Tight Parking

[New POD]

Picture 1 shows the entrance to the parking place, and the MX5 waiting.

 

 

Picture 2 Shows the reverse.

 

 

This is the sighting of the passenger rear wing around the door frame, through the door mirror

 

 

The final Full lock, missing the house by inches.

 

 

Finally, about to close the door.

 

 

 

I'm thinking about retro fitting pAS to it.

[garethj]

Looks like a piece of piss, you're lucky Russ Swift didn't handbrake a Montego in ahead of you.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMTx0ZTOaIc

[Jim Bell]

Nice work, but "inches" is loads of room. You didnt even have to fold the mirrors in.

 

Giffer skiws:

 

 

 

 

 

SKIWS!

[purplebargeken]

That is one tight garage! Wow. 

[Angrydicky]

Just think how many old giffers must have scraped their cars getting in and out of offset garages like that over the years! I'm glad that isn't my garage as the Maestro is surprisingly wide and I know I'd only scrape it like a giffer within a few weeks.

[vulgalour]

That is an easy drive-garage combo to get an MX5 into.  You should have attempted to get my non-PAS Princess into the tin garage I had at Bolsover, I got so good at it I could do it in one shot.  Wasn't so lucky reversing off my brother's drive when I managed to park my bumper on top of the low wall when reversing off.

[philibusmo]

That is an easy drive-garage combo to get an MX5 into.  You should have attempted to get my non-PAS Princess into the tin garage I had at Bolsover, I got so good at it I could do it in one shot.  Wasn't so lucky reversing off my brother's drive when I managed to park my bumper on top of the low wall when reversing off.

 

I can confirm that this garage is a bastard to get in and out of, especially in a Princess with no brakes, that is completely out of tune so has no power and needs to take the steep slope up to the garage at full pelt with cats madly dashing out of the way. At least I had PAS though, even if the tracking was so far out that the wheels were practically pointing in opposite directions.

[eddyramrod]

 reversing off my brother's drive

And there's the second mistake...

[dave21478]

Nice work, but "inches" is loads of room. You didnt even have to fold the mirrors in.

 

Giffer skiws:

 

 

 

 

 

SKIWS!

 

The guy sounds like a cross between The Two Ronnies and Fred Dibnah.

[NorfolkNWeigh]

The thing is when these garages were built cars and people were half the size they are now( or maybe that's just me)

[Christine]

Might be a bit GILFS sucking eggs , but by parking on new heavyweight polythene bags , it makes it easy to shove a car over into a tight spot..just sayin like !

[Guest Lord Sward]

I used to live in an old terrace house and the only way I could park the E-type was to reverse in into the back yard via the bottom of the street.  An uphill run, a tight, wall to get around at 90degrees and a further uphill reverse.  And no wing mirrors on a E-type.  I look at it now and wonder how I used to do it, let along how the missus did it.

[Lord Sterling]

I love tight parking. Where I currently work there is a space around the back in the corner of the building by the staff entrance. You can't turn a car around due to the partition fence between our carpark and the industrial estate next door so I get my car through the gates, turn around in the main bit and reverse passed the staff entrance and swing into the space. The Rover 800 was a fair sized car but the Mercedes Estate is larger but still easy (for me) to get into the space.

 

Years ago I used to work in a factory where were allowed to park in the goods-on area of the factory as we were the night-shift and there weren't many of us. There came a point where I'd turn up and see the pool cars badly parked in the goods-in area so I'd take on the task of parking them correctly so we could get our cars in.

[Timewaster]

From the title I thought it would be about my habit of saying "£1.30 for 3 hours?! - bugger that!" and then driving round and round and eventually parking for free but so far away from the shops I might as well have walked from home

[STUNO]

I noticed while in UK last year that even in new houses the garages are very small, most seem about old Mini sized. Do the developers only drive small cars ! Most people there leave their car outside anyway. Aunt I stayed with had a good sized heated garage and her Golf sat outside and her bins got the garage , there was plenty of space for them out the back of the house, and the lawnmower that sat with them in the garage could have lived in the garden shed where the lawn was!

[xtriple]

When I had my Sl it was soooooo bloody wide that even with the mirrors folded in it fitted through the garage door only if it went in at a slight angle. It was sooooo long I had to let it run into a bitof wood at the end of the garage before I could shut the door.

 

But,

 

Many, many years ago, I was an 'insurance man' for the Co-op and used to wander round with my red book collecting... I went to this chaps house one day and he was working on an early (non frogeye) Sprite. His drive was an okay size but not especially wide and his garage down the end was on a bit of a dog leg to get in. He said: 'I'll just back the car into the garage and I'll be with you....' I didn't like to point out that his car was facing the wrong way. He set off in a fairly dramatic (though totally under control and with zero wheelspin) and halfway down the drive by the side of the house, he did a perfect 180 degree spin in the cars own length and slotted it into reverse mid spin and shot into the garage backwards... all under perfect control!

 

Turns out he did autocross as a hobby!!!!!!!!!!!!

[DS20]

I noticed while in UK last year that even in new houses the garages are very small, most seem about old Mini sized. Do the developers only drive small cars ! Most people there leave their car outside anyway. Aunt I stayed with had a good sized heated garage and her Golf sat outside and her bins got the garage , there was plenty of space for them out the back of the house, and the lawnmower that sat with them in the garage could have lived in the garden shed where the lawn was!

 

It's a bit chicken / egg, but I think one of the reasons that garages are so small is because developers think they're used for non-vehicular storage, and assume the majority of people will leave the car outside and fill the garage with bins / mowers / unopened boxes from the move-before-last / Christmas decorations / garden chairs / assorted other tat instead.  

 

Of course, if garages were a little bigger, then there'd be more chance of people using them to store the car.  But which gives way first?  

[catsinthewelder]

I'm fairly sure that new housing developments are supposed to include a certain amount of off road parking in proportion to the size of the house. 

 

When my dad extended his house he was required to have a drive with space for 2 cars as well as his garage.  Obviously we widened it just enough to theoretically squeeze 2 Mini's on leaving no room to reach the front door and planning were perfectly happy.  As my leaky heaps have never been allowed on the block paving and my brother has never owned a car it has all been a bit pointless.

 

A pointlessly small garage is still a parking space in the planning officers mind and he doesn't need telling when it is eventually converted into bedroom 4.

[Stroller133]

Is there not some planning rules restricting how many parking spaces on sone developments with some ill thought out logic that if people can't park they will get rid of their cars! Might work in central London or large cities but in semi rural towns/villages with a weekly bus service people just park on the highway instead.

[NorfolkNWeigh]

The latest planning thinking* on new developments in Milton Keynes is to have driveways and car ports rather than garages as people will actually park their cars in a carport not fill it with bikes,bins etc and park the car in the street.

Seems a bit strange to see £600,000+ houses with no garage.

[Slappy]

Your friendly planning rep speaks:

 

In West Sussex all new development has to meet a minimum threshold for parking calculated via a survey of all the streets here on average and vehicles per dwelling on a Ward basis. It's failrly relaxed depending on the amount of sustainable transport in the vicinity (I saw a site last week which had 2 spaces instead of 3, but there's a 15 min bus service that stops opposite, so it was acceptable in planning terms), and a modicum of common sense is used by ourselves.

 

Our minimum space requirements are 2.4 metres by 4.8. And we can include conditions on not using the garage as a habitable space. The obvious problem is that there is very little that can be done to enforce it.

[New POD]

Ever try asking an estate agent, for the garage dimensions ? They look at you like you asked if there was a EASA approved helicopter pad in the bathroom.

[ruffgeezer]

I noticed while in UK last year that even in new houses the garages are very small, most seem about old Mini sized. Do the developers only drive small cars ! 

 

They are shit with room proportions too, Mrs Ruff and I once viewed a house where, with a normal sized dining table, you could only get out from the seats around it by moving the table, all the chairs were against the opposing walls.

 

Don't even get me started on 3rd bedrooms that are only 5'11 wide.

[eddyramrod]

When I used to drive this baby

I was delivering timber to new-build sites.  My observations suggest that if you buy a brand new half-million pound family house, you might, if you're lucky, get enough off-street parking for a 1973 Fiat 127, and possibly an equivalent garage.  Where you put the X5, SLK, BINI and VW T5 is up to you, and inevitably ends up being the narrow, sharp-cornered, high-kerbed road.  Which I (size of a fire engine) now have to get down to deliver to the rest of the site.  There's no way I'd buy a house on a new estate, for that reason.  I'd be a crisp long before Captain Flack and the boys got within sniffing distance of the smoke.

[doobietoo]

Ever try asking an estate agent, for the garage dimensions ? They look at you like you asked if there was a EASA approved helicopter pad in the bathroom.

 

Haha yes they do.... and they are even more amazed when you look round the house and ask to look in the garage....and get a tape measure out to measure it .... the final amazement is when you say you love the house but cannot make an offer as the garage is too small. 

[New POD]

Haha yes they do.... and they are even more amazed when you look round the house and ask to look in the garage....and get a tape measure out to measure it .... the final amazement is when you say you love the house but cannot make an offer as the garage is too small. 

 

 

We had a spec for the house that we were looking for.  Must have a Garage. Or space for a garage. 3rd bedroom, must be bigger than 56 square foot, (ie about 7 by 8 or 6.5 by erm 9 and a bit, but not 5.5 by 7).

 

That was impossible for them to compute. They couldn't tell us which houses had space for a garage. and in our price range, they couldn't be arsed to measure the rooms. (Seriously).  My son had a school project to create a set of estate agency details for our house, and his first attempt was to copy the details I had in a file.  It was given back to him, with, "I thought we'd turned the corner on you rushing homework, please have another go" oh how we laughed.

[STUNO]

Helicopters...Funnily enough I went to a house at the weekend that had an attached garage, complete with a Bell Jetranger in it. The place is for sale too, but I don't have the appropriate licence , or cash.

Went to their garage sale !

 

The Garage

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[DS20]

When I was house-hunting, I ended up asking the estate agents not to send me details for any houses built after 1960, because at least where I was buying (Sussex), the newer (i.e. post-1960) houses in my price bracket mostly had 5-foot wide third bedrooms and only-just-over-6-foot-wide second bedrooms.  They were a joke; it'd have been better, in most of them, to have had two *usable* bedrooms, instead of one bedroom and two box-rooms.