Garage (house)

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A residential garage is a building or part of a home either designed or used for storing a vehicle or vehicles. In some places the term is used synonymously with "carport", though that term normally describes a structure that is not completely enclosed.

[edit] U.S. residential garages

In most American single family and town houses featuring a garage, the garage has a door on the front of the building for vehicles to enter and exit. Most garage doors open upward using an electric chain drive (garage door opener), which can usually be remotely controlled from the resident's car with a small radio transmitter. Garages are connected to the nearest road with a driveway. Interior space for one or two cars is typical, and garages built since the 1950s typically have a door directly connecting the garage to the interior of the house (an "attached garage").

In the past, garages were often separate buildings from the house, almost resembling modern sheds. On occasion, a garage would be built with an apartment above it, which could be rented out. As automobiles became more popular, and convenience essential, the idea of attaching the garage directly to the house grew into a common practice. While a person with a separate garage must walk outdoors in any type of weather, a person with an attached garage has a much shorter walk inside a building.

Garages are often where the attic entrance is located. Used also to store tools, bicycles, lawn mowers and other such items, most garages have unfinished concrete floors. Since they are heavily used for storage, and as work space for home improvement projects, garages sometimes can't be used to protect the automobiles they were designed for. Many two-car garages only have one usable space. Some garages contain separate a storage room to partially alleviate the problem.

[edit] British residential garages

Those British homes that have a garage have a single or double garage either built into the main building (thus subtracting from the living area), detached within the grounds or in a communal block. As the typical size of a family car has increased significantly over the past thirty years some garages can no longer be comfortably used to park a car and increasingly the garage is used as a general storage space.

Traditionally, garage doors were wooden, opening either as two leaves or sliding horizontally. Newer garages were fitted with metal up-and-over doors. Increasingly, in new homes, such doors are electrically operated.