RV Barndominium in Georgia

Measure the coach, not the brochure. For height, measure to the absolute highest point — the roof air conditioner, the antenna, the solar panel — and add at least 12 inches. For width, measure mirror to mirror without retracting the mirrors, because that is how you drive it in, and add 18 inches total, about 9 inches a side. The RV Industry Association's dimensions policy supports coaches up to 45 feet long, 8.5 feet wide and 13 feet 6 inches tall in travel mode. Run those numbers and the widely quoted 14 ft door turns out to be right for a coach up to roughly 12 ft 6 in and no taller: a coach at the 13 ft 6 in travel maximum needs 14 ft 6 in of clear opening, which is a 16 ft door. Width lands on 12 feet as an arithmetic minimum and 14 feet as the size people are glad they bought, because you are steering a forty-foot vehicle through it rather than sliding it in on rails.

Taller than the door by more than most plans allow. Above the opening sit the header, the torsion tube and springs, the horizontal track and the opener. Garaga, a major North American residential door manufacturer, recommends 12 inches of headroom for a standard-lift torsion-spring door and says to add 2 inches for an electric opener; trade guidance rounds the same figures to 15 inches, and a high-lift conversion — which is what you specify when the door has to clear overhead storage or a lift — wants 24 inches or more. On top of that sits the header, which over a 14 or 16 foot opening in a post-frame or steel wall is an engineered member with real depth, not a rule of thumb. Working the stack: a 14 ft door reaches about 15 ft 3 in before the header, so plan a 16 ft sidewall eave. A 16 ft door reaches about 17 ft 3 in, so plan 18 feet. Put the door in a gable end instead and the rising roof does some of that work for you.

Depth is coach length plus a buffer, never coach length alone. About 4 feet extra gives a tight storage fit; 10 to 12 feet gives room to open the bay door, walk around it and get at the storage compartments. So a 40 foot coach wants 50 to 52 feet of clear interior depth and a 45 foot coach wants 55 to 57. That is deeper than most barndominium footprints are wide, which settles the layout question for you: the bay runs the long direction of the building, and the door ends up in a gable end rather than a sidewall. That turns out to be an advantage. A gable end roof rises away from the eave, so the height available at the door jambs is greater than the eave height. On a 40 ft wide building at 4:12 with a 14 ft eave, the roof plane at the jamb of a 16 ft door sits at 18 feet — enough for a door that would need an 18 ft eave in a sidewall. Check it at the jambs, not at the ridge, because the jambs are where the roof plane is lowest across the opening.

In some Georgia jurisdictions, no — and the reason is height. A detached building is an accessory structure and accessory caps run far below principal-structure caps. Cherokee County's zoning ordinance limits an accessory building to 25 feet or the height of the primary structure, whichever is lower, which means a detached coach bay is capped by the house standing next to it; Cherokee also caps accessory floor area at 50 percent of the principal structure and bars accessory structures from being used as dwellings. Sandy Springs caps a major residential accessory structure at 24 feet, or 15 feet if it sits within a required setback. The City of Atlanta caps an accessory building at 20 feet in R-1 through R-5, at 25 percent of the rear yard and at 30 percent of the main structure's floor area, and allows only one main building per lot. Several counties also control the sequence: Cherokee, Atlanta and Paulding all require the principal building to be underway first. Bartow County allows an accessory structure first on an A-1 lot of two acres or more, but states in terms that it cannot contain living space. Attaching the bay to the principal structure is what makes the height allowance available.

In Jackson County it counts for nothing, and the county says so in writing. Its Unified Development Code section 3-050 regulates barndominiums by name and requires the dwelling portion to provide at least 1,400 square feet of heated gross floor area. Section 105 defines building floor area as the gross floor area of all heated spaces, and states that heated floor area does not include garages, unheated basements, attic storage areas or partially enclosed decks or patios. The exclusion is written by use, not by temperature, so heating the bay does not convert it into countable area — a garage is excluded on its own line. A 1,000 sq ft living core with a 1,200 sq ft coach bay is 2,200 sq ft under roof and still short of the minimum. An RV-focused build in Jackson County starts from 1,400 sq ft of conditioned living space and adds the bay on top. Other counties set their own minimums with their own wording — Bartow County 1,200 sq ft, Walton County 1,400, Coweta 1,725 — and we confirm which figure and which definition applies to your parcel before the plan is drawn.

In the Georgia counties we have researched, that is not a route. Bartow County's zoning ordinance section 6.6 allows a recreational vehicle to be occupied as a temporary dwelling for no more than ten days in any two-month period, and only if there is already a permanent dwelling on the lot; section 6.7 adds that recreational vehicles cannot be parked on any lot without a primary structure at all, and once one exists they stay out of the front yard and out of every setback, with no more than two on a residential lot. Cherokee County's code section 14-125 states that no recreational vehicle shall be permanently occupied, and defines permanent occupancy as 30 or more consecutive days, 30 or more non-consecutive days in a 90-day period, or connection to metered water or electrical power at a unique mailing address; the section carries no construction exception. Coweta County's zoning ordinance section 67 prohibits a recreational vehicle being used for living, sleeping or housekeeping purposes when parked or stored on a residential lot. Hall County's temporary use section allows farmers' markets, mobile food establishments, garden markets and construction trailers, with no temporary-residence category at all. Some Georgia counties elsewhere in the state do permit it. It is confirmed for your parcel before you plan around it.