Garage door insulation

[derekbang]

My two-car garage is and will be my workshop when not occupied by our cars. When we built our house a couple years ago, I didn't have the foresight to have all of the walls insulated as well as the garage door. Only the backwall and maybe 1/3 or each side wall is insulated and drywalled. The other 2/3 of the side walls have pegboard installed.

My garage door manufacturer will come out and install an insulation kit and adjust the lift mechanism for $200. My question is: does it make sense to have the garage door insulated when 2/3 of each side wall will not be insulated? Since the walls are peg board, I can't blow in insulation.

It gets pretty cold out there in the Indiana winter, but I don't want to waste money on upgraded heating if insulation will help.

[final_t]

Insulate first before upgrading heating.
Now, as for the garage door: it will help, because most doors are monster heat sinks. It will also help with noise abaitment, about 2-3 db inside, up to 10-12 db outside.
Are they also going to be putting draft deflectors on the sides of the door? This is where most of my problems were at.

[frumper64]

We put in an insulated 16' wide steel garage door a few years ago and it does seem to keep things a bit warmer in the winter than the old wooden door did. It is also MUCH quieter in operation than an uninsulated steel door. Here in Texas our winters aren't really cold for too long, though. On the other hand, $200 seems a bit steep to insulate a garage door - on ours, the insulation is basically just a rigid styrofoam kind of material.

[LarryG]

final_t has it right. First priority is weatherstripping. It's amazing how much heat can be retained even in an uninsulated space if you just seal up all the drafty places. Second priority is insulation. More heat is the last priority. (And the neat thing is, if the space is weatherstripped and insulated properly, you'll need less "more heat," if you follow my meaning.)

[Jim-Iowa]

My garage was insulated as well as the door, when I bought my place.
Not yet heated, and our winters are comparable to yours.
The previous owner had a faciantion with thermometers.
He left one in the garage and one on the outside SE corner protected from direct wind. There is always a 10 degree difference inside the garage compared to outside temp. In Summer it is cooler and in winter warmer than outside temp.
If your setting your shop up in there(and possibly heating or cooling) the insulation will pay for itself in very short order.
10 degrees may not seem like much, but if thats 10 degrees the heater or A/C does not have to recover, it works out as out of pocket dollars taken from your project budget.
Mine will have some form of heat before next winter.

[LCHIEN]

If you had a perfectly insualted space, then you would only have to heat or cool a room once in a lifetime making it inexpensive over time.

The point is that you don't heat or cool a space, area, or volume, what you are doing is replacing heat or cool lost through imperfect insulation. In fact, heating and cooling units are sized by the expected loss which includes area and type of insulation of the walls, the size and type of windows and doors, and area of the roof and type of attic insulation and the type of floor you have.

It also depends graetly upont he differential in temperature across that insulation, twice as many degrees leads to twice the loss.

When they tell you you need a 14,000 BTU air conditioner that means your esxpected loss from the area you are trying to cool is going to be approaching 14,000 BTU on the hottest day.

so every point of thermal loss you can plug up will reduce your heating/cooling load.

Seems like once you get the garage door fixed, it shoulod be easy to pull off the pegboard and install fiberglass batting, maybe a sheet of plastic (if you are going to reinstall pegboard) then reinstall the pegboard.

[bfrikken]

My FIL used the foam board insulation from the Big Hardware store. It's cheap and he cut it and installed it himself. He also had a couple sheets leftover that we use to cut plywood on the ground with the circular saw. It made a big difference. He has a heater that he had to run during the winter to keep it around 55 (up here in Michigan). I believe now the heater doesn't run too much on the lowest setting, casue the pilot light is enough to keep it warm I guess. The weather stripping seems like a good idea to me as well. I checked out my garage. This past weekend it got down to 30 (felt like 20) outside and I was able to work comfortably in my garage without jacket. The Garage door is insulated and there looks to be weather stripping along the garage door seams. I'm lucky that my garage is fully insulated as well. Although, it removes the possiblity for between stud lumber storage 200 bucks seems like a lot to me, but I'm a cheapskate too. Or is that frugal?

[LCHIEN]

quote:Originally posted by bfrikken

... 200 bucks seems like a lot to me, but I'm a cheapskate too. Or is that frugal?

Repeat after me:

Other peopel are cheapskates and Frugal.
Me, I'm value-driven.

[maxparot]

The more you can insulate and area the quicker and less expensive you can change the temperture when needed.
Make sure that not only is the door insulated but that the weather stripping is making a good seal.

[derekbang]

The quote for the insulation kit for the door was $150 plus $75 for a tech to install and adjust the lift springs. I'm sure I could install the insulation but I'm nervous about adjusting the spring. I had not considered pulling off the peg board and putting up fiberglass batting. That may have to be a fall project.

[gdog]

I put some of the mylar bubble insulation stuff on my door with some spray adhesive and then cut some of the styrofoam insulation to fit in each section. I found the mylar and used 3 sheets of the foam at about 11.00 per sheet. I already had the draft guards on the side of the frame. I have a 9 ft door.

[ivwshane]

I'm almost done with my garage remodel (I'll have a super long post for that once I'm done). Anyway the first thing I did was insulate the garage door, it helped a little bit but it wasn't untill I added insulation to all the walls did I really feel a difference. Now that I have that done the garage stays rather comfortable without the help of any heat or ac.

[gmack5]

When I was living in Chicago, we bought a nice 2400 square foot Tri-Level with an attached over sized two-car Garage. The first thing I did was to Insulate the two side walls, the Ceiling and the area on either side of the front 18' garage door.

The second thing I did was to Insulate the Door itself with 2" of Rigid Styrofoam and weather seals attached to the the door and Door Frame.

It was a bit of a challenge, cause the door was an Overhead, sectioned type.

When I finally got that and the Dry wall installed, I was able to keep the Garage above freezing in the coldest Chicago Winters, with a 1600 Watt Electric Space Heater (Set on the lowest range, heat-wise).

So, in my considered opinion, insulating your Work-Space is well worth the effort and really not all that expensive, if you do the work yourself.

[LarryG]

As we've discussed before, in other threads, rigid foam insulation should never be left exposed as it is a HUGE fire hazard. Even if it's not an outright code violation (which it usually is), your insurance company and/or lending institution would have a cow if they ever found out about it.