Halting Heat Loss In Your Garage

When the temperature begins to dip during the colder winter months, your garage can become a source of heat loss for your home. If you are looking for a simple way to reduce the amount of money you spend on utilities each month, bringing garage heat loss to a halt can be a viable solution.

Insulating your garage door is one easy way to prevent heat from escaping through your garage. Here are some tips on selecting the right insulation for your garage door in the future.

1. Steel Garage Doors

If your garage door is made from steel, then fiberglass batt insulation is your best option. This type of insulation is extremely flexible, allowing it to easily fit into the frames around the steel panels of your garage door.

All you need to do is cut the batt insulation to match the size of your panels, and stuff it into the frames surrounding the panels to create an air-tight seal. Be sure that the fiberglass side of the insulation is facing your garage door to maximize your heat retention.

With fiberglass batt insulation costing a mere $0.25 to $0.75 per square foot, using it to insulate your steel garage door is a cost-effective way to reduce your heat loss next winter.

2. Wood Frame-And-Panel Garage Doors

Many high-end homes feature wood frame-and-panel garage doors. These doors are often handcrafted, and feature many recessed panels set within raised frames to give homes a customized look.

If your home is equipped with a wood frame-and-panel garage door, then rigid insulation is best suited to help you reduce heat loss. Rigid insulation is made of a durable foam material that is thin and lightweight. These characteristics allow you to easily cut pieces of insulation that are the same size as the recessed panels in your wood garage door and attach them using a spray adhesive.

If you want added climate control, you can double-up by installing two layers of rigid insulation. Installing 2 inches of rigid foam insulation could increase the R-value (energy efficiency rating) of your garage door by 65%.

3. Flat Garage Doors

If your garage door doesn't have any recessed panels, it is classified as a flat door. A lack of recessed areas in which insulation can be installed might seem like a challenge, but reflective insulation can easily provide a solution to your flat door's heat loss problems.

Reflective insulation is incredibly thin, which allows you to completely cover the interior surface of your door without impeding functionality. All you need to do is roll out the insulation, cut it to size, and use a spray adhesive to attach it to the interior side of your garage door.

Since 50% to 70% of the energy used in the average American home can be attributed to heating and cooling, adding reflective insulation to your garage can effectively reduce your energy costs in the future.

If you want to prevent heat loss through your garage, be sure that you are installing the right type of insulation for your garage door.