the garage directly into the house-- which meant carrying the groceries through the foyer and family room into the kitchen; I say this because now I live in an apartment built in the 1940s that has a front and back door; the back door goes out the kitchen, and it's actually convenient in terms of unloading groceries from my car, which is parked in back of my apartment in a carport. Anyway, the house I grew up in also had the washer/dryer in the garage, as well as the furnace and water heater. During the Nightstalker Serial Murder spree of the summer of 1985, my parents got into the habit of pulling into the garage and then immediately hitting the remote control so that the garage door closed right after pulling in.

Some newer custom homes are built with detached garages in the back, old-school style, which in my opinion looks better from the street; often with some one-story houses with the attached garage in front, it looks like the garage is the whole house and that you live in a garage.

This is off-topic but in many working-class suburbs in southern California (northern California too probably), many garages have been converted into illegal living spaces among Latino populations, according to a book I read called "My Blue Heaven," which is a history of South Gate and a few other working-class industrial suburbs immediately southeast of downtown Los Angeles. This is why many of those small, working-class cities have high population densities; what were meant to be detached, single-family homes have more than 1 family living on the property, with the garages illegally converted into living spaces. That book also goes on to say that this was mainly a California phenomenon, being that in, say Florida, many homes don't have garages, but carports. I noticed in Hawaii that many houses also don't have enclosed garages but carports.

[Xelebes]

Security is the biggest reason. Though, they are split between attached and unattached garages. Attached garages have the benefit of climate control, especially during the coldest colds. Even with unattached garages, a car in a garage loses heat slower than a car in the open and thus doesn't need to be plugged in as much.

Snouting the garage does raise the ire of many here though.

[flar]

Garages have many uses. I currently have an attached garage and probably couldn't live without one now.

-a place to work
-security
-storage
-drinking with friends
-keep your car cool in the summer and warm in the winter
-don't have to scrape ice and snow off the windows in winter

It was 90 degrees outside yesterday, only slightly cooler in the garage, but it keeps the sun off the car. Big difference from parking outside in the direct sun. I have leather seats, so after a couple hours parked at the beach yesterday they were blistering hot. No such problem when the car is in the garage.

[MolsonExport]

How else can you have a garage sale?

[uaarkson]

I'm an urbanist through and through, but people here will find the most ridiculous things to complain about.

I mean, really? You really can't understand why people store their cars in a place where it can't be broken into, blanketed in snow, hailed on, sun damaged, or struck by another car? You can't understand why people would want to walk from their kitchen into their heated/air conditioned garage and get directly into their car instead of walking through whatever environmental phenomena that could be occurring outside?

There are aspects of suburban life that are loathsome. If you're a rational person, this is simply not one of them.