Insulating Detached Garage Attic

A properly insulated garage is a safety must.

Insulating detached garage attic. Insulating the attic above the garage will help keep temperatures in the garage a bit more stable but it won t have any appreciable effect on energy bills. Face the paper backing toward the inside of the garage. The garage attic is where a lot of the heat in during warmer months of the year. Place insulation batts in the spaces between the garage rafters.

Plan to pull up the flooring and layer new insulation on top of the old. You can buy insulation kits for standard metal garage doors or you can cut pieces of rigid foam insulation to fit each door panel section. If you live in sunny states like arizona texas and florida insulating a garage attic is a must if you want to keep your garage cool enough to withstand for short periods of time. If the garage is open to the rafters the boards that support the roof use r 38 insulation between the rafters at the roof if they are 10 inches deep.

The primary reason to insulate any part of the home is to provide a thermal barrier between conditioned heated or cooled interior space and the outdoors or unheated spaces such as an unfinished. You won t be working in a huge space unlike your main house an empty cold attic or a wide unfinished basement. Keep in mind that the structural metal ribbing of garage doors is an excellent conductor of heat and this typically doesn t get insulated. Because the simplest and cheapest way to insulate an attic is to add material to the floor.

Building a detached garage means you can make it as big as you want. When you should insulate the garage if your home s hvac system does extend into the garage then the attic above it should be insulated as it would for any other room of the house. Or as big as your lot allows. For me the bigger the better.

A radiant barrier is great for keeping the heat out of the garage attic. Staple the paper flanges of the batts to the inside face of the rafters with your staple gun to hold the insulation in place. Whether you opt for spray foam blown in or fiberglass batts for your insulation it s likely you won t need a whole lot to fully insulate your entire detached garage. To get more insulation in the garage install a ceiling and provide access to the space between the ceiling and the roof.

The higher the r value the better the thermal performance of the insulation. But if the floor is covered in plywood you can t stuff enough insulation beneath it to do the job sufficiently not even in warm climates. You can achieve better thermal performance in your attic by adding an. Don t insulate your garage walls and ceiling without insulating the big garage door too.

Find your zone on the map and then use the chart to determine the level of insulation you need to properly insulate your attic walls floors and crawlspaces.