[rainfall]

Hi all

as cars are getting bigger and bigger, should I be concerned about the width of my garage doors?
I have the opportunity to lightly remodel my garage and I have 2 options: leave the original structure and just do a 2x8 ft garage doors (8ft ~ 2.4m in real world) OR I could do a single garage door with probably up to 17ft (or 5.18m).

The second option would be extremely expensive: the contractor was talking about crazy numbers like 20-30 thousand dollars as it would require some serious foundation changes on my garage, have to order custom garage doors, etc. etc.

I hate SUVs because they are too big, but I might eventually have to own one (never say never)...
I don't have any kids now, but I want to have some day.

Thanks in advance.

[bb1857]

Simple...are you and your family good drivers? If you tend to bump into stuff go wider, if not stay the same. As far as working on cars goes a single door is way better

[Efthreeoh]

Make one 8 and the other 10

[Draper]

How much do you love this house? Do you envision yourself retiring there?

You can recover the costs from many types of improvements when selling, but this will net you next to nothing when it comes time to sell.

[rainfall]

Thanks for the inputs guys.
I'm not absolutely in love with the house but there is a chance that I'll live there for a long time (other than relocating for grad school, I lived 7 years in my previous place).

I'm a decent driver: haven't been in an accident (small or big) since 2007. My current car is absolutely flawless and my 2 previous cars looked like brand new (with 10k and 60k kilometers respectively).
My wife is a grey area on driving skills... she hasn't driven for a long time, but hasn't been to an accident either.

Anyhow, maybe it's a good idea to do 2 doors of different sizes than having to make significant structural changes. I could probably do 8 ft + 9 ft pair garage doors without doing anything incredibly expensive (frame to frame is 17ft, so I would have to widen both sides of the bigger door). I need to talk to the contractor and see what he thinks.

Thank you guys for your opinion.

[BeEmVe]

For the size, one single door is not really going to be much different than two doors and as all you loose is the pilar in the middle. The huge cost is for losing the pilar because they will probably have to put in a new beam for the span. The foundation rework will probably be minimal.

When rebuilt our single car garage we put in a 10' (wide) x 8' (high) door. It is great cause the car is parked off center and the extra room allows us to get wheelie bins around and out easily.

[rainfall]

Thanks, this is helpful man.

[Mexecutioner]

I have one 17ft garage door and one 8ft. I can easily park my X5 and my wife's MKX in the large door garage, without much worry. There is room between both SUV's to open the doors too. While any of the 2 SUV's fits through the 8ft. door it is pretty tight and any miscalculation would mean scraping a mirror. I'm OK with it but makes my wife nervous, so she never uses the small garage.

Even if you are you are not planning on ever having a SUV go wider on one door if you can now that you are remodeling. We always thought we wouldn't have 2 SUV's and now here we are...