If you happen to own a house that has an integrated garage but have never gotten around to insulating it then chances are that your garage is leaking more than heat. Fixing this could save you a fair bit of money.
It\'s pretty straightforward to understand what the problem is. Any deficiencies in your home insulation will guarantee a thermal exchange between the inside and outside air, or put more simply your temperature control systems will be battling against the outdoors. This is a costly way to fight a losing battle.
It should be obvious that if, for instance, the roof is well insulated but the windows are poor quality then heat will leak straight through the windows instead. The net result being that the roof insulation may as well not be there either. The key message is that insulation is an all or nothing measure; any gaps and the whole thing founders.
Likewise, well insulated and tight fitting windows and doors will be simply bypassed if the loft space or cavity walls have inadequate insulation. Temperature differences will always seek out and exploit the weakest link, usually taking your money with them.
So where does the garage fit into this picture? Simple; an integral garage is what it sounds like - integrated into the overall structure of the property. Imagine for example if you had a living room the size of your garage which was poorly insulated - the effect on any connected rooms alongside or above would be quite noticeable. Well, that\'s pretty much what an un-insulated garage can do.
In reality, nobody would consider compromising the insulation of a room within the main home just because, say, it didn\'t get used much. The effect would be felt elsewhere in the house, resulting in having to spend more money maintaining a comfortable temperature. Yet that is exactly how a great many folk treat their garage.
The techniques for insulating your garage are broadly similar to those applied to the other interior spaces in your house, with one notable exception, namely the garage doors. Today most garage doors use a metal panel (usually steel). Like most metal objects, these are excelent conductors of heat and therefore absolutely terrible where insulation is concerned.
The answer though is remarkably easy and thankfully affordable. You can either get a garage door insulation kit which may be fixed to the inside of existing doors, or you can get pre-insulated doors. This latter route is for people who either view this as a possible opportunity to upgrade their garage doors or for owners of wood garage doors. Even though wooden doors offer significantly better natural insulation than steel ones, really the only way to obtain seriously efficient insulation is by using a modern-day wood panel that has been manufactured with an internal layer of high performance insulation.
For much more information on this subject, check out these additional articles about wooden garage doors and garage door insulation.
Comments on this entry are closed.