How big does a driveway need to be

driveway

I own a row home in an urban area in which on street parking is a nightmare. We have a small (20' wide x 25' long) backyard that abuts an alley. Both sides are hemmed in by tall fences. I am thinking about converting some/all of it to a driveway/parking pad. Ideally, we would have enough parking for 2 cars (tandem would be okay), but I do not think it is big enough.

How big does a driveway need to be if you are pulling straight in/out of it?

What about if we did some sort of parallel parking spot for a single car?

Best Answer

The size of a standard parking spot depends on where you live. For example, in the US the width will usually be between 8 and 10 feet, and 18 to 20 feet long. But in a European country where the average vehicle is smaller, the average parking spot will also be smaller.

Something to consider when designing your parking area: space outside the "lines". You need to have room to open your door and get out without causing damage to the car or whatever is next to it. Make sure to account for that.

Additionally, you need to think about turning room. If the alley is narrow, you may not be able to turn in to your parking spot if the spot is too narrow, especially with another car in the next spot.

Related Solutions

How long does sealing a driveway take

6-8 hours with 2 people sounds like it'd be about right to me, but I don't have experience in such things. 2500 ft^2 would definitely be above average in my book, that is like 10 ft wide by 250 ft long. I'd expect that a normal drive way would be 15-20 feet long.

How to find the square footage of an irregular driveway

Approximately 9,800 square feet, assuming your drawing is accurate. I hastily colored in the image using MS Paint (not perfect, since JPG compression added a bunch of fuzzy grayscale values).

Then using MATLAB with the image processing toolbox:

width = 235; % establish scale parameters
height = 300;
img = imread('areatest.jpg'); % read image in 
bwImg = im2bw(img,0.5); % convert from JPG to binary BW
% find black pixels, divide by total image area, 
% and scale to square footage depicted in drawing:    
dwArea = sum(sum(~bwImg))/numel(bwImg)*width*height;

You may be able to work this online, with the compile online website. However, I'm not sure if it can read in files from your hard drive.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

How long does sealing a driveway take

How to find the square footage of an irregular driveway

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