Double Level Garage

When you go to get a car out of this, do you want LIFO, FIFO, or full choice of which car to pull? Designs and costs will differ for these three cases. If you want to get way cool, you could tilt the cars up vertically. Anything you want for as many $$ as someone else wants.

We had one, back on the farm. It was built on the side of the hill that the house was on. Two spaces on top, one below, perpendicular to the top. Top spaces were entered from the south, lower one from the east. No moving parts.

Cool thing was, we had a 3x4 foot opening in the floor/roof so you could service vehicles from below. Great for changing oil, etc. I know this isn't what you have in mind.

My question is what if you wanted to drive a car that was on the top level? If you had individual lifts, you'd only have to move one car, but, still..........not very practical.

Thanks All,

This would definitely be something that I had in mind. I hope there would not be any violation to the code anywhere in U.S.

Just out of curiosity, why wouldn't crowded city like New York build something like the multi-level car garage, would save ton of spaces and would attract more tourists. Maybe because we still have ton of untouched land. Thanks again.

Fine when shiney & new, but a headache when the lift breaks down - "Sorry, sir, the part we need to fix it has been deleted, but your car will be safe from theft in the meantime, so keep paying for the space, or we'll send it down the quick way!!"

There are more than just a few of these in downtown Madrid, check out this webpage (no english version available, but if you check the videos section or the projects (proyectos) section you can get a pretty good idea of the multitude of systems available.)

Integral Park Systems

I saw an article about a commercial parking garage with an automated forklift type system, I believe it was somewhere in the UK. The cars were lifted into slots, saving space.

Aussiebob nailed it!

Okay, so where is this Guggenheim Museum Parking Garage? Is it for real, or is it a chrisg288 drafting exercise? Whichever, it's great!

It's for real.

AussieBob found this one:Munich Parking Garage (Photos) - Urban Legends A

Ooh, I can see it now. Of the twin Petronas Towers in Malaysia, one is the office building, and the other is the garage. Well, at least the concept could work....

That pole in the middle is going to be a mite busy, though. Good study in bottleneck theory? Or do they have a Maypole dance choreographer to sort out several lifts on the same pole?

No- its not Chris's - it is real

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/76489/flying-car-amp-vying-customers.html

Many years ago, went shopping in Japan. The shopping centre had a parking station where the car entered at ground level and went onto a skid that was part of a continuous vertical loop chain.

20 positions on the loop, parking attnedant at the ready, turntable in the footpath to turn the car around so you didn't reverse onto the street.

VERY civilized!

Stack parhing has been around for a long time. They had stack parking in Pittsburgh at one time, but not now, at least I do not currently know of one.

It has been in other large cities where parking is very limited

PEbobimm

Be very careful of fire. Make sure your insurance covers any potential problem.

PEbobimm

Would you consider building it on sloping land, where the two garages one above the other could each have a ground level entrance?

But that would take away the fun of building a lift system.

Simpler yet. In San Francisco, years back those narrow 3 to 5 story apartment buildings had turntablesin the basement where you drove into the center, got out and aimed your car by turning the turntable. After that, you would get back in and drive into your slot. Reverse process for departure. These days this would be easy to automate. this could alow a lot of cars with only a single entry.

Just another complicated mechanism to break down and leave your car hanging in the breeze......

Hope they have a huge stockpile of replacement parts on hand and machine mechanic on duty 24/7! LOL

I have a 2 car garage (with room for 3 4-wheelers on one side - a mower, a motorcycle, and some miscellaneous yard equipment along the back wall) in the upstairs of the garage and a double door with room for 4 cars below on the lower level in the house I built. I wanted to build a downstairs shop when I was designing the house, but thought that I could not afford it. When getting bids on the house, I was shocked to see a cost of nearly $10,000 for backfilling and hauling of clear stone for the basement of the garage (over 1,000 sq ft x 10' tall). That plus over $10,000 for form-work for the basement and garage.

That got me to thinking: What if I just went ahead and built the basement under the garage? It would eliminate the backfill, increase the cost of the slab a little, and provide an awesome shop attached to the house! I designed the floor between the levels out of Spancrete concrete planking and spent $5,000 to buy the plank, and installed it for about $600 worth of crane time. By going with Spancrete, I had an instant floor between the levels, and I did not need any posts. I have a clear-span 30 feet by 32 feet!

I then eliminated the conventional form-work for the basement/garage lower level wall and made them out of Insulated Concrete Forms. The ICF's cost nearly $10,000, but provided a sound-proof, fireproof wall with an insulating factor of R50+! For less money I had a basement that is top-notch, a two sorry garage, and I pay under $1200 per year to heat the whole works, including the entire living area of the house!

I use the upstairs for parking the every day vehicles (room for 4 at the end of the day, but I don't like playing ring around the Rosie with vehicles). The downstairs is the shop that I use for large projects. It actually can hold 5 mid-sized cars, but I usually only park one down there that is not being worked on. That one can be pulled outside when I need a large workspace, or I have about 10' by 20' around my workbench when the "parked" car is left inside.

Between that lower level shop and the actual house basement is a 6' wide by 7' high door that I can pull a mower, 4-wheeler, or motorcycle through to work on it in the small shop inside. I don't heat the large shop unless I have a project going in the winter (it never gets below freezing, and is usually around 45 to 50 degrees), but the small one is always 70 degrees. That is also where I do my small projects that are "clean" projects year-round. It also holds my tools at a constant hold-able temperature to avoid rust and numb fingers in the wintertime. Paint, grease, oils and any other liquids are similarly kept warm in the vestibule between the rooms on the out side of the firewall.

Best decision I ever made, and I would never move of my own volition. If I had to move, I would build the same feature into the new home - no matter what the cost! In the case of building it myself it was actually cheaper (and waaaaay better) than conventional construction, but I suspect that a contractor would charge you a premium for him to get outside the box. You would want to figure out a way to convince him that it is less labor and materials to do it this way. ICF's build like Lego's (c), and it literally took 2 to 3 of us a week of evenings to pour footings, stack blocks, and brace! I think we had about a half-dozen of us on pour day to finish bracing and to keep the pumper busy and on-task. The pumper cost about $1000, but I think it was necessary given the steep slope of the hill required to make it work out. The entire package was still cheaper than the alternative.

This is the way to go if you give up on a mechanical means of stacking cars - it probably is cheaper in the end as well. No break-downs, no inconvenient car locations, no waiting for a hoist, and no worry about strength of design. However, it is not as fun a solution, and it does require a special lot (I have 10' of fall over 30' of depth).

One final suggestion: If you go the lift route, make the basement 10' deep. If you have normal cars, you could get 2 vertically stacked in the basement (verify this with lift design of course). That means room for 6 vehicles in the space of 2! You may not need 6 now, but eventually you will. I never thought I would use up 2000 sq ft of garages, but there are days I wish I had more! Besides, if you want a shop you could have table saws, workbenches, lawn equipment storage in the bottom and still store 4 cars if the lift was blocked up to avoid entering the bottom 4 or 5 feet of basement. I have never regretted spending the extra $1000 for that last 16" of basement wall, but it has crossed my mind that another 16" would be nice to have. I have never needed 11'4", but I have desired it...

My brother-in-law has one. Looking at the front of the home (the north side of the house), it appears to have only a two car garage. However, the house is on a hill, and there is a secondary driveway that leads to a second garage on the east side of the home that is below the first garage. The lower garage is a continuation of the walkout basement. The floor of the main level garage is prestressed concrete. The set up of the two garages is great - you never have to move a car to get another one out. In addition, the house looks modest from the front. It isn't until you get inside or walk around to the lake that you fully comprehend the magnitude of the property. Needless to say, my brother-in-law married into some money.

there are lot's of these systems used in parking lots in NYC.. Kinda neat to watch, and they seem to be rusty workhorses.

I don't see them in Chicago..

..No (legal) street food either..

Unjustified fears?

anyhow... I've seen some types in catalogs for under 5K

Yes, I have seen not one but many double level particular garage in .... Japan. As everybody knows there are too many people in a so amall country, so soil scare a lot a people has to use imagination. Going to the point I have seen many but I did not put special atention to the construction, only I remember the car on the top was supported over two narrow platforms, just enough to hold the tyres of each side.

But the important thing is by what means the car moves from botom to top, and that I can't explain to you. Sorry

Hi! Depends on your plot. Need all the details of your facility, like drawings with dimentions, inner and outer layout/ hydraulic dumb waiter can be an option for a multi level Garage facility. I can really help you if you send me the details.