Garage Door Insulation = Miracle
June 3rd, 200976.Something
I might as well put up the stuff I wrote before I found out Mish Weiss was having a new medical crisis.
I received a funny answer to an Ebay inquiry. I asked a guy selling a mill if he had photos of the ways. He got back to me today: “I didn’t get a chance to take pictures of the table or ways but there is really no reason to as they will appear as new with the exception of a light use patina. No gouges, holes or any sign of wear.”
I love it. I don’t need to see the ways, because he has seen them. That’s what I call service. You don’t need to verify the condition of this guy’s merchandise to keep him from cheating you, because he’ll verify it for you. I’m sure he would be completely honest.
If you think Ebay protects you from crooks, think again. If you read the fine print in the Paypal “fraud protection” stuff, you will find that it boils down to “It is just barely conceivable that we will refund an inadequate portion of your money if you get royally screwed. But we will do our best to avoid it.”
Say you buy a milling machine for a thousand dollars (one of those imaginary low-mileage Bridgeports I keep hearing about), and you have it shipped for twelve hundred, which is a realistic figure (unlike the mill price). If it’s junk, you get a full refund. If you ship it back at your own expense. What a deal! And depending on the language in the ad, you may not get your original shipping fee back. And unless you’re very careful about checking the fine print before you buy, you may end up getting an item with no protection whatsoever.
I’m not sure what the EbayPal folks think “Buy With Confidence” means, but it definitely doesn’t mean you can buy with confidence, unless “confidence” means “confidence that I have no recourse if I get screwed.”
The new insulation in the garage worked. The result, when the AC is on, isn’t so much a lower temperature as a gentler temperature gradient. It used to be cold on one side of the garage and warm on the other, over by the garage doors. Now it’s cool all over.
With no AC, the picture is still very promising. I went in to the garage this morning; the outside temperature was around 85. Inside the garage, it was under 77. Amazing. I always thought the roof was the big heat source, but I guess I was mistaken. I was afraid heat would come in through the roof, and the insulated doors would hold it in, turning the garage into a Bridge-Over-the-River-Kwai-type oven. But that didn’t happen, so the roof must be the lesser problem.
I’m wondering if there is some kind of cheap rigid insulation I could staple to the roof. Putting rolls of fiberglass up there would be a month in hell, but there is probably some board-type product that goes on with staples and does an okay job. I know there are spray-on products. I can just picture that crap raining down on my tools.
Maybe it’s overkill. The roof is white, so it reflects a lot of heat, and hot air likes to rise, so maybe the open space over my head is not a big problem. A guy who worked in commercial real estate once told me that square footage was more important than a room’s height. I don’t know if that’s true.
After I get done praying for Mish, I’m going to go out there and just…not sweat.
June 3rd, 2009 at 11:02 AM
Is your garage insulated above the ceiling? Mine (in Dallas) is, even though the outside wall isn’t (as far as I know) and the door isn’t either. If you can get up into the attic over the garage (assuming there is one) and it’s not already insulated, it might be nicer-looking to spray some insulation up there.
June 3rd, 2009 at 11:18 AM
Extruded polystyrene board!
June 3rd, 2009 at 11:37 AM
sprayfoam the roof. You’ll be amazed.
June 3rd, 2009 at 11:41 AM
No ceiling! Just roof.
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I could foam it myself for under $700, but the R-value would be lower than the pro stuff.
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Don’t know if I want to fool with it. It’s great out there now.
June 3rd, 2009 at 11:52 AM
I used this:
http://www.radiantguard.com/index.aspx
in an addition I put on the back of the house.
Works rather well.
I stapled it between the studs (rafters) under the roofing deck.
The reason I used it was because I had to attach drywall immediately under it and it allowed ventilation.
June 3rd, 2009 at 12:16 PM
It’s not done until your garage can double as a meat locker.
June 3rd, 2009 at 12:19 PM
I’ve had good luck with rigid foam with foil on one side. It’s maybe 3/4″ thick and easily cut to fit between the rafters. Mount it (foil side up) against the roof, or an inch or so away if you want the extra cushion of air.
June 3rd, 2009 at 1:06 PM
If your roof is as poorly constructed as everything else in Miami, sprayfoaming it will give you a HUGE boost in your energy efficiency.
You should see about 1/8th the solar heating from the roof that you’d get with it uninsulated; and sprayfoam acts as an incredible gap sealing vapor barrier.
It keeps bugs out too… though I have heard some varieties of tunneling wasps actually LIKE the stuff.
If you dont want to foam, consider just using a radiant barrier.
June 3rd, 2009 at 1:28 PM
I assume by your description in this posting and some past postings mentioning using the bottom of the trusses to lift stuff that you’re looking at bare plywood with no fiberglass above your head?
If that’s the case and you have trusses on 16″ or 24″ on center you have a daunting task getting much of anything up there against the “rafters” without killing yourself in the process other than kraft faced fiberglass or the new Owens Corning “non-fiberglass” fiberglass product.
Rigid foam board would be a disaster scraping elbows and cutting stuff to fit around the woodwork and rigid board installed on the bottom of the truss horizontals would work like a ceiling skin but wouldlook like heck with screws and tape and all.
You could consider buying some 3/16″ or 1/4″ plywood and using a finish nailer with your compressor to put a skin on a new attic space and cover the seams between the panels of 4’x8′ material with lattice strips.
If you put in a drop down stairway or a skuttle opening you could then rent a insulation blower and a buy a bunch of bundles of insulation and knock down the cooling load for both the main house and the garage.
Just keeping the garage cooler as it is helps by reducing the heat load on the wall and attic over the living spaces.
There are jigs you can make that allow you to hang sheets of material over your head by yourself but it’s better to have an extra set of hands in the process.
June 3rd, 2009 at 2:25 PM
I think the foam would definitely be better, but the radiant stuff is very cheap, and the garage is pretty cool already.
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I am one of the few people in the city of Miami who realizes a brown roof is a stupid idea. This house used to have a brown roof, and now it’s white, and it made a big difference. Maybe that’s why the garage isn’t heating up much now. The roof consists of white tile, two layers of felt, and plywood. That’s about it.
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It’s funny how hard it can be to make people understand something obvious. Find five people and try to tell each one a black car is hotter in the summer, and four will tell you you’re crazy.
June 3rd, 2009 at 7:56 PM
I don’t know that much about this, but, I do know in hot, humid climates such as those you and I live in, if a roof on an outbuilding is built properly, it provides absolutely necessary ventilation…if it ain’t broke…
June 4th, 2009 at 3:36 AM
My main point is that when and if you sell and move to Nirvana in the country you don’t want to have to undo or redo anything if you can avoid it.
You want to be able to load your tools on a truck and patch a few bolt holes in the concrete walls and slab and since you’ve done such a good job with the electrical the 220 V stuff just stays on the walls.
Future homeowners might just want a garage instead of a machine shop area and a solid wooden ceiling envelope would appeal to more people than open rafters and foam–BUT it does cost more in time and material to install.