Making the best use of space in a hangar is a challenge. Tom Green of Marcelona, Mich., found the best solution for his two-plane hangar at his Lakes of the North Airport home, which is in the shape of a star.
“The whole hangar part of the house has no walls more than a foot,” Green says. “In between are seven doors. Starting out from one side of the house there’s a garage door, then I have a 3-foot pass door for people to walk in. That’s followed by a 42-foot Schweiss Doors hydraulic door, another garage door and then a second Schweiss hydraulic door. Then there’s another pass door and a third garage door.”
From the air, Green’s hangar home is star-shaped. His planes enter the hangar and are housed on elevated tracks, 3 feet above the ground to allow more usable floor space in the hangar.
The hangar and hydraulic doors, both at a 45° angle from the elevated taxiway, blend into the home.
The area behind the hydraulic doors and the garage doors houses two airplanes, four snowmobiles, four cars, two 24-foot boats, as well as a 39- x 13-foot workroom.
Green said he was able to find a general contractor who was up to the creative challenge, but he had to explain his idea 50 times to subcontractors who worked on the building.
Green, who has experience in a variety of cockpits in 45 years of flying, currently flies a Cessna T337 Skymaster and a Lake 240 Renegade six-seat amphibious hulled aircraft.
When he was 15, he bought a 65-hp Aeronca Champ with no electrical system. Green relates that his parents had no knowledge of the purchase until it was completed.
“It’s one of those things — it’s in your blood somehow or another,” he says. “I played ball as a kid and then afterward I would look at the flying books. I’d lay in my backyard and look up at the Air Force planes going by and try to identify them, trying to guess when the sound barrier would break. After a while, I got to know just about every airplane there was.”
Green went with hydraulic doors over bifold doors because he needed the clearance and didn’t want the hangar any taller than needed.
“Some manufacturers’ doors moved in a way that wasn’t particularly attractive to what I wanted to do,” Green says. “There were others that were heavy and were hard to modify using sheeting on the outside in addition to the bump-outs (for the nose of the planes). I needed a very strong door to do that. I went to Oshkosh and looked at every single door operator. Sometimes I would sit there for a half-hour and watch a door operate. Eventually I came to the conclusion that the Schweiss door had the greatest structural integrity to make this work. I’d seen Schweiss doors and others at a number of places. Before I could continue with building the home, I had to be absolutely convinced it was the right door.”
“What I did was take a 2,450-square-foot hangar with 16 foot walls and hid it behind a 1,500-square-foot home with standard 8-foot walls,” Green continues. “You might think it’s impossible, but I’ve totally hidden that hangar and by using Schweiss hydraulic doors and modifying the front of the doors with little bump-outs. No one has any clue this is a hangar house.”
With the added weight of cladding and bump-outs on each hydraulic door, Schweiss Doors supplied a beefed-up cylinder lift system that handles the heavy doors smoothly. And with some creative planning and building, the hangar may be as space efficient as any other.
“I started looking at a hangar and how much wasted space there is when you try to put something in that is T-shaped,” Green says. “Everything in front of the wings is wasted space no matter what kind of plane you have. Anything behind the wings, whatever you put there, you have to move the plane to get it out. So I started thinking, ‘What if my goal was to make everything move in the hangar independent of everything else, what would it look like?’ The thought of moving things and having them come in at different levels kinda worked. I started testing by building ramps and I would inch my plane up on ramps at the commercial airport where I was hangaring my plane at the time. The further I got the plane in the air, I could see how it opened everything up.
“I realized that if I could move the plane forward, the space in front of the wing would be minimal. The whole nose of the planes sits outside the hangar and I built around it. The reason I used hydraulic doors is because they swing straight out. With this alcove, the door closes around it.”
This looks like something out of my dad’s wildest dreams. With the amount of time that he spends in his hangar, I’m surprised he hasn’t built something like this house! I can imagine he would be really happy living on a piece of property like this. Thanks for sharing!
That is some very nice design work. Clever use of grading to avoid having to raise and lower the planes. Nicely thought out platforms to work on the planes off the floor like that. Bump-outs to minimize wasted space in front of the wings, and one big area that gives you flexibility to change things up, or sell to someone with different needs, should that time come. Safety, strength and durability throughout. I’m an engineer so I probably see it differently than others. Impressive.
Thank you
It took me a minute to realize this was you as I was reading it. It looks like you have built a pilots dream home for yourself. Well thought out and beautiful.
Thanks Eric
It is ironic to me, that I live in an airpark and many people think those of us that do have hangar homes are wealthy. The irony is some guys live even COOLER HANGAR HOMES and have more money it never ends does it ? LOL TWO PLANES, FASTER PLANES, TWIN ENGINES, ECT.
I don’t know that I would trust some cinder blocks and some pine boards to support a $100K aircraft.
Loving that 337! I only have my ppl but I would sure find the money to get my private-twin rating . That skymaster can take you pretty much anywhere. In line thrust , long range ,good fuel economy …
How do you work on the planes?
I don’t do any major work on the airplane. As far as minor things like cleaning or pre-flighting I just open the door and pull it forward and with the door open I have a covered area to work. If I wanted to do work in the hanger I have a collapsible work platform that is 39 inches tall 4 foot long. That raises me up 3 inches taller then if it was sitting on a conventional floor
Every Pilots dream home!
Very nice….but I must say…beauty is in the airport…..I just bought a cottage type home, would fit in his bathroom….but the airport is the most beautiful in the U.S. ….Windsock 4000 grass airport, Ossipee, NH., facing the White Mountains….nice hanger thought, I must say retired firefighter, Tim Andrew
I really Like this and have one suggestion to make it complete. Since you’ve made such a nice hanger and home, I would put a car Lift “modified” (it would need the nose wheel ramp added) so you can roll the wheels of the plane even further back into the hanger clearing then prop past the concrete wall(inside the bump out area), giving you room to lower the plane down to the main floor for maintenance or loading, when desired. (Note: I can’t tell from the pictures if you have a couple feet needed in back of the wings before they touch the steel posts holding up the structure.)
I do have a couple of feet, and the steel support is movable forward or backward a couple of more feet . Underneath the concrete floor is a very wide concrete piling which allows me to move the support beam. Either side of the hanger is big enough for a Cessna 421 . For maintenance or loading I open the door and pull the plane forward on the taxiway and still covered by the hanger door. That makes the preflight easy and out of the weather.
Hello, thank you for giving us more information on the Sweiss Doors (42′ wide) by 16′ tall. Good way to get an estimate on the cost of these doors. I really like the bump outs in front of the nose cowl, prop, and spinner.
Now I would like to know where to go to purchase the plans to build this house. Can you please publish who to go to. To purchase plans. I thank you for time and publishing some great aviation articles. Ken.
The design of the home and the plans are completely my own. I wish I could’ve went someplace to buy them as it would’ve made my job much easier. To see if all of this would work I actually built the scale model out of Cardboard sheets. I built the airplanes ,cars, furniture and virtually everything else to scale and then just kept changing it as new ideas happened over time. I tried drawing the plans with computer models and it kept trying to auto correct what it thought was anomalies but what I needed to have happen. If you are thinking of building this house, I would strongly suggest that you come on by and I’ll give you a tour as the plans will just make you scratch your head like it did with the subcontractors. This plan allows you to have a variety of unusual things inside the home. Our closets are vertical not horizontal and the same in the kitchen as the pots and pans come out of the ceiling rather than be in cupboards Our airport community will have two fly ins next year and I’d be happy to show you around.
Whoops, that’s Phil and Mike below . . .
In reply to Phil and Mike above, you must have missed the part about the taxi way being raised 3 feet, not the floor lowered. Closer inspection of the photo will give evidence of the change in elevations between the front and back of the house.
Interesting idea, but maintenance would be difficult.
I was a little worried about the maintenance myself so I made sure that anything that needs maintenance is on completely flat ground. All grass cutting Is on level ground and around the house everything is completely level. The same goes for inside the house where there are only three steps from the hanger to move around any place on the main level witch is where all activities are at.
RE: Phil’s question. It appears from the photos that the center door has a pad, at grade, that extends about five foot in from the door for the snowmobiles and cart. I suspect there is no way from there to get those vehicles to garage floor level. There are two additional traditional overhead garage doors on either side of the hanger doors. Grade for those are at the garage floor level. (Remember, the article said the taxiways were elevated.) So cars simply drive in 3 feet below the planes. And if he wants the snowmobiles at garage floor level, he does it via the automotive overhead doors.
If I want to get any vehicle from the elevated platform to the main floor I just open the garage door from the elevated platform and drive the vehicle out and drive it in one of the main street-level garage doors. The pictures were taken when I first put air planes in the hanger and construction materials were still scattered in the building so the utility Is a little hard to see.
How do you get the center garage vehicles up and down to the garage floor which looks like a 2 foot drop and how do you get your cars in and out of the ground floor level?
I would also like to purchase a mocked up version of your house plans to view it before I actually purchase the actual large scale plans.
Your idea is great. I just need to figure the whole concept of how the main floor is accessed and how do you back up your planes so that they fit on those glide tracts which are about 2 feet above the floor.
Thanks for your help.
Phil Calder
954 485-7335
I think I answered your questions in the responses to other people except for one thing; I have one winch that has a pulley system that can pull either plane onto the ramps. But most of the time, if I have two people it’s very easy to push the plane onto the ramps. The Skymaster is 4000 pounds so requires a little bit of effort no matter where I push it.The ramps are flat so it is no different than pushing it into a normal hanger and trying to follow a line painted on your hanger floor. Incidentally the tracks are 3 feet above the floor.
I think this is a great idea on how to store two airplanes and keep the useful space below the wings in a livable ideal condition. Would like to know where to go to purchase the building plans for a home/hangar place to live. This has got my curiosity going. Can you make a reply and give the company name of the people who designed this home, address, phone number, and plans number on this site?
Thank you for your cooperation in helping me find the right home to build. K.
Ken, I’m glad you like the plans. There is no company , Just my ideas.
Very innovative use of the space! Tom must be very good at explanations if he only had to explain it 50 times to the subs – I built a much more conventional house and hangar, and I had to do a lot more explaining than that!
I think I’d be a bit happier if the trestles the maingear are on were a bit wider and had POSITIVE stops at the end. If there is ever a problem and a mainwheel slips off that narrow track, there will be some serious expense and trouble getting it back up there.
Can’t use the lowered floor idea here in Florida unless we want to park the airplane over a swimming pool 😉
I do have positive stops at the end and the tracks have been made 2 inches wider which is ample. Those pictures were taken very early during the testing stage of the project . This home is built on completely flat property. The hanger floor is not lowered .It is at ground level it is the taxiway that is elevated and could easily be built in Florida.