Is Garage Insulation a Contradiction of Terms?

Garage Interior and Drywall. Getty / Phil Banko

By Lee Wallender

Updated December 16, 2014.

Garage insulation may seem like a strange concept. After all, garages in days of yore were detached structures that had little or no relation to indoor living spacesto the main house itself. And since these bare-bones boxes were enough to provide minimal coverage to vehicles, there was no need to load up on insulation.

But when garages attached themselves to houses, and people began spending more time in the garage itself, it became necessary to provide insulation if only to protect the house itself. Learn the basic concepts behind garage insulation and what you should do (or not do):

Newer, better garage doors are insulated; most are not. One way to fix this is to insulate the garage door, using a kit.

What you get are rolls of reflective insulation designed to fit between the garage door's support rails. I've looked at these kits and see nothing amazing about them; you can do the same thing by buying your own reflective insulation.

In any case, here is a kit: Buy Direct - Single-Sided Door Insulation

Wind positively whistles through the bottoms of most garage doors. This is because the seal at the bottom is inadequate. Also, garage and driveway slabs can tilt over time, creating gaps that the garage door bottom cannot cover. Use a garage door threshold kit to solve the problem. It's inexpensive and goes down quickly.

Buy Direct Garage Door Threshold Kit

If the above don't do the trick, then look at your door to the garage. Is it an exterior, fire-rated door (we hope)? If not, some previous homeowner may have put a highly non-insulated hollow core door there. Solid wood doors are better but not by much.

Now we're getting into the more work- and money-intensive projects. Is the wall between the house and garage insulated?

Go out in the garage, put a 1/8" auger bit on your cordless drill, and drive a hole into the wall at an out-of-the-way spot one or two feet off the ground. Don't drive into a stud. And be sure to flip off any circuit breaker that might even remotely have wires running through that wall. Because this is a key location (service panels are often located in garages), you may want to raise the garage door for light and turn off every circuit breaker.

If you have batt insulation, it will come up on your auger almost like cotton candy. If not, you may want to cut a larger hole so that you can look in there with a flashlight and see if you have blown-in insulation.

You can insulate the wall with blown-in insulation, or if you really want to go crazy, you can pull off drywall and insulate with batt fiberglass. Or, build a second wall just for the purpose of holding the batts.

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Is Garage Insulation a Contradiction of Terms?