House with detached/integrated Garage

Tiddlywinks

I have an integral garage but no internal door from the house which I would have liked for going out to the overflow freezer.

One thing which is bad with an integral is that the room above can get a bit colder than the rest of the house. My ensuite is above the garage and we have had to install extra floor insulation as it used to get pretty cold in there during winter.

The_Palmist

Very interesting replies. I am buying a house with a detached garage and was wondering if I would rather add that garage space to back garden. I thought may be a house with integrated garage would be better as I do like the comfort of just walking in to the garage from within the house and grab "something". One thing I did not realise was that integrated garages take up valuable house space in some cases.
My mates house has a garage which is sort of integrated and attached sideways to the house. So it doesn't take up house space. Seems like best of both. Another one of my mates has converted his integrated garage in to an extra utility room.
I also realise that generally houses with larger drives have smaller garden and smaller or no drives seem to have bigger garden. Come to think of it, they are both built on roughly the same size plot, just differently. I am talking about normal houses and not the really expensive ones who seem to have everything.

shirlgirl2004

Definitely stick with the detached garage. I detest integrated garages because most of the time the house is top heavy. I thought garages were for putting cars in and all I hear is talk of freezers and secateurs.

silvercar

Advantage of an integrated garage is that you always have the option to convert it into another room.

hazyjo

I'm guessing the vast majority don't use garages for their cars. One of ours is used for 'stuff' (including secateurs - thanks for the spelling - as we choose not to have a shed when there's two huge garages out the back), the other garage is used for my car.

Jx

Contessa

I'd rather have an extra room downstairs than an integrated garage. A house is for people not cars.

googler

Integrated with an internal door every time.

CH boiler in there, electricity meter in there - no meter readers or service engineers traipsing through the house.

Tap for gardening, car washing etc. self-installed just inside the door, so no need to drill through walls etc.

I can go to and from the garage in the winter without traipsing through snow, wind or rain.

sonastin

KateLiana27 wrote: »

One of my pet peeves is a garage that you can't get a car into, even if you wanted to. We ruled a huge number of houses out when viewing for this reason. But I must be in a minority on this because so many people seem to have them...

I think the problem is that cars are bigger now than they were when the houses were built. You'll never get a Porsche Cayenne into a space designed for a Hillman Imp!

One of my pet peeves is houses with the garages converted into living accomodation! We viewed so many of them with an eye on what it would cost to convert it back. My OH has so many tools and shed isn't secure enough to store them in - not counting the fact that many of these houses don't have plots big enough to put a decent size shed on in place of the lost garage space.

tyllwyd

sonastin wrote: »

... One of my pet peeves is houses with the garages converted into living accomodation! We viewed so many of them with an eye on what it would cost to convert it back. My OH has so many tools and shed isn't secure enough to store them in - not counting the fact that many of these houses don't have plots big enough to put a decent size shed on in place of the lost garage space.

We had a garage in the garden behind the house with a narrow drive which wasn't much use for a car - we decided to extend over the drive because we had a shed bigger than most garages and a gate on the other side of the house. Now we've come to sell, I think its counted against us, and another time I'd keep something with a garage door facing the road, just to be able to say that there was a garage.

LandyAndy

My two previous houses had integrated double garages that were outside the main footprint of the house. They were excellent, really convenient and great to nip into for an hour's pottering at any time or to retrieve tools etc.

My present house has a detached double garage. I didn't think it would make much difference...but it does. Even the twenty feet across the front of the house and fiddling with keys is a real pain.

I agree about integrated garages that are inside the main footprint. The downstairs always feels as if it is missing a room, which, of course, it is, usually the dining room.