Steep Driveway; Lowering Garage Floor

[Tom Bender]

It may make sense to jack up the garage an inch then demolish the floor and footings. Build a new floor and footings and extend the walls. The extensions can be wood above grade but will have to be concrete or block below grade. This should be faster and cheaper than trying to save something.

[Don Bullock]

The permit process will tell you what you can and can’t do. In my case I built a workshop/garage building. The building code required the garage section to have a sloped floor whereas in my workshop without a garage door the code allowed a flat floor. I also remember we had to redesign the foundation because a building code change that wasn’t caught by the designer. The code will determine what you can and can’t do as intrepted by those granting the permit(s) not your landscape architect.

[Mike Heidrick]

Sell it and move like recommended above.

[Bernie May]

What kind of shape is the garage in? Insulated? Updated wiring? I like the idea of lowering the driveway and garage floor, but I would consider at least taring the garage down (unless it is under a portion of the house) and rebuilding the whole thing from the ground up. A bit more money, but a whole lot easier. Plus you can get exactly what you want.

[Joe Jensen]

I would want to look a bit deeper before recommending a sell. Selling will cost 10% or move of the value of the house (6-7% sales commissions, concessions to the buyer, moving costs, points on new loan origination). Say he has a $500K house, that's $50 flushed down the toilet. Also it sounds like the existing driveway detracts from the value of the house. Would the new lower drive increase the homes value? Now, says the house is worth $200K, probably never make sense to spend what it would take to lower the garage floor and drive.

[Malcolm Schweizer]

$50k is a lot of money to end up with the same square footage. Is there room to build a separate shop and just live with the driveway?

[Bill Dufour]

If you have to dig it out anyway why stop at two feet? Dig down deeper and have a basement for the ducting and storage with a shop on top.
Bill

[Kevin Beitz]

Just a few thoughts... Put a second floor in the garage and move the walls in so not to disturb the house foundation. Lay new walls from the new floor up to the house. Bu putting in a second floor should really drop the driveway down.