Offsite Storage Of Classic Car
 

We recently purchased a home in Bradford, but will only be there part time for the next 2 years so we have some time to make the changes we want to make before fully moving in. One upgrade I'm considering is putting in a Autostacker to park my two classic cars in one side of our 2 1/2 space garage, but before I do that I'd like to know the cost and availability of secure indoor storage for classic cars in the village to compare costs, ease of use and access, etc. Does anyone here store a car somewhere in or near the villages and if so what are your experiences and costs doing so?

Thanks in advance,
Jim

All Aboard Storage is very close just south of Warm Springs on 301, it is a new facility that has temp/humidity controlled 10 x 20's at about $150.00 month including taxes, etc, they also run specials, I don't know what the exterior units cost but I assume much less, they also have larger units. Give them a call.

Thanks for the info, I'll check them out!

In case not aware, my garage ceiling is 8ft, so there is less than 7 ft clearance under the garage door.

I have a plan for that (I'm full of them, just ask my wife). If I decide to put in a lift I will 1) get a low profile lift that minimizes the height of stacking 2 cars to around 10' and 2) will have a contractor put in a tray ceiling over just the one parking space and only as long, wide and deep as required to allow the car roof to raise that far. I figure something like $10-11K+ plus all in which I'll have to balance against ~ $2k/year for offsite storage.

As far as having a stacker there's a certain amount of inconvenience accessing the car on top but also the convenience of having both close at hand.

Think about just putting them both in the garage and call it a day. We always leave our everyday driver in the driveway.

Good thinking, wish I had thought of a tray ceiling when specing the home.

I'm a little more math challenged than that, my two muscle cars are my toys. My wife informed me a long time ago one spot is for her car and at least for now I have a daily driver on top of that! I would have a 4 car garage house if I could have afforded it, trying to do it on the cheap(ish).

I have room for one more car in my garage.

OP, I tried to do the same thing (gardenia model with stretched garage). I asked for a 9 ft ceiling when we built, not an option. I mention this because you may run into problems getting the pocket ceiling installed, the building codes are very strict. IMHO, get a copy of your house plans (sumter county building department) then contact the engineering firm that designed your house and have a discussion with them. On our model the pocket will have a very negative impact on the storage above the garage, and I only needed and additional10 inches to stack both cars.
In any case good luck with your project.

A tray ceiling would require major structural modifications.
 

A tray ceiling works fine when the original construction is designed for it. The truss is constructed with a horizontal bottom chord that rests on the exterior walls. The tray effect is created by adding non structural framing hung from the original truss bottom chord to support the sheetrock. The tray does not have any structural purpose. The tray is purely for aesthetics.

Trying to make a tray ceiling in your garage would require major modifications to the existing trusses. You would have to cut every bottom chord in the subject area and make a new truss using many connectors and new chords. Meanwhile you will have no structural integrity and require many temporary vertical supports and structural ties to regain lateral structural integrity. I do not see how you would get some one to design the mods. Good luck with getting the County Building Department to approve your design. They had agita with adding a sliding door unit in a masonry exterior wall in another post which is a straight forward concept.

If you are serious about looking into this "tray ceiling concept", contact ROMAC who designs and builds all of the trusses for TV construction. If you do this mod, I am sure that your current TV structural warranty would be voided.

Another issue motioned previously is that your current garage door track is only about 7 ft. above the floor. So your "tray would need to start about 10 ft. from your garage entrance. Do you have adequate space to do you mod?

Evidently All Aboard and My Garage are showing the same address. I contacted My Garage and inquired about storage for my cars. I was quoted $300 plus tax for a 12x25.

Not sure how you came to that conclusion but All Aboard's address is 2976 Co Rd 523, Wildwood, FL 34785 and My Garage is 5626 C.Thomas Rd, Wildwood, FL 34785

Know a person who bought a home close by with a detach four car garage, he bought the home and uses it as a rental except for the garage, there he stores his babies.

I was going to say to try to get a house with a larger property line so you can get either a longer deeper garage or wider but what is done is done. There are also several storage facilities in Leesburg and Wildwood you should Google them

Classic car storage.
 

I bought a enclosed car trailer and they store outside under $100/month.

“My Garage” behind Lazydays just south of 44. 800 square foot-1200 square foot climate controlled space.

The concrete to support a lift needs to be thicker than what you get in a standard build.

What is the standard build thickness....4 inches?

Try a tilt stacker
 

I encountered this problem at our house in wisconsin and found a stacker that tilted up on one end that allowed two cars to be in the same space. Think of how car haulers put them on their rigs. The first car backed in then when lifted up the second drove in.

I have two drag cars and a Shelby AC Cobra roadrace car that I keep and work on at My Garage The Villages in Wildwood behind Lazy Days. It is not cheap but it let's me keep doing what I love to do.(I still race and I was at Sebring last week with the Cobra clocked at 171MPH. ) Google My Garage Wildwood

Tray Ceiling
 

I had a tray ceiling put in my garage when I built my house in The Villages. Under it is a 4-post lift for parking a 4th car or just working on my hobby. No extra cost when I built the house.

Good information, thanks!

My garage is extra deep at 24' so I believe at least the roof would clear the raised garage door but I do recognize it will be close.

You know, that's actually genius! Only downside I see is it's going to cook in the summer time, have you noticed any issues with that?

That's awesome, one of mine is a bone stock 14 GT500 that I have a ton of parts to put on before I do any racing. I'll probably go the autocross route as I've done that in the past with other cars.

We actually bought ours right before what looks like at least a $25-30K price increase based on the available new homes similar to ours. It would have been great if we could have built instead, but the cost of waiting would have been significant.

I've actually looked at that exact stacker online a while back but now don't see it offered, or at least I can't find it. Was it a Bendpak or another company? I figured there must have been issues with it so it was discontinued?

From what I've read that is mainly an issue with 2 or even 1 post lifts that have to be anchored more securely into the concrete. The lifts I'm looking at are bolted to the floor so they don't move around so the concrete can't be so thinly poured it would lead to cracking, etc.

4-Post Lift
 

The feet on my 4-Post lift are 1 foot square. they put less weight per square inch on the garage floor than a car. When I built my house in 2001, the size of the garage was a priority. I had mine widened, lengthened, floor lowered, an area added in the back for a workshop, and a tray ceiling. Total square footage is about 800. Picked up extra room recently by hanging my new furnace from the ceiling and putting a tank-less water heater on the wall.

Just beware. Personal experience. In days of old, eight years ago when I was still working and in New York, I used to walk by and chat with a neighbor who as a hobby was restoring, working on old cars. He was proud that he got one of those old gas heaters that I remembered seeing hanging from the ceiling, in stores. He was so proud. He hung it and connected it to the gas all by himself. I have some regret I saw it and wondered if he had any idea that that heater and spray paint etc is a bomb waiting to blow up. He was found dead under his formerly gorgeous 1950 or so Jag that was destroyed by the fire and explosion in his garage. A simple spark as in a light switch can ignite dust, vapors etc.

Here's a fun group to get some track time a couple of hours away:

Race Track at The FIRM | High Performance Driving School

The FIRM Friday Open Track Day April 2 info on Apr 2, 2021 '('577906')' | MotorsportReg.com

Scissors Truss can create more headroom
 

Glad that you were able to get the TV builder to make truss modifications in the original design and construction. It is a cost effective way to achieve more headroom. Using a scissors truss (go online for many sketches and discussion). In TV, the IVY model ( and many others) has a "scissors type truss construction" to create a raised ceiling effect without increasing the masonry wall height. There is a sloped up section at the exterior walls that raise the ceiling to about 10 ft. The end bottom chords rest on the masonry walls and then the central bottom horizontal chord forms the central raised ceiling area. Perhaps this is what was used in your garage area rather than the classical tray ceiling effect around all four walls.

Trying to modify an existing standard truss to do this would be extremely difficult.

Offsite storage of classic car
 

The standard concrete thickness will be fine with a 4 post lift. You said the garage depth was 24 ft., that should work also with lift pushed toward the rear, the garage door will be close but will work. I looked at a house that had a two car garage w/8 ft ceiling , went to County and told them what I wanted to do, they said if I had an engineer do drawings they would approve. I had an engineer come to the house for a look. 5 minutes later he said no. Trusses were running side to side, not front to back.
So you couldn't cut thru all the trusses, if they ran side to side, it would only need a few to be modified. So take a look up there. If the trusses run front to back you can probably do it. Side to side is out. Or find a house with a 5 panel garage door, most of them are on garages with 10 ft ceilings. I've been in a few but don't remember the model type.

So after 18 years, my original furnace needed replacement. Rather than put the replacement on the platform where it originally stood, taking up valuable floor space at the rear of the garage, I had it hung from the ceiling. Cost a little extra, but along with the wall mounted tank-less water heater I picked up about 30 more square feet of floor space. I did not, nor would not, use anything that did not meet code.

That's interesting. Based on the gabled roof I'm 99% sure the trusses run side-to-side. I was thinking I still would only have to cut a 'few' trusses since the tray would only be as long as the roof of the car on top, plus wouldn't extend back towards the door since the garage door would make it unusable there. All good information, thanks!

Hobby garage condo idea
 

I'm a new villager, and for me the toughest part of moving to TV was the lack of shop space.

There must be thousands of car guys in TV. You have to wonder why there aren't half a dozen hobby garage places nearby. That "My Garage" place is half a hour from me and completely rented out.

It's amazing that it's never occurred to the Developer to build a bunch of metal barns near by, subdivided into 1000 sqft hobby garage condo's, for all us guys who were forced to give up a lifetime of tinkering and a garage full of tools just to retire to Florida. What a missed opportunity!

I have checked them out online, just haven't signed up so far. Definitely something to do for a fun weekend! I've also looked up the SCCA autocross nearby and there's also the Martin Sports Car Club which is dedicated to autocrossing. Not as much fun as an actual track but a fun way to wring out the Shelby while I hone my driving skills.

A Great Video on "How to modify trusses for more height to install a car lift"
 

I do not plan to be adding a car lift to my garage; but I have an engineering degree and could not resist researching this further. I ran across a great video that I think accurately demonstrates a potential solution. I AM NOT RECOMMENDING THIS. SEE A LICENSED ENGINEER BEFORE YOU PROCEED. Engineers just see things differently than most people do :)


How to Modify Garage Trusses for More Height for a Car Lift (Super Garage Video #1) - YouTube

Watched & Bookmarked! A ton of good information there, hadn't thought about the scissor bracing, but if I'm right about my trusses running side to side wouldn't work for me, darn it. Still shows what can be done and definitely would have a licensed engineer design it out if that's the way I go. Thanks so much.