Carport And Garage Pros And Cons
I have just moved into a great new house, with everything that I have wanted, except for one thing. There is no garage. There is not even a carport. Now my wife and I knew that we needed to be able to put the cars under some sort of protection, we are no longer interested in digging the cars out or cleaning them off in the winter everytime we want to go somewhere. Thankfully we got a great deal on the house, so we knew that we could build either a carport or a garage once we took possession.
Time is a bit of an issue in our decision. We definitely want to get our car storage up and completed before it starts snowing, which gives us about two months to build. That is more than enough time to put up a carport, but if we decide on a garage, then it will be cutting it close.
The hardest decision for us is choosing between a carport or a garage. Each have their pros and cons. I think if we decided on a carport, we wouldn’t make it a totally open carport. So even though both of our options would include a roof and (some) walls, the difference comes down to one being totally enclosed, whereas the other doesn’t offer quite as much protection.
No matter what, a carport is going to be cheaper, easier and faster to build. Building a closed carport will add a bit of time and cost, and might be a good compromise. Adding a structure to the property is going to raise my property taxes, and a garage will cost more in taxes. Perhaps not a significant amount per month, but in the grand scheme, it may be significant by the time we want to retire and we could have put that money into rrsps. One more pro for a carport in my opinion is the simplicity of it, meaning we probably won’t pack it full of junk and clutter like we might do with a garage.
There are definite pros to having a garage though. The complete weather protection is a big item, it would be much nicer for loading and unloading the car in the winter. Also it is more secure – a lot harder for anyone to access the cars. Extra storage (although I dread junk) is also a benefit, and perhaps the extra (secure) storage that a garage would allow would warrant the larger building, maintenance and tax expenses. The last point my wife suggested is having a garage would cut down on heat loss as we enter and exit the house from the garage door in the winter time.
Building either a garage or a carport is going to give us the basic protection from the weather that we want for our cars, both in the summer and winter. We just need to decide whether the extra benefits of a garage are really necessary for us at the moment, versus the extra time cost and effort that building a garage would incur. Once we decide that, we’ll be able to start building, and have our extra storage in place for the snow.
