Winter is coming, as the saying goes, but for Calgary residents it can feel like it never truly goes away. Spring feels like it’s over in a heartbeat, and while there are more sunny days than just about anywhere in Canada, there’s always the knowledge in the background that the warmth is temporary and the long winter months are the norm in the city. For Calgary homeowners, the advent of winter means thinking about how to function in the snowstorms and sub-zero temperatures, and a large part of this will focus on how to keep your car clear of ice and warm enough to start up quickly. This is where investing in a carport garage makes a lot of sense.
What Is A Carport?
A carport garage is a halfway house between simply parking your car next to your home and hoping for the best and building a full scale garage with solid walls and foundations. It’s a permanent structure, meaning that you only have to build it once, but it doesn’t require any digging as the posts can be bolted straight into your driveway. They tend to be open-sided with an angled roof to slip the snow away, so your car will be ice free in the morning without the enormous cost of a full scale garage.
How A Carport Garage Helps In Winter
If you’re working on a tight budget or simply don’t have a huge amount of room on your property for an external building or garage for your car, a carport is a great solution to help keep you moving in the Calgary winter. The following features make it a great option for many Calgary homeowners:
- Proximity to your home – when the temperatures start to drop, it’s not fun, or even safe sometimes, to be outside in the cold weather. A carport typically attaches to the side of your house meaning that you can pass from inside to the warmth of your car without suffering from the cold. If you invest in an automatic car starter, you can have everything ready to go from the comfort of your home, making the proximity of a carport a no-brainer.
- Shelter from the snow – a carport that attaches to your house will have a roof that slopes in one direction away from the building, while free standing carports will likely have an A-frame structure that keeps any ice and snow away from your car. The open sided nature of a carport means that your car will still be cold, and big snowstorms may still reach it, but you’ll spend considerably less time clearing off your car in the mornings with a carport.
- Additional storage – finally, a carport offers some simple storage solutions for your winter ice removal gear. The posts holding up the roof are solid enough to hold heavy tools, as well as buckets and small shelves for storage. If your carport is attached to your home, you can also add some storage to the external wall to keep your winter tools close to hand.
