4 Ways to Make Your Car Safer in Your Garage

Whether or not you have a flushmount garage door, adequate weather-stripping, etc., your garage is almost always the best place to store your car for everyday use. In the constant quest for optimal storage, many homeowners also use their garage for extra storage space. These two things can sometimes get in the way of each other, but when it really comes down to it, your car is probably the asset that’s worth more.

Read our quick guide below to learn how to keep a car safe in your garage (without having to empty it out completely).

Park the car in the best position

There are a few tricks you can implement in order to make parking your car in a crowded garage a breeze. First, take a piece of string and hang a tennis ball from your garage door while it’s open. If you line it up properly, it can provide a guideline for parking your car in the direct centre of your garage – you’ll know you’re in the right spot when it bumps against your windscreen. You can leave the string and ball there – connecting it to the very top of the door means that when the door opens it should hang exactly where it needs to in order to give you a guideline of how close you are to the back of the garage.

Another quick way to help you park in a crowded garage is to use parking mats. These are a little more expensive, but you can find mats with rigid bumps to drive over, in order to know when you’ve gone far enough – and keep the car from rolling around if you accidentally leave it in neutral!

Keep the doors safe

A narrow garage could lead to dented doors, and on our worse days, we can accidentally trigger an avalanche of tools or sports gear. If you need to park right beside a wall or row of shelves, a fast and cheap way to keep the doors safe is to fasten rubber tubing or pool noodles on the wall alongside the car. This also works to keep two cars from opening doors into each other if you need to store more than one vehicle in your garage at once. You can string foam tubes between the cars like a rail, to ensure you don’t accidentally damage either of them.

Keep your storage sensible

While you don’t need to give up on storing extra things in your garage entirely, it pays to be clever about it. Don’t store anything near your parking space that could topple or fall over. If you don’t have anywhere else to lean your rake, for example, simply use brackets up on the wall to store it rather than propping it up where it could tip over and break your windows.

It’s also worth considering how you arrange your shelving. Storing something above your car may be necessary, but it’s much safer if the shelves aren’t as full as possible or, better yet, if they have small rails keeping everything in place. This way, there’s less chance of low vibrations – like those caused by your car while you park it – slowly but surely wiggling a can of paint of the shelf and down your bonnet.

Deter pests

There are several pests in New Zealand that you may not be aware of. Even though rats aren’t as common a problem as they are elsewhere, New Zealand still has two main species of them, and they love garages in the winter.

This is more of an issue for your car if you have an older garage that’s not very well insulated. Picture this: if a pest squiggles under your door due to damaged weather-stripping, or through a hole somewhere else but the garage itself isn’t very warm, the next best place is the engine of your car. From that point on, they can do terrific damage to your car’s circuitry.

In order to prevent this, you need to have a properly-sealed and well-maintained garage door. Beyond that, there are a number of home remedies for repelling various pests – rats allegedly hate the smell of mothballs. Then again, keeping mothballs in your car might not be for you, as they’ve been officially banned since 2014 for poisoning concerns. Your best bet is to keep your garage pest-free from the beginning, and for that you need a good garage door.

Talk to the experts for a car-friendly garage

To find out more about the Prestige range of garage doors, get in contact with our friendly team. We can offer steel, timber, or even custom garage doors designed specifically for your home. Contact us today and find out why Prestige Doors & Gates is the best in the business!