h a l f b a k e r yIt might be better to just get another gerbil.
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There are plenty of clever schemes for jamming lots of cars into municipal parking garages, but I've yet to see any gadgets for reducing the parking space needs of a car at home.
Conventional garages are expensive in many ways; they typically take up more square footage than the living room of the
house, and the necessarily boxy shape of the garage tends to make suburban homes visually unappealing.
Why not go vertical.
Drive your car home, put it in neutral, snap a metal cable onto a reinforced tie point on the bumper, and press a button. As you walk inside your home, an electric winch attached to your home hoists the car up into the air, and the space it was occupying is now free again. And it's highly unlikely that your car will be broken into or stolen.
When you are ready to leave in the morning, press another button as you are leaving, and by the time you're outside the car has been lowered to the ground, ready to unhook and drive away.
Of course just like on a garage door there would be a sensor system to make sure there's not a trike or tyke underneath as it's being lowered.
You don't want the lower bumper dragging on the ground as the car is lowered or raised. This could be avoided by mounting small caster wheels on the bumpers.
You really need a two story house to make this work; with the winch on the top of a ranch home the car probably wouldn't get off the ground.
If weather protection was a concern, the car could get winched up into a covered cavity where it would be fully protected.
The real advantage to the winch and cable approach is that it's cheap and reliable. It's something that could be sold at Home Depot and installed in a couple of weekends by someone who wanted to convert the garage into a spare bedroom.
City dwellers would drive their car right up on the sidewalk in front of their condo, and winch away. That completely eliminates the footprint the garage requires today. And it's all the better for showing off your new CityDominator SUV.
gadgets for reducing the parking space needs of a car at home
http://www.maywoodg...nt.co.uk/BPOWER.htm
[half, Apr 12 2005]
Parking lift
http://eagleequip.c...E/PROD/LI-SS/HD-9XW
[MisterQED, Nov 14 2007]
[link]
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//an electric winch attached to your home hoists the car up into the air//
...tipping the engine oil, coolant, fuel, battery contents and any unsecured objects all over the inside (or outside) of the car. |
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Alternatively, dig a big hole in the garden, drive the SUV into it and plant some nice Petunias on top. |
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This was done (and illustrated really nicely) in one of W. Heath Robinson's books - maybe "How to live in a flat" - I'll have a look when I get home. |
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[angel], I think that the gas, oil, and battery fluid are pretty well contained. (They don't come sloshing out when you brake hard, do they?) Can't say the same for the stray coins/coffee/sunglasses, but that's a small price to pay for all that square footage. |
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It's probably not a real DIY project, though---it needs some heavy-duty rigging. You can't hang a 1-ton car from a couple of drywall screws in the garage ceiling ... |
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Three ideas: 1) You don't want to put half of the weight of the car on casters on the bumper. You could drive the whole car onto a rigid sled-like-doohicky, lock the wheels to it, and have the hoisting point and casters on the sled. |
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2) Lift from the back---the light end of most cars. You can use a cheaper hoist. |
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3) Can the car's engine help with the hoisting somehow? |
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I'd stick with hoisting the car in a level attitude, if possible. |
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When I was in a big city recently, I was shown an apartment building that had a car elevator to a basement parking garage. The elevator had broken over a year ago, and the part needed was still not available. They'd somehow got some of the cars out, but there were several stuck in the basement.
Be sure to build your hoist fail-safe. |
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Just build a very strong ramp that goes vertical quite quickly and has a set of catches for the wheels. Then let your teen-ager park the car. |
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If I were the dude parked under said winch-hoisted CityDominator, I would invest in winch-cutting (or whatever) technology, cut that shit to pieces, watch the CityDominator CityDominate my CityPinto, sue, and buy a CityDominator.... *with DVD player*. Awwww, yeah! |
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For families with several cars, you'd end up with some kind of bizzare car mobile. |
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//you'd end up with some kind of bizzare car mobile// And of course, Bruce Wayne would end up with a bat mobile. |
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//Bruce Wayne would end up with a bat mobile// which would of course hang upside down. |
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Baked, it's a parking lift used in many older parking garages to double the capacity of lots and high ceiling garages. See link. The problem with your idea is that very few vehicles have a point strong enough to support the cars weight. The only ones I'd guess would be full frame trucks. Also putting your car on end would be horrific if you forgot to remove your bowling ball from the back seat. |
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[bm-gub], cars do not cope very well with being tilted too far. for reference, look into the incident with the freighter that nearly capsized - the new cars that were stored within were scrapped because they could not guarantee everything had stayed where it should. |
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