Design your own Traditional Oak Frame Garage, Carport and Other buildings

With SolidLox you can design:-

• Garages, car ports, home offices, garden rooms, games rooms
• Flat roof, low roof, medium roof, high roof, rooms-in-the-roof
• Hipped roofs, gabled roofs, barn end roofs, mansard roofs
• Balconies, pergolas, raised decks, home extensions, studios, leisure lodges
• And more.

How SolidLox Oak Frame Designs Work

SolidLox is designed to use solid Green Oak, Douglas Fir, Redwood, engineered Glulam, or other timbers

The SolidLox system is designed around larger than normal 100 x 220 beams and 150 x 150 posts.

Proprietary metal connections fix beams to posts.  These are set on 120mm to 160mm adjustable height metal base plates to facilitate adjustment for any small discrepancies in levels.

Standard Posts are 2.4m long, giving a slab (or pad) to top of post height of 2.5m, adjustable upwards by 40mm. This means a standard garage / car port entry height of 2.28m can be achieved. Lower posts can be used, as for example for log store extensions, and longer (higher) posts up to 3.4m long for greater entrance clearance, or balcony heights.

Designing Your Bespoke Oak Frame Garage / Carport

The following examples show how to use the solidlox system to design your own structure.

Design Example Plan 1

You can download these instructions here as a PDF and print it off to make it easier to follow

1. Look at the Classic Oak Garage and Classic Oak Carport designs and plans on this web site
2. Sketch down on paper the plan you want to have for your traditional style building
3. Divide your plan up into the different use areas you want
4. Mark on the plan the measurements what you want each of these areas to have
5. Add up the total lengths and widths and mark these on the outside of the planned footprint
6. Mark on your plan where you want to see the 150×150 square posts
   (NB: Space posts at centres of 3m without walls between, and 6m with walls between – +/- 5%)
7. Mark your plan with those walls you want to be infilled (solid) and divisions to be open (dotted)
8. Give each side of your plan a letter and mark on the approximate North point so that you can refer to these easily

1. Also mark on your plan where your beams will go. You will need these on all outside walls and between bays as the dotted lines show
2. Floor Area – Multiply the outside length of side “A” by the outside length of side “B” (eg. 9m x 5.7m = 51.3 sq m

In this example there are:

• 12 Posts
• 6 Beams
• 17.4 metres of infilled walls
• 17.7 metres of open sides
• 11.4 metres of Gable Ends
• 51.3 sq metres of ground floor area

Design Example Plan 2

You can download these instructions here as a PDF and print it off to make it easier to follow

Imagine you want to design a garage or car port that is a bit more complicated, say by adding a room in the roof and a lean-to store for garden equipment and logs to the plan on side “c”

1. Repeat the process 1 to 9 above ADDING a “Room in the Roof ” over the main ground floor area
   Note that the first floor sits on joists connected to the ground floor beams, and there are no posts or beams in this area
   Also note that there are no walls to sides “A” & “C” since these are the slopes of the roof. Only the Gable End walls “B” & “D” have walls
   You might now have something like the drawing below

1. Floor Area – Multiply the length of each rectangle by its width, e.g. in the example above this will be:-Ground Floor
   Equipment and log store 2m x 6m = 12.0 square metres (12m2)
   Studio/offfice/workshop 3m x 5.7m = 17.1 square meteres (17.1m2)
   Car 1 & Car 2 – 5,7m x 6m = 34.2 square metres (34.2m2)
   Giving a total ground floor area total of 63.3 square metres (63.3m2)

   First Floor(room in roof)
   Over the Office & Garage only, 9m x 5.7m = 51.3 square metres (51.3m2) (The floor joists and floor deck will cover the whole area)

   In this example there are:

   • 15 Posts
   • 8 Beams
   • 28.4 Metres of infilled walls
   • 16.7 Metres of Open Sides
   • 11.4 Metres of Gable Ends
   • 63.3 sq Metres of Ground Floor Area
   • 51.3 sq Metres of First Floor Room in the Roof area

   Now for the Elevations

2. first draw what you want your building to look like from the front
3. you already know the spacing of the 150×150 posts from your plan
4. decide how high you want it to be to the underneath side of the beams (e.g. for vehicle access)
5. since the beams are 220mm deep, you can now specify the post height
6. mark on the height from floor of building to top of beam (this will be the same level as the top of any joists)
7. decide what type of roof your want – low, to stay under any 4m planning requirement, or high for room in roof
8. also decide if you want the roof to overhang the walls, or be flush (usually 150mm overhang)

1. if you have different height requirements, say for equipment and log stores, show these on the side elevation
2. mark the height you want at the bottom of the 220mm beam along the lowest side
3. . this will give you the lowest post height required on this side

this shows that there is no beam between the low ‘lean-to’ on elevation ‘C’ and the main post and beam b. The posts along elevation ‘C’ will be only 1.5m high underneath the 220mm deep beam.

We can now see that there will be:-

• 3 posts 1.5m high along elevation ‘C’
• 2 posts 2.52m high
• 1 beam 6m long
• 2 beams 9 m long
• 1 beam 7.7m long
• 3 beam 5.7m long
• 1 beam 2m long
• 28.4 meters of infilled walls
• 16.7 metres of open sides
• 2 main gable ends 5.7m wide = total width 11.4m
• 2 half gable ends to lean-to section each 2m wide = total width 4m
• 63.3 square metres ground floor area
• 51.3 square meteres first floor room in roof area (if required)

Drawing Your Infill Walls

An additional beauty of designing your oak framed garage or car port using the SolidLox system is that, where walls are required, all you have to do is draw a line and note what cladding you want to be seen on the outside.

If you want this cladding to run over the posts and beams, rather than expose these as a design feature, you simply need to add another note to this effect.

SolidLox will then produce walls using its standard specification of 50 x 75 braced softwood framework, with the cladding you choose on the outside.

The inside of the walls will expose this framework to be seen as part of your creative design.

However, if you want to line the inside of these walls, for example to create a room in the roof, ground floor office, store or workroom, just note this on your sketch or other drawing.

Likewise, you can specify the space between the studs to be filled with insulation if you wish.  Most commonly used for this is Kingspan or Celotex, but other materials may suit your needs better. All can be supplied.