Originally posted by Wayne
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Insulation in your internal access garage
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Originally posted by Maccachic View PostShe leaves the internal door open into the house for the cats (cat door is in garage side door) so I'm assuming both - hers is a modern house and door appears to seal well, garage is also carpeted.
The garage door, assuming it is steel, is like a big heat sink so one of those kits would probably work well.
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We advise/sell insulation and what each person need to determine is what their thermal envelope is going to be. This is the area you are going to heat regularly. The insulation goes right around the outside of this thermal envelope. If you determine that the garage is not going to be part of this thermal envelope then the walls between the house and garage should have insulation about the same level as external walls. If you determine that you wish to regularly heat your 'man-cave' then additional wall and ceiling insulation around this room will save energy and keep you warmer as insulating the garage doors which you can now buy retrofit insulation kits for. We sell most respectable brands online at www.ceilings.co.nz and there is a lot of information on here about insulation. Insulating a home is something most people, handymen and builders can do so please ensure you get any insulation costs broken into materials and labour including how many hours you expect the job to take. I can tell you that after discounts there are quite a few insulation installers making some extremely high hourly rates. Remember the average home (120-160m2) may only take 9 hours or less to insulation the ceilings so up to $400 is fair, up to $1000 is not, underfloor can take slightly longer.
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Don't forget also you can purchase a temp/humidity meter at the warehouse for around $10-$15 and you can let it sit in any room for a couple of hours and it will tell you fairly well what the humidity is. Each room will be different and ideally it should be between 40-60% RH. Don't be like my mother whom had the HRV people come and visit her a year or 2 back saying her home is too damp without doing some proper measurements. Fortunately she had a humidity meter and knew the real truth. You will find that once you measure whats happening it is normally easy to identify the reason why particular rooms are damp. Might be hallway just outside of bathroom (fan not adequate/door left open after shower), a room with broken guttering/downpipe putting water under the home, A room that's never aired, house built on side of hill/in gully, large trees not letting any sunlight into certain rooms and holding a lot of dampness in the area around them etc etc. Good luck its not that hard and feel free to call on 08002062879.
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The wall between the house and garage should be insulated - must be insulated according to the regs.
it isnt an insulation code clause it is a thermal efficiency code clause. (but there is a lesser requirement that is part of internal moisture control)
Insulation reduces heating cost. The smaller the habitable space being heated the more efficient the heating.
the designer chooses the envelope he wishes to insulate very common to not insulate the garage as this is simply adding to the costs of heating a greater space It is more cost effective in a single level garage say on the end of a house to insulate the connecting wall rather than 3 walls of a garage and the ceiling to complete a larger envelope (with a poorly insulated door taking up most of a wall and opened at times in all weather.
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I've been battling heat in my shop since I moved into my current home eight years ago. I live in SoCal, and my garage door faces west. The afternoon sun has always heated up the shop to levels that make me spend less time in the shop. I added a mini-split HVAC, and that helped enormously. But in the summer, when the outdoor temps can get over 90 degrees (sometimes over 100), and the afternoon sun is beating on the garage door, my mini-split had no hope of keeping up, and shop temps would climb.
I insulated the walls and ceiling, and that definitely helped. But my mini-split was still no match for the summer afternoon heat.So, I got a thermal imaging camera. I learned a few important things that have helped get the heat under control.First, the uninsulated steel garage doors were acting as a giant radiator. I knew that, but I didn't realize just how much that contributed to the problem. On those 90 degree days with the sun beating on the door, the temp of the outside of the garage doors would get over 120 degrees. The inside of the doors would get over 110. Since my shop is a 3-car garage, that's a lot of heat! No wonder the inside of the shop kept getting so warm.
I bought those garage door insulation kits from a big box store (I think HD). That made a significant difference, but the doors were still a big radiator. Instead of the inside of the door registering 110 degrees, it would get up to the high 90s. That's a 10-15 degree drop, but my mini-split still struggled to take all that heat out of the shop.A few months ago, I upgraded my garage doors to some of those R-18 super-insulated garage doors (with no windows). That has made an enormous difference. We haven't yet had any 90+ degree weather this year, but so far, the inside of my garage doors has stayed pretty close to the ambient temp in my shop. So, whatever heat the sun is putting onto the garage door's exterior is mostly not making its way into the shop.
People get fixated on seals. In some circumstances, bad seals can be the culprit. But keep in mind that the job of the seals is to keep the heat/cold in the AMBIENT air outside from getting inside. When you have a West-facing garage door and the sun is beating on your garage door in the afternoon, the ambient outside temperate is really not the problem. The problem is that the sun is super-heating the exterior surface of your garage door to a temperature that can be 20-30 degrees hotter than the outside air. That's a much bigger problem than bad seals. I'm not saying that seals don't matter; I am saying that getting as much insulation as possible on the surface of your garage door is much more critical than seals for controlling heat if you have a West-facing door and you want to keep your shop cool. At least, that has been my experience.
The thermal imaging camera also gave me some additional insights. I had extensive fluorescent lighting throughout the shop, and the camera showed just how much heat those were putting out. So, I changed to LED lighting. Enormous improvement
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