- 6–8 , Cars per unit, with lifts
- 150A , Individually metered panel
Car storage
Car storage you own, with room for lifts.
- Clear ceiling
- 25 ft
- Garage door
- 16 × 14 ft
You have two cars you drive and three or four you do not. The third one is under a cover on the side of the driveway, the fourth is at a friend's warehouse in San Carlos Park, and you have not turned the key on it since March.
That is the problem this building was designed for: a place of your own, on a deed, where the whole collection sits under one roof at one temperature, and you can walk in at two in the morning if you feel like it.
- Service per unit
- 220V, 150A, 1 or 3 phase
- Unit sizes, sq ft
- 1,350 – 3,724
Why indoors
What Florida sun and humidity do to a parked car.
Dew point
What it is, Southwest Florida averages afternoon dew points in the low to mid seventies for five months of the year.
What it does to the car, Under a car cover in an unconditioned garage, that moisture condenses onto cold metal overnight and sits there. It finds the inside of the door skins, the underside of the trunk floor and the seat rails first, the places you do not look.
Ultraviolet
What it is, Then there is the sun. Ultraviolet exposure through a west-facing garage window fades a dashboard in two seasons.
What it does to the car, Interior temperatures in a closed, unconditioned Florida garage routinely run 15 to 25 degrees above ambient in August, which cooks the plasticizer out of dashboards, dries out leather and hardens door and window seals.
Domestic risk
What it is, And there is the ordinary domestic risk: the neighbor's basketball hoop, the lawn crew's string trimmer, hurricane shutters stacked against a quarter panel, a teenager reversing an SUV.
What it does to the car, Every collector we have sold to can name the specific incident that made them start looking.
Cars per unit, door size, power and ceiling height.
Every unit comes with the same base specification. What changes between plans is floor area and door configuration.
- Garage door
- 16 ft wide × 14 ft high, insulated
- Clear ceiling height
- 25 ft
- Electrical service
- 220V, 150A, 1 or 3 phase service in every unit, individually metered
- Climate
- Dedicated HVAC system serving your unit alone
- Roof
- 60-mil TPO membrane
- Access
- Gated, 24/7, camera monitored
- Cars per unit, typical
- 3–4 on the floor in a 1,350 sq ft unit; 6–8 with lifts
- Lift clearance
- 25 ft supports stacked four-post lifts with room above
How owners set up a car unit.
- 01
Battery tenders on their own circuits
150-amp one- or three-phase service per unit means you are not daisy-chaining tenders off one wall outlet. Owners typically run a dedicated circuit and a rail of outlets down each side wall.
- 02
Four-post lifts
With 25 ft of clear height, a four-post lift doubles a bay without touching the plan. Two lifts and a floor row is six cars in a 1,350 sq ft unit.
- 03
A sealed floor
Epoxy or polyaspartic over the slab. It stops the concrete from wicking moisture and it means a fluid leak is a paper towel, not a stain.
- 04
A wash and detail corner
The full bathroom gives you a water source. Owners add a hose bib, a hose reel and a drying station rather than washing on a hot driveway.
- 05
The second floor as the office
320 sq ft above the bay, plumbed for a wet bar. Most collectors put a desk, a fridge and two chairs up there and look down at the cars.
- 06
Cabinetry along the back wall
Spares, fluids, tools, wheel and tire sets. Off the floor, out of the humidity, behind doors.
What it costs to own, by the quarter.
The association fee is $1,000 per quarter on a 1,350 sq ft unit, increasing pro rata with size. Property taxes and your own contents insurance are additional. A four-car collection sits under one roof, on one deed, at one temperature, for that one fee.
The plans for two to six cars.
The cars
Four on the floor, more on lifts
The RV
Driven in with the tow car still hitched
The boat
Trailer and tow vehicle, nine miles inland
The second floor
320 to 960 sq ft, plumbed for a wet bar
Baron
1,350 sq ft · 320 sq ft second floor · From $399,000
Three or four cars on the floor, or six on two four-post lifts, with a workshop wall and room to walk around every fender. The most common first purchase for a collector.
Baron plans
Knight
1,800 sq ft · 450 sq ft second floor
The right size when the collection is still growing, when a trailer lives here too, or when you want a proper two-post lift bay separated from the cars you are not working on.
Knight plansQuestions about storing cars
The site-wide facts, stated once: 170 mph ultimate design wind speed, FEMA Flood Zone X, outside the Special Flood Hazard Area, roughly nine miles inland from the open Gulf, and an association fee of $1,000 per quarter on a 1,350 sq ft unit, increasing pro rata with size. RV dump station on site, included in the association fee. How the building is engineered and what it costs to own are explained in full on their own pages.
Walk the car storage standard in person.
Excalibur is one property with 41 units inside 2 buildings on 5 acres. Both buildings are complete. Stand inside a finished unit and judge the space before you decide.
Best-matched plan
Baron
- Floor area
- 1,350 sq ft
- Second floor
- 320 sq ft second floor
- Price
- From $399,000
For four cars or more with lift(s), a workshop wall and a second floor you will actually use.
Tour a finished unit, see Baron