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2 car garage lift vs 2 separate garage door

13 years ago

As per our designs, we have a three car garage. One is already by itself. The other 2 car garage has a single door lift. Aesthetically we like the 3 separate garage doors. Is there any advantage to keeping it as one single and one double or is it the same to make it 3 single doors?

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Comments (7)

flgargoyle
13 years ago
Obviously, you need a separate opener for each door, and each door has it's own hardware, etc., so it would cost more for three separate doors. The difference in price would be tiny compared to the cost of building a new house. I'm not sure why, but I would prefer 3 separate doors. I recommend 9' wide doors instead of 8'.
chisue
13 years ago
Three doors will cost more and possibly require a wider frontage, but would probably be more attractive. An emphatic yes to the nine-foot wide doors!

Is there any practical reason you'd need the double opening? Would you need more space to jockey vehicles, lawn equipment, whatever?
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phisch
13 years ago
My current house has a 3 car garage with 3 seperate doors and I hate it. So much so, the house I currently have under construction with have a 4 car garage with 2 double (16 foot) doors. The reason why I hate the single bay garage doors is because they are a PIA to back a car, let alone a truck into. Plus, as the others said the 3 seperate garage doors will cost more money.
david_cary
13 years ago
I think it depends on the angle of approach and size of the cars. A "double wide" is always easier and I have seen the results a few times of the miscalculation.

So it is a balance of aesthetics, cost and function. Nothing unusual there. Front of house may argue for single doors more but who has a 3 car garage on the front. We copied a house that was on a corner lot and had 3 singles. There was a discussion about looks but cost won out. If you do decide on the double wide, then you have to then decide where to put the double - we went with closer to the entrance door since we knew that the double would be used more. That wasn't a universal decision in our neighborhood but it made sense to us.

BTW - no trucks/SUVs here - with a nice wide driveway but just yesterday, someone was parked in the drive and my wife never would have made it out with a single door.
lazy_gardens
13 years ago
You can always paint the door to look like 2 singles.
trudymom
13 years ago
I have a double and a single. I like it because I have a truck and I can park in the middle of the double that way.
geraniumeister
13 years ago
We lived 23 years with one smaller door on the side of the garage for lawn mower etc., in the front we had two seperarte 9 ft. doors. Our last house had one large door that was not big enough. Was suppose to be a two car garage, but was very tight. Our new build we are going back to seperate 9 ft. doors with 3 or 4 ft. between the two doors. Will love having them again instead of one large one. I personally don`t like the idea of opening one large door and having the whole inside of my garage in view for people driving by being able to see what`s in it!

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