How wide is your driveway?

[Fantom]

Maybe not directly "motors" related but would certainly appreciate some fellow petrol head's input\opinion on an issue I'm facing.

So the issue is I'm currently planning an extension to my house, the most logical and only feasible location is on the side of the house. At the moment I have a garage\workshop in my back garden and a nice wide driveway running up to it, with the extension being planned to the side of the house covering some of that driveway. I'm torn between assigning space to the internal room (lounge\diner) or to the outside space (driveway\lane).

I want as large a lounge as possible, but still, need to be able to get cars etc back past the house to the garage, the current plan means the driveway at its tightest point is about 2.8m wide, the room is approx 3m wide.

Any of you guys live with a small driveway\lane? how narrow is it and how do you manage?

Another noteworthy point is that there is a driveway at the front of the house for about 2 cars, so we won't need to park\exit the vehicle in the narrow area.

 

[vanpeebles]

How wide are your cars?

 

[Fantom]

How wide are your cars?

Mine (e46 m3) is apparently 1924mm including wing mirrors, we have an A3 also but its narrower.

Cars may change in future, also would potentially need to get a van or something back there occasionally.

the length of the tight area is knocking towards 8m, just hard to tell how difficult reversing back it would be.

 

[IAmATeaf]

Can't really help but I have a side gate to my garage which is only 2.5m wide and I wish I had made it wider as on the few occasions I drive my car in it always feels tight.

I think for you, it would depend to some extent who will be driving down the side, cars these days are around 1.9m wide, mine is around this width.

 

[vanpeebles]

Yeah, I reckon 2.5 would be minimum. Cars only seem to get wider too.

 

[Chris1712]

2.8m is plenty, could probably go 2.6m I'd say and still be fine. If you want to park there aswell then 2.8m is probably best for guaranteeing car + open door to get in / out.

 

[Fantom]

Yeah it's not going to be used for parking, there is plenty of room in front of the house or the garage where we would park\enter\exit cars, this narrow part just needs to be wide enough to comfortably reverse past and get larger stuff into the garden on occasion. seems like 2.75 might be a good balance?

 

[Conscript]

We have a shared driveway with our neighbour (as in, a single wide piece of tarmac between our houses leading to the garages).
I think it's about 5 metres wide in total, so 2.5m each. Our neighbour rarely parks on his drive (because it's stupidly designed sloping up to the pavement, then down to the road, and any car with normal ride height and wheelbase will bottom out crossing over the threshold of the drive/footway), but on the few occasions where we've both been parked on the drive, it's fine as long as we've parked as close to our respective sides as possible.

2.8 metres should be fine, especially if that's only at the narrowest point and you'll just be passing through it rather than parking at that point. For reference, the standard width for a parking space in a car park is 2.4 metres, IIRC.

 

[Terminal_Boy]

Even though you’re not planning to regularly park vehicles there, make sure the driveway is built to take the weigh of a tradesman’s van or a fully loaded skip.

 

[Fantom]

SketchUps 3D warehouse is pretty cool!

 

[vanpeebles]

2.6 looks a push too!

 

[sovietspybob]

We had a very narrow gate in our last house which i think was 2.4m from memory. It was extremely tight when the missis had her Clio 197 as that was a touch over 2m wide.

We did however park on it every day and it was fine, if its just for occasionally getting to the back of the house i'd happily go as low as 2.4m if it meant the usable house space was more.

 

[DanTheMan]

Ours is annoying as it's 3m wide until the house and then around 2.1m wide past the house...then a 3m wide garage behind the house.

I have absolutely no idea why they put such a large garage behind the house with such a narrow gap to access it. It is technically possible to get to the garage in the car but I never bother and it's just used for general storage instead.

I would say 2.5m as a realistic minimum if I was using the garage to park a car in regularly.

 

[a1ex2001]

Ours is annoying as it's 3m wide until the house and then around 2.1m wide past the house...then a 3m wide garage behind the house.

I have absolutely no idea why they put such a large garage behind the house with such a narrow gap to access it. It is technically possible to get to the garage in the car but I never bother and it's just used for general storage instead.

I would say 2.5m as a realistic minimum if I was using the garage to park a car in regularly.

Stupid planning regs is your answer the parking is a requirement but it doesn’t actually have to be sensibly useable like the house on my street with a step into the garage.

 

[Semple]

You'd get a bus through that gap!

We have a shared driveway with our neighbour (as in, a single wide piece of tarmac between our houses leading to the garages).
I think it's about 5 metres wide in total, so 2.5m each. Our neighbour rarely parks on his drive (because it's stupidly designed sloping up to the pavement, then down to the road, and any car with normal ride height and wheelbase will bottom out crossing over the threshold of the drive/footway), but on the few occasions where we've both been parked on the drive, it's fine as long as we've parked as close to our respective sides as possible.

2.8 metres should be fine, especially if that's only at the narrowest point and you'll just be passing through it rather than parking at that point. For reference, the standard width for a parking space in a car park is 2.4 metres, IIRC.

We have a shared driveway per se with our neighbour too. There's no obvious divide down the middle, you just know that it's half and half. It's trickier for him as his house is on the drivers side whereas ours is on the passenger side so I can park up to the house nice and close. Either way the gap isn't much wider than your standard car.

 

[mccarf]

I used to squeeze my 350z into this by folding the mirrors on the way in. You can see how much space even an Audi A1 takes. Had to park almost on the grass so that there was space to walk past. Then at the back of the drive was a big box for the gas meter so you also had to judge between not going to far back and going far enough for the gate to close without hitting the car. It was manageable but you had to concentrate much more than some driveways, especially at night.


https://imgbb.com/

 

[tom_nieto]

I think our drive is 2.2m at the narrowest point. Luckily it’s a straight run into the garage otherwise it’d be impossible to get anything in there. Would use it every day if we didn’t have a large Korean bus parked in front.