• National Post
• Times Colonist

Featured in the April 27, 2007 National Post.

Hydraulic lifts help to transform garages

Increase storage capacity. Will convert a space made for two cars into three- or even four-vehicle spot

FRED LANGAN, CanWest News Service

The garage was the big selling point for Charles.

His wife loved the smart downtown Toronto house because it was elegant and central, close to shops and transportation. But the big worry was where they were going to park their cars: a 2004 Toyota Sequoia, a 2007 Audi A3 and a 2001 Porsche 911 Cabriolet, Charles's pride.

"When I saw the garage, I couldn't believe such a structure existed in a downtown neighbourhood," said Charles, who likes a touch of anonymity.

What he saw was a hydraulic lift that converted the two-car garage off a crowded lane into a parking structure big enough for his three vehicles.

"I used to have to leave one car in the driveway and find a winter parking spot for the Porsche. This is not only more convenient, it's more secure," Charles said.

On the day we toured the garage, his wife was out in the Audi and the 911 was up on the hydraulic lift. A flick of a switch and a turn of the handle, and the 911 came down in 20 seconds. Two ramps attach to the lift so the car can drive off smoothly.

The technology isn't complicated. A small electric motor operates a hydraulic pump that moves the hoist up and down. In Charles's garage, there is only a few centimetres to spare between the top of the 911 and the ceiling of the garage.

Look in any one of various publications and there are dozens of ads for companies that sell gear to expand a garage.

Carlift.ca is a Canadian distributor that sells about 800 units a year, ranging in price from $2,395 to $6,000, with another $800 for installation, although the company says most weekend tinkerers could put it up in an afternoon.

"Our sales are split pretty much between Eastern and Western Canada. In places like Toronto, people want to expand their garage, while a lot of our sales in Western Canada are for bigger units for small trucks and tractors," said Jonathon Campbell, a salesman with Carlift.ca at its head office in Calgary.

The hydraulic lifters are measured by the maximum weight they can hold. They range from a 7,000-pound (3,175 kilograms) unit for $2,395, to a 12,000-lb (5,445 kg) one for $6,000. They use pounds because of the U.S. market.

"Our most popular unit is 8,000 lb at $2,595," Campbell said. "It can easily lift a vehicle as heavy as a Hummer H2."

Most of the lifts are made in Asia and imported.

There is only one Canadian manufacturer, Specialty Auto Lifts of Calgary. It sells about 200 units a year and concentrates on three provinces.

"Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia are the only provinces we care about," said David Free of Specialty Auto.

"We make single units and doubles."

There are other add-ons to the lifts that can make the garage even more functional. Wheels under the unit let you move the lifts around, even with the car on. Oil drip pans are available for changing your own oil and making sure the floor doesn't get stained.

And many people keep their garages pristine, adding almost professional units to hold tools.

The garage, once only a place to park the car and store winter tires and lawn mowers, might be the last part of the house to undergo a makeover.

As a writer in Forbes magazine put it: "The garage is where the home theatre was 10 or 15 years ago."

New Homes -- A place to park stuff
After storing tools, decorations and sports equipment, there's often no room for the car
Pedro Arrais, Times Colonist
Published: Thursday, January 03, 2008

There was a time when the garage was used solely to park a car. Nowadays, the space serves multiple purposes for a family, from a place to store sports equipment, seasonal decorations and gardening tools to a home spa and gym.

According to Robert Gifford, an environmental psychologist in the School of Environmental Studies, Department of Psychology at the University of Victoria, the modern garage evolved from barns and standalone carriage houses that protected the family transportation from the elements.

With the advent of the automobile and smaller urban lots, the space merged with the family home in the 1950s, with garages located under houses. By the '60s the garage was elevated to the main level of the house. In the '80s and up to today, the trend has been for

"Today, the garage occupies more space than most bedrooms in a house," Gifford says. "It speaks of the importance society places on the car culture."

While the garage is seen as a mainly male purview, women are just as happy to have the convenience of a dry place to unload groceries, he says.

He notes that in the traditional sense, the garage is male territory. Women tend to allow freedom of the space to the male. Men, as the hunter-gatherers of the family, tend to fill up garages with their finds.

But it is also used by the woman as a place to banish items she no longer desires inside the home -- as the last step before the dumpster.

The size of a contemporary garage is merely a reflection of the larger homes being built in British Columbia. According to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation data, while the size of a typical house in Canada decreased to 1,900 square feet in 2007 (after reaching a high of 2,000 in 2006), in B.C it grew by 50 square feet to 2,600. In the municipality of Saanich, the average house size is 3,065 square feet.

Builder Dennis Dale of Fairwest Construction says most houses he builds include a double-car garage finished in drywall with one coat of paint.

"It's mainly seen as an auxiliary area and not counted in the square-footage of a house," Dale says.

The unadorned area is generally 20 to 24 feet wide and 20 feet long with a 10-foot ceiling. Although he has built a few three-car garages, they are not common, due to constraints in lot sizes.

In custom-built homes, clients sometimes request a larger and taller space to accommodate oversize vehicles.

Curt Dorin, owner of Unlimited Garage in Kelowna, says increasingly people are using the garage as a space to store sports and recreation equipment. His firm offers 300 styles of cabinets to outfit and organize items found in a garage.

"Much as the mudroom is for clothes, the garage is for stuff," Dorin says.

"Like the rest of the house, it's easier to clean an organized garage."

Dorin says clients often get motivated to organize their garage once they come to the realization that it is sheltering "$2,000 worth of junk while $100,000 worth of cars sit outside."

He says a garage makeover can run as high as $25,000.

Faced with expensive real estate, some homeowners who cannot build bigger are doubling their vehicle capacity by installing car lifts.

In a garage with a regular 10-foot ceiling height, a car lift can accommodate two regular-sized cars, one on top of the other.

A typical scenario will see an owner store a collectible or sports car on the lift while the day-to-day family sedan parks underneath it, says Kevin Humfrey of Carlift.ca, a Calgary-based direct retailer of the equipment.

"Although the product appeals to all demographics, we find that 90 per cent of our business comes from homeowners in the metro areas across the country," Humfrey says.

Formerly only found in commercial applications, light-duty, electrically powered car lifts are now aimed at the homeowner, with units that cost between $1,995 and $2,895.

But some garages might never see a car.

An Elk Lake homeowner has transformed his three-car garage into a well-equipped home gym, complete with mirrors on the walls, a TV and a sauna. He says he spent $20,000 outfitting the space after he got tired of the long lineups to use popular equipment at fitness clubs.

"This way I don't have any excuse not to get in shape, and it doesn't hurt the cars to be outside," he says.

His family frequently shares the equipment.

Although the space was always planned as a gym, he built it as a garage instead of a room for resale purposes.

"The next owner may not be an exercise nut and it will be easy to remove the equipment and turn the space back into a garage," he says.

Outfitting and organizing a garage is straightforward, designers say.

"While not common, the design of a garage is very similar to a kitchen," says Jenny Martin, principal interior designer for Pure Design of Victoria, and who recently designed her first garage. "It's all about a clean, streamlined design that excludes anything that collects dirt."

Her design called for a lot of closed doors and racks for equipment. Martin found the garage cabinets shared many similar dimensions with kitchen cabinets. She estimates the project cost an extra $9,000 to $10,000.

Although her clients decided to finish the two-car garage plus workshop as an afterthought, "the husband was very excited with the prospect," she says.