Is Your Garage Costing You Money?

How is it possible for a garage to cost its owner good money on an ongoing basis? Simple really, if it is integral to the property and (as is so often the case) without proper.

Why is that? Easy really; you’re spending good money to maintain a comfortable temperature in your home, by means of operating either air cooling and/or heating. But without adequate insulation throughout then really you’re also shelling out on chilling or warming outdoors, which commonly proves to be a costly proposition.

It’s easy to see that if, for instance, the roof is well insulated but the windows are poor quality then heat will leak directly 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 always find and exploit the weakest link, usually taking your money with them.

But what does this have to do with your garage? Well, an integral garage is by design a part of your home and typically furthermore the biggest individual interior space within it. If it isn’t insulated to a comparable standard as the remainder of the property then it gets to be a massive thermal weakness along adjoining walls, ceilings and access points.

The fact is, nobody would consider compromising the insulation of a room within the main house just because, say, it didn’t get used much. The effect would be felt elsewhere in the home, resulting in having to spend more money maintaining a comfortable temperature. Yet that is exactly how a great many folk treat their garage.

When it comes to the actual business of how to insulate a garage then pretty much the same materials and methods as are common to normal home insulation are used. The principal difference being the doors. Now most garage door panels nowadays are made of steel (or other metals) that is among the worst insulators known; in fact it is an excellent conductor and heat will pass through as if it wasn’t even there.

But all is far from lost; thanks to add-on insulation kits and new internally insulated garage doors it is neither difficult nor especially costly to very effectively insulate a garage door. The ready insulated doors are particularly suitable for people who have or want wooden garage doors. These look much nicer and have better intrinsic insulation properties than metal doors, but still not close to modern home insulation levels. However, due to their greater bulk and weight it is almost impossible to add on a secondary insulation kit and so pre-injected insulation is the best bet.

For much more information on this subject, check out these additional articles about affordable wooden garage doors and garage door insulation panels.