Trees House: Carport is an addition, not an accessory building?

Saturday, October 19, 2024

Carport is an addition, not an accessory building?

What if we built an 18'-6" x 20'-0" addition in front of the existing workshop? Give it walls and a roll-up garage door. I'm picturing a 20' LVL for a ridge beam with 2x6 @ 24" on either side at 1.5:12. On the 2x6s? SunTuf polycarbonate. Solid walls, glass roof. Ta freaking da.

Alternative #1: sheathing and EPDM roofing. Alternative #2: Kick the roof pitch up to 4:12, use conventional trusses and die into the existing garage roof like a dormer. Alternative #3: Just bite the bullet and extend the garage roof (hip or gable at front?).

This approach has these advantages:

Solves car protection from leaves/driver protection from rain
Preserves full-size workshop (a selling point, and not just for me)
Does not look like a second front door; no confusion
A Mud Room would be very nice

And disadvantages:

Low-slope roof looks bad--might be better with a parapet all around (that is, better weird than bad)
Puts the garage door in your face, just like every other crappy tract house
18' depth fits the RAV4, but it's not code for a garage. For the city, I'd call it all Workshop.

Alternative #1 EPDM roof:

EPDM would look like a manufactured home. At least SunTuf would be serendipitous

Alternative #2 4:12 roof:

More expensive framing; might want to add posts and a beam down the middle
Need to remove some of the new roofing to tie in--need to reconsider gutter situation
More expensive roofing--have to match Certainteed roof

Alternative #3 Full roof:

Gives us attic storage options
City might require calcs for new roof (dumb, because it's just engineered trusses over the addition and filling in with 2x4s over the existing loft--it's not going to add load to the existing structure)
Only solution that doesn't scream addition/garage conversion
5 squares of new shingles - $500 roughly