Can never have enough.
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Garage insulation
- Thread starter shanekingsley
- Start date
Can never have enough.
Trials
Well-known member
Hard to beat light right where you need it:
not to mention the low cost
... oops I just mentioned it :|
Another cheap durable/warmish floor covering is horse mats from TSC (5'x7'x1/2" for $80, IIRC sale price is ~$50). If you didn't have the lift, a single mat is probably large enough to work on the bike without sitting on concrete. I am not sure how much insulating the floor would help the temp in the room. Probably some, but I would focus my money other places first.
You have to let a horse mat sit for a while outside, to get rid of the odour. It's also better to have a lift anyways to be able to get at stuff.
Trials
Well-known member
did you know; building code for radiant heated monolithic slab on grade requires 3 inches of closed cell foam under the entire floor, plus 4 inches on the vertical faces, plus another 3 inches of foam buried under the backfill of the buildings entire perimeter for a distance of nearly 4 feet :| that's a lot of foam!
Matthews mats are what I use to stand on one side of my bike and I have commercial grade carpet on the other side so my boots or feet never really get cold. I do have one of those work lights and always wear a headlamp when I work or use the flexible telescopic LED lamps.
I suppose my goal would be to ensure the temp in there is easy to maintain at around 5deg.
I suppose my goal would be to ensure the temp in there is easy to maintain at around 5deg.
I'm pretty sure you cant run a heating vent from your house into your garage for various reasons as someone has previously suggested.Propane heaters give off fumes ,take up too much room with required clearances( plus tank) and you would also have to worry about keeping solvents and gas away from it.for a well insulated single car garage ,electric heat is the most cost effective,space saving way to go.A 1500w plug in heater would probably do the trick, a 2000w-3000w 240v wall mounted fan forced heater would be better and wouldn't take up any floor space.I wouldn't recomend a kerosene heater either, I tried one once and the fumes werent too bad but I found I always had condensation on my tools and vehicles when I used it.
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I'm planning to do turn my garage into a shop next summer/fall, so I will be watching this thread.
At this point plan is that garage will only be heated when I need to use it, for cost reasons, and I will probably install a 220V ceiling mounted heater. Garage shares a wall with the laundry room and I have a family room above the garage. Both rooms are cold in the winter and I'm sure I have minimal insulation now. The 2 exterior walls are dry-walled with no insulation. Zero insulation on garage door. I was going to rip off all dry-wall and remove old insulation, run new lines for lights and extra outlets, add a hot water tap, add Roxul insulation (spray foam is big $$) and vapor barrier and then dry-wall. Then new garage door, floor finish and cabinets/benches of some type as yet undetermined.
I'm getting conflicting info on insulating and putting a vapor barrier in a room that is not heated 100% of the time + 2 rooms already have a vapor barrier on the current warm side of the wall/ceiling adjoining the garage further complicating the issue. Lot's of people claim this is a recipe for mold issues long term. HD gave conflicting info of this.
At this point plan is that garage will only be heated when I need to use it, for cost reasons, and I will probably install a 220V ceiling mounted heater. Garage shares a wall with the laundry room and I have a family room above the garage. Both rooms are cold in the winter and I'm sure I have minimal insulation now. The 2 exterior walls are dry-walled with no insulation. Zero insulation on garage door. I was going to rip off all dry-wall and remove old insulation, run new lines for lights and extra outlets, add a hot water tap, add Roxul insulation (spray foam is big $$) and vapor barrier and then dry-wall. Then new garage door, floor finish and cabinets/benches of some type as yet undetermined.
I'm getting conflicting info on insulating and putting a vapor barrier in a room that is not heated 100% of the time + 2 rooms already have a vapor barrier on the current warm side of the wall/ceiling adjoining the garage further complicating the issue. Lot's of people claim this is a recipe for mold issues long term. HD gave conflicting info of this.
Trials
Well-known member
Wow, you got a whole lot of stuff going on there! what is the exterior siding on the garage? That might be a better place to start if you figure you actually require insulation and not just stop drafts and define a sealed & heated air space.
Water pipes need to be in an area where they never freeze or else they need heat traces to keep them from freezing, adding plumbing to an area that never had it also implies you need a sewer drain in that area. Electric heat is always the cheapest to install, least efficient and the most expensive to operate, do you even have enough hydro to the panel to support the current draw of an electric heater? Heat Always rises and it costs a lot more to heat air from the ceiling down then it does to heat the solid mass you are standing on.
If I was retrofitting heat to and existing garage right now and it was only going to be on occasionally, I would look at heated driveway systems. Google "heated driveway" and watch a couple of videos, it might save you a ton of time and money.
electric heat in a small, well insulated, attached garage would not cost as much to run as you would think.You are already getting some heat radiating from the house.I bet it rarely gets below freezing in there even without heat.you just need to bring it up to 60 degrees farenheit or so to work comfortably.Avoid any kind of open flame or pilot light in a garage,even spray painting something in there could create an explosive environment.I met a guy that almost killed himself spraying carb cleaner in a shed with a heater with some kind of pilot light.Definately keep your heat source down low.I had a 5000w heater hanging from my ceiling in a two car garage and found that it heated and circulated the air much better sitting on the ground.The $1000 or more that you would save using an electric heater as opposed to running a gas line and buying a unit heater would be better spent on insulation and a decent insulated door in my opinion.
Heating a space using convection takes forever (hours or more). If you want something that you can heat quickly, work for a bit and then shut off, it's really hard to beat electric forced air heaters (or electric radiant heaters but I don't really like them other than for tiny areas like a workbench). They aren't running many hours a year and the price jump to a system that costs less to operate may never get recovered. If you want something that stays warm (or warmish), heating from the bottom is amazing.
By definition, electric heaters are 100% efficient (all input energy becomes heat in the space). They do cost more to operate as the input energy costs more. For electrical capacity, you aren't running the garage heater and your A/C at the same time and they have similar power draw so most people should be ok.
It takes much much much more energy to heat the mass you are standing one than it does to heat the air in your garage. Unless it was specifically planned, you lose a ton of heat out of the other side of the slab (and some out the edges) and it has a huge thermal mass that you had to heat up. Thermal mass is a wash if you leave your garage warm, but if you cycle between warm and cold, it is hard to find a more inefficient way to have a few hours of heat than to heat the slab.
I wouldn't salamandar a garage unless I had no other choice, there is way too much moisture output. If I wanted to retrofit gas heat a garage, I would either toss a furnace in the rafters or run linear radiant heat (like in factories and arenas) that dumps the combustion exhaust outside the garage.
As for the water, my garage has a hose bibb in it that I don't bother shutting off and the garage is completely uninsulated with open rafters and only about 8' of one wall connected to the house. The pipe picks up enough heat from inside the house (and it is above a suspended ceiling) that I have never had a problem with it freezing. I thought about turning it off when I moved in, but as the inside shutoff is above the electrical panel and my experience is they often drip while cycling them, I chose to leave it alone. Interesting comment about the drain, my garage has no drain. I have no idea whether one is required or not as it may be considered outdoor space? Obviously my builders were not the best given the location of the indoor shutoff so I have no idea what should have been.
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Trials
Well-known member
Typically the floor of the garage slopes towards the doors so that melting snow and water exits that way, but garages don't typically have hot and cold water taps in them where you can potentially have a continuous supply of water. Chasing all the water towards the garage door is a great scenario for having your garage door freeze to the ground and have a buildup of ice immediately outside of your garage doors. Code now requires that garage floor drains must have a fuel and oil separator such that any significant fuel leak will not drain directly into your septic system (or city drain) where it could become a source of pollution and or explosion hazard.
My new garage has a dog wash with a drain plus a clean-out for the sewer system.
(hint, hint) a sewer clean-out located in your garage and close to the door is a great way to facilitate a dump for your travel trailer if you have one. It costs big money to dump those things now.
The thing about insulation is, it's useless without a heat source, it holds the cold in just as well as it holds the heat in. Two things I found with continuously cooling and then heating a garage only when you absolutely need to: one, the hand tools and the vehicles metal parts are always too cold to touch and two, condensation becomes a huge problem, particularly for a tractor that is being used for snow removal.
Those forced air kerosene blast heaters are absolutely useless anywhere except outdoors, I have one anybody can have for free if you want to come and get it. They throw an invisible flame for about three feet, fume like crazy and eat fuel like it was free, they also draw a lot of hydro.
My new garage has a dog wash with a drain plus a clean-out for the sewer system.
(hint, hint) a sewer clean-out located in your garage and close to the door is a great way to facilitate a dump for your travel trailer if you have one. It costs big money to dump those things now.
The thing about insulation is, it's useless without a heat source, it holds the cold in just as well as it holds the heat in. Two things I found with continuously cooling and then heating a garage only when you absolutely need to: one, the hand tools and the vehicles metal parts are always too cold to touch and two, condensation becomes a huge problem, particularly for a tractor that is being used for snow removal.
Those forced air kerosene blast heaters are absolutely useless anywhere except outdoors, I have one anybody can have for free if you want to come and get it. They throw an invisible flame for about three feet, fume like crazy and eat fuel like it was free, they also draw a lot of hydro.
As for the vapour barrier, I would only put it on the exterior walls of the garage.The wall/walls between the garage and the house will already have a vapour barrier on the house side (predominantly warmer side) of the wall.Adding another vapour barrier on the garage side is probably not a good idea.
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If I want to temporarily warm up (in winter) or cool down (in summer) my garage, I just leave the door between the garage and the inside open for a couple hours. If I've done something that puts a bunch of moisture into the garage (e.g. wash a bike) - same, until it dries.
This past spring I installed an insulated steel door that is far better sealed. I'm hoping that this will make a big difference. My garage only has one outside wall along one side, the back and the other side are against the inside of the house and there is living space above the garage.
This past spring I installed an insulated steel door that is far better sealed. I'm hoping that this will make a big difference. My garage only has one outside wall along one side, the back and the other side are against the inside of the house and there is living space above the garage.
Trials
Well-known member
Um, building code requires it. Needs to have an automatic door closer or spring closing hinges on it too.
I think he means overhead door, not the interior door.
Trials
Well-known member
Oh
that would make a big difference.
What kind of door did you use and where did you get it?
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