Garage door opening

[LostInThePNW]

Building a garage for the Oliver.

Anyone had issues with a standard 10x10 garage door?

2022 LE2

Adam

 

 

 

[John E Davies]

Too low! You need a 12 foot high door, at least. You also need a 16 foot ceiling in the garage so you can get up top and do maintenance and cleaning.

In other words, an RV bay, not a garage. My door is 10 wide x 14 feet high. If you do not build it as a standard RV bay it will make it a lot harder to sell the house later. The older generation that is downsizing and investing in big RVs wants a bay and a small house. Out of the 25 houses on my street, 8 have attached RV bays. 43 or 45 feet long.

John Davies

Spokane WA

[Gliddenwoods]

Hello "Lost..."

I recently remodeled (lowered the floor) my garage and installed a new 10' door for my O-2; works great. Search for my project pictures under  Gliddenwoods.

[Bill and Nancy]

It will be a tight fit but I think it will just make it if your carful. With out looking up the specs I think its 9 feet wide by 9 feet 6 inches tall. Dont forget the length  26 feet is about as small as you want I wish I built my pavilion 30 feet  incase I decide to side it. . John is correct if you want to work on it it needs to be much bigger but the door size of 10 x10 may just make it but not by much. My pavilion is 14feet  wide 12feet  high and 26 feet deep.

Bill

 

[John E Davies]

 

https://megagaragehomes.com/rv-garage-dimensions-cheat-sheet/

John Davies

Spokane WA

[ScubaRx]

I designed a floor plan for a  house we planned to build a couple of years ago. When the garage and adjoining shop reached almost 4000 square feet, I decided we probably didn't need to build an 8000 square foot house at our age. It would have been nice though.

[2008RN]

I went with a 12ft high x 14ft wide and it is 30 ft long.  I really like the 14 ft wide, for being able to work on the Oli and it gives me extra width for getting backed into place (still working on the backing skills).   The extra height is also nice to get up on top.  I had enough room I could have gone 36ft long, and I wish I had.    When I was going over things with the contractor he told me that for resale I should do a 14ft high opening, and max the length out. We had set a financial limit on what we could spend on Oli, truck, RV port/garage, and accessories to get going. 

When it comes down to it, we hope this house will be our last, and we will never go with bigger RV/Trailer.  I had a  GMC greyhound bus conversion many years ago which was fun, and it had lots of room and storage.  Although it was to big to get in placing that I can get the Oli into.  We really like the Oli trailer setup better, and I no longer have to take care of a towed vehicle. 

So my decision for the RV garage was right for me.  My Children will have to worry about resale in the future,  I hope to be to darn old to worry about it.  What I do regret is that 10 years ago I built  a 10ft high x 24ft wide x 36ft deep garage with 2 stalls . I wish I would have be more forward thinking and built a 40ft wide x 36ft deep with 12-14ft height with 3 stalls. I would have saved 1/2 of the cost of the RV garage doing it all at once, and had more room. 

 

Good luck with your decisions. 

[LostInThePNW]

Thanks a lot.

It will be an additional out building. The house has an adjoined three car garage with no space to add anything else in that area.

Will be building an implement shed for the tractor and stuff and then a dedicated structure for the Oliver and a boat. Stuck at 26 ft width, length will be 32 ft.

We live on a hillside so have to do everything terraced.

So sounds like taller is better. Will speak to the builder and garage door company. Thanks a lot.

 

 

 

[Colin Rafferty]

We have a 10x10 door for our detail shop and have pulled several LE2's into the shop with no problem, both old and brand new Olivers. It's a tight fit and gives your roughly 4-6 inches of clearance on top of the Oliver since they are 9ft 6in tall. 10x10 is the smallest you can go and will work.

[Mattnan]

Our opening is 10x10 and worked fine.  Important that the top is full 10ft.  We have sliding barn doors vs a roll up.  

[SeaDawg]

Our side door at home for our Elite 1 is 10' high, outside rollup.  Perfectly level approach, and it's tight. I think it's 12' wide. We don't use it much, but tested it twice. My husband now uses the Ollie space for his extensive workshop, and Ollie continues to sit outside.

When we built our pole barn in wnc, we ordered a taller and wider door. I think 14' wide, 14' tall. 

10 x 10, level approach,  would be minimum, imo.

[Patriot]

We kept it fairly simple 13’w 11’h 25’L and no doors just an all steel building. Having a (3) car garage upper attached and a lower basement garage we just did not need another garage. So we had an “Ollie Hangar”  built 6 months ago. Lead time from when we ordered was two weeks. In a day and a half we had our Ollie under cover. The concrete pad is 13x55. This has worked perfectly for our needs.

From this -
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To this-

 

[SeaDawg]

Lovely  olllieport,  @Patriot. Could you remind folks where you are? I don't  think snowload is a big part of your equation.  But, I could be wrong.

[John and Debbie]

2 hours ago, Patriot said:

We kept it fairly simple 13’w 11’h 25’L and no doors just an all steel building. Having a (3) car garage upper attached and a lower basement garage we just did not need another garage. So we had an “Ollie Hangar”  built 6 months ago. Lead time from when we ordered was two weeks. In a day and a half we had our Ollie under cover. The concrete pad is 13x55. This has worked perfectly for our needs.

From this -

 

To this-

 

They did a nice job.  Love the "airport lights" and pad area.

John

[Patriot]

4 hours ago, SeaDawg said:

Lovely  olllieport,  @Patriot. Could you remind folks where you are? I don't  think snowload is a big part of your equation.  But, I could be wrong.

@SeaDawg Thank you. 😊 We are located in Western NC and we rarely get very much snow at all. And not having any frost in the ground during winter what little snow we do get does not last long. Our roof on the Ollie Hangar is snowload certified/rated for 35# per square foot. We sure hope it’s never tested.

 

[Patriot]

3 hours ago, John Welte said:

They did a nice job.  Love the "airport lights" and pad area.

John

John,

Thank you it took a little time for it to all finally come together. We sure are very grateful to have a place at home to park our Oliver. Those lights are solar powered and we purchased them off Amazon. 

-Patriot 🇺🇸

[Rivernerd]

23 hours ago, LostInThePNW said:

Will be building an implement shed for the tractor and stuff and then a dedicated structure for the Oliver and a boat. Stuck at 26 ft width, length will be 32 ft.

Sounds like taller is better.

John Davies addressed height in an earlier post.  I will address garage door width.  Wider is also better.

Your situation sounds very similar to ours.  4 years ago we built a 30' x 30' outbuilding to house our tractor, raft trailer and inflatable boats.  We call it the "boat shed."

That is where we now store our Oliver Elite II, because it has 16'-high rafters and a 16'W x 12'H garage door.  The tractor got moved elsewhere.   

Now that we store the 7'-wide Oliver and the 7'-wide raft trailer side by side in the boat shed, we wish the garage door were wider.  When installed, the garage door opening is about 15'10".  With about 6" clearance on each side of the door opening, there remains only about 10" between the sides of the two trailers when "perfectly" parked.  It is workable, but in hindsight, we wish we had paid the extra for an 18'W garage door.  It would make backing the second of the two trailers into the boat shed much less stressful, and make it easier to walk between them.

For the 26'W building to house your "Oliver and a boat," if in doubt, get the wider garage door.

[SeaDawg]

You do have to be careful what you wish for.

Our pole barn door is wide and high, and sometimes got stuck if we didn't stop it early.  

The company came out and corrected it, while under warranty,  but big (heavy) doors require big openers, and definitely check it out while still under warranty. 

[Geronimo John]

On 12/28/2022 at 8:15 AM, LostInThePNW said:

We live on a hillside so have to do everything terraced.

So sounds like taller is better.

I'm sure you have done the geometry already, but just a reminder as it bit me:

Being on a hillside generally results in an angled driveway leading into the flat garage floor.  If backing uphill, that angle change will cause the rear of our trailer to "tilt up" as you back it in.  In my case I needed an additional 6" of door and ceiling when backing Ollie into the Ollie Cave.  Another reason to go for the 12' tall garage door and really tall inside ceiling height.  

GJ

[Steph and Dud B]

We're starting a garage project now. Current plan is for a 14' tall and 12' wide Ollie door, flanked by two 12' wide x 10' high doors for the truck and car. The bays will be 30' deep.

We went with an oversized trailer door so it would fit other travel trailers, Class Bs, or large trucks, too. And backing a dually into a 10' wide door isn't fun.