Winter is perhaps the best season to appreciate the value of a garage for your car. On winter mornings, the snow beside the roads, initially pristine and white, quickly turns to a dark grey sludge, a mix of water and mud melted by road salt. This harsh winter environment makes it easy to spot cars that have had the luxury of spending the night in a garage.

Whether your garage is made of stone, or wood, is a double garage, a combination of a garage and a carport, or even a rented space, the type of garage doesn’t make a significant difference for your car. The crucial factor is that the vehicle is sheltered from the harsh winter conditions.

A garage protects your car from the elements, particularly the corrosive mix of road salt and sludge that is so common in winter. This protection not only keeps your car looking cleaner but also plays a crucial role in prolonging the vehicle’s lifespan by protecting it from rust and other weather-related damage.

Moreover, a garage offers more than just protection from snow and mud; it also provides security against theft and vandalism, and in some cases, may even help with your car insurance.

A garage keeps your car clean, and protects it from rain, snow, hail, sunshine, bird feces, pollen, dust, leaves, or even branches of trees during a storm.

Parking your car in a garage is not only a matter of cleanliness

A garage also will improve your everyday experience of using your car largely. Just imagine getting into your car during a heavy shower – or even better: getting out of it with some cartons of goods from the grocery store. Not only will you be able to take yourself as much time as you like getting out of the car and all your bags and packages lined up, it also will not rain into the car, making the floor mats wet and increasing the moisture inside for hours to come. Here we get a first hint of how a garage will also safeguard your car from rust and wear and thus will give you tangible financial advantages compared to keeping your car out in the open, a topic we will have a closer look upon in the next chapter.

Another example is getting up in the morning after a cold winter night with your car parked outside at the side of the road in the open. Not only will you have to cut your breakfast short to gain the time you need to scratch the windows free of ice and remove the snow to not be late for your work, but doing this is as uncomfortable a task as it is a dangerous one. You are balancing on an icy, slippery open road, other cars maneuvering under these conditions, and you might well cut it short and get in the car with just some provisional view holes in the window that reduce the level of safety for the following trip even more than the road condition already does.

Needless to mention a car that has spent the same night in a garage will most probably have clear windows all around and snow will just be on the roof of the garage and none on the car.

Can you afford to build a garage?

If you look at the range of prices of our wooden garages, including double garages, you will find prices roughly in the range of £2500.- to £5000.- Now that may well be much more than you can afford to spend right now. But what if we look at a calculation that includes the future? Maybe we would calculate the lifetime of a well-maintained wooden garage at just 100 years, or we would just include the more foreseeable future of maybe 5 to 10 years?

However, you prefer to figure it out, five factors are essential here:

1. How expensive is your car?
2. How much value will you add to your car by expanding its lifespan and reducing wear off using a garage?
3. How much higher will the resale value of your car be after having spent its life in a garage compared with having spent it outside?
4. How much is the garage itself?
5. How much are you ready to spend for a much more comfortable user experience regarding the daily use of your car?

As to the value of your car and the price of the garage: These are, of course, variables that you would have to fill in yourself. We just know that for most people, their car is the single most valuable mobile item they own. If you had an original Rembrandt or Picasso hanging in your patio, you’d probably also already have a garage for your Ferrari, right? Think about that for a moment: Do you possess any mobile thing that is of more monetary value than your car?

As to the value of the garage: It seems our wooden garages are in the range of about 5 to 10 percent of a new car. And here we are talking just about one car while we should be talking about many cars, namely your current car and all the next cars to come after that one during the full period that you want to include into the calculation because they all will profit greatly from the garage that you will have to afford just once.

Why are ‘garage cars’ preferred on the second-hand car market?

One quick answer is readily available if you just compare the optics of a ‘garage car’ to an ‘open air car’: the ‘garage car’ will have much shinier colours as it has not had to cope with acidic excrements from bees and birds, and most importantly: it usually will have had a lot less car washes. With every car wash not only dust and dirt wear off the car finish, but the nylon brushes will as well while the washing water will make sure to wash the dirty fluid into every small gap, into every little crack of the finish.

It is commonplace that ‘garage cars’ have a much longer lifespans than those unlucky ones that have to cope with the elements for all their life. And this is, of course, not only a matter of optics: rust effects bearing parts as well.

How can you make a garage become real for you and your car?

Depending on the size of the garage, you would need an area of about 3×6 metres to 6×8 metres next to your house or even on some neighbouring site which you could rent or buy.

You could start building a garage from building blocks and have a new hobby for the next roughly 12 to 18 months, or you could purchase a ready-made garage and have your new home for your car available in just a few weeks.

You might have to apply for a planning permission, however, in many cases it is also possible to erect garages without. Please inquire at your local authorities.

If you purchase any of our garages, you would just have to prepare a drivable, dry ground for the garage to stand on.

Why do we recommend a wooden garage for you?

Considering prefabricated garages, wooden garages boast many advantages over garages made from other materials:

1. Timber is a breathable material that takes up and gives off moisture thus balancing out the levels. Parking a wet car in a wooden garage will have your car dry again much quicker than in garages of non-breathable materials.
2. Timber is also a highly thermo-insulating material. Balancing out thermal changes as well as changes in air moisture, and condensation will usually be no big deal in a wooden garage. Mostly no permanent running ventilation will be necessary.
3. Timber is a natural material that looks very good in natural environments like gardens. Moreover, it can easily be painted in any colour to make it fit in perfectly with the main building.
4. Timber is a sustainable, regrowing, renewable raw material. We use highly durable, densely-grained Nordic spruce that practically grows at our doorsteps. Our wooden garages are a highly ecological, environmentally safe investment.
5. Our wooden garages are fabricated with high precision from kiln-dried wood; they are delivered in packages containing the complete garage in numbered building pieces that can easily be assembled by two laymen in one to three days.

You will find more interesting features at our website especially in the section for garages and carports. We also offer double garages, carports with shed, and combinations of garages with carports.

For any questions, please contact us or call Oliver at 020 3807 0369!