Double Garages, why are they never used for cars?

[Beaaware]

Several of my neighbours have double garages and at least 2 cars per household, but they never put their cars in their garages instead they take up other neighbours car spaces in the road? I think this is very selfish of them when they have more than their fair share of garage space than most of us.

i feel your pain, some houses built here had garages as there was hardly any road parking - yet most of them have converted into rooms so park their 4 cars in spaces meant to other houses.

i'd personally quite like a garage.

I presume these "neighbours spaces" on the road are actually just spaces on a public road which are there for the use of anybody with a taxed car.
Fwiw yabu and it's absolutely none of your business how someone else uses their own space.
ridiculous to claim it's being selfish to park on a public road.

Everyone knows that garages are for miscellaneous junk, not cars!

I have a double garage with two single doors on it (stupid Barratts) and my car won't fit through the door, it is too wide.

I must admit, we have a garage that the car is NEVER parked in. It's pretty old and narrow, I would not be confident I could back the car in without damage. Plus, I can't be sure that I won't get blocked in if I did use it. (Complicated local parking arrangement.)

It is indeed full of junk.

We have a double garage and used to get both our cars into it
Now, i just park my car inside it every night - cheaper insurance and nice and warm in the winter with no ice to remove etc.

The rest of it is taken up with bicycles and spare wheels.

My DH current car doesnt fit inside - too high

we don't use our garage for the car. It's only a single though. I find it a pain with 3 young children to use as it is too narrow to manage to open the doors wide enough so would have to get them out then go back to car to move it and would have to get it out of garage before putting them in car. We do have enough drive space for our 2 cars though.

Only one of my 20 or so neighhours parks his car in the garage. None of those with double garages do! We have converted the back of ours (still looks like a garage from the front as it has a small storage area) into a room - much more useful! The vast majority of garages are simply filled with junk from what I can tell - just need a good old de-clutter! We do, however, park our one car on our double drive .

If they have a garage they must have a drive, don't they park on there? I can see why you are slightly irritated if they leave their drive free and park on the road but, really, you have no right to complain unless they are parking on your private land or blocking access for you.

if they are allocated spaces then i agree with you they should not be using them. If its just a public road they have as much right to them as anyone else. what they do with their garages is there business - we use ours for junk and playing tabletennis.

We've noticed the same thing round here - very few people actually use their garages for their cars - I think I can see one person who does, from my front window. However, since the houses all have off-road parking too, it isn't really a problem.

As others have said, garages seem to accumulate junk - ours certainly did, after we moved in, even though we knew that we were going to convert both of them as soon as we could get permission. A number of people have converted their garages too - we've certainly found them to be far more useful as rooms than they ever were as garages.

We did once put one of the cars into the garage - when we were away on holiday the first year we lived here. One car went in longterm parking at the airport, and the other in the garage, but it was the tightest of tight squeezes, with literally an inch either end of the car, and only just enough space for dh to open the door and get out.

I suspect that developers aren't particularly generous with the size of their garages, and cars have got bigger and bigger over recent years - and these two factors have combined to make it very difficult to use a garage. Plus, as dh has told me, car paint technology has improved a lot, so there's no longer a great need to keep your car out of the weather to keep the paint from fading and ageing.

Half of them are too small for the cars. If they're anything like my mother as well - she used to drive forward till she physically HIT the back wall of the garage to make sure her back end was in the garage... got through about 3 front number plates a year with that parking manouver.

Our double garage is built at the wrong angle/to close to the house to be able to use one side of it the other side is being used to rebuild/store my classic car.

YABU

we have a double garage, but could only physically fit one car in there (and do) as its too narrow for 2.

I would love to be able to fit mine in as well to save on time defrosting it in winter etc. I hate it when I have to dig mine out of the snow as DH waves as he drives past me

Garages are for keeping cars in ??? Really?
I don't think we have ever put our car in the garage in 20 years - mind you we have always had a drive so we don't take up space on a public road either.

The only people I know who use their garage for the car are our neighbours and the people over the road. Both are elderly and obsessively tidy and probably have plenty of time on their hands. If you happen to see in their garage when the door is open it is unbelievable - whitewashed walls with tools hanging off the walls on little rows of hooks.

Some time back we had a really thorough tidy up in our garage but there was still no way even the smallest of our cars (a Polo) would fit. For a while though I felt like inviting passers by in to look at our garage as it was so novel to see ti so spick and span!

Another double garage owner here whose car (a supermini) can only just get in - best to retract door mirrors to get through doorway.
DH's car would not fit - and his car is only one size up from mine. Fortunately we also have a driveway to leave the cars.
The double garage is full of the junk of years - anyone for a table tennis table or a boxing punchbag or a dartboard?

The only person I know that uses their garage is my Mum.

Without fail she puts the car in the garage every night. I think she believes that because shes told the insurance people that its garaged overnight that if anything were to happen to it during the hours of darkness and it wasn't in the garage then it wouldn't be covered by insurance (and, of course, being a Vauxhall Grannymobile Agila it would be a prime target for thieves and joyriders alike )

We live in a fairly new house (five years old), built by a big developer and we simply can't fit our estate car in to the garage, not if we want to open the doors to get out! Like most people, we use ours for storing garden implements, tools, dog food and the BBQ. Actually, I read a fascinating piece of research by CABE (Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment) which found that overwhelmingly people did NOT use their garages for cars, and this was a knock on effect of lack of storage space in modern homes and most developers know this. Govt rules on new housing density mean that new houses generally are pretty tight for space and have tiny gardens so no space for a shed either - a garage is the way of getting round this. Seems sensible to park on your drive though.

I would sell my child for be very grateful for a garage (and a driveway!) So sick of not being able to park in front of my house, and the ice chipping in winter is a nightmare!

So YANBU. If I had a garage I would put my car in it!

Well ours has been converted into a gym - so obvioulsy not used for anything!

Cars parked off road on drive though.

We have a double garage, but with two single doors, and although I think I could just get my car in, I'd have to climb out of the back as the doors couldn't open. We do park on the drive though

I am intrigued by your description of "more than their fair share of garage space than most of us" Beaaware. Unless the road parking is allocated then I think you will find that these people have paid for their double garage (either rent or ownership). Therefore they are entitled to more than their fair share of garage space. Perhaps you should pop round to one of them and suggest that since they have more than their fair share of garage you should be entitled to annexe half of theirs to make it fairer.

we have a double garage and two cars. Only time we used the garage when going away on holiday DH managed to scratch the bonnet of his car due to the swing that was hanging from the rafters.

We have seen a lot of houses for sale over the past couple of years and I have only ever seen cars in one of the garages, everyone else uses it for random tat like ourselves. I mean where else would we store our old dining room table and chairs/old kitchen/camping equipment and 10,000 recycling boxes that we require.

We do put our cars on the drive though. My parents ( old) scrupulously park both cars in the garage every day I think it is an old person thing.

Scuttlebuster's quite right - there's a lot of research that shows that the minimum size of garage recommended by most planning authorities (2.3m IIRC) is significantly smaller than people find usable as a garage for cars, because as everyone says, you have to get all your passengers out, drive in, and then squeeze out of the driver's door. Essex planning authority now states 3m as a minimum width, because you need to not only open the doors of the car, but also to store bikes / camping equipment / barbeques etc.

I'm currently in a bit of a dispute with planning authorities, hence having to look up all this info about garage recommended sizes.

However, the Government rules on new housing density have been overturned, so people may get sheds again!