Room above integral garage is colder than other rooms

manorpurl

Hi,
I live in a 1930's detached house, which has a room above an integral garage. This room is colder than other rooms in the house even though the radiator in the room is working fine. The garage ceiling i believe looks concrete type, it is not definitely plasterboard. What would someone recommend me to do in order to make the room at same temperature as other rooms in the house? Clearly, lack of insulation is to be blamed here in the garage. What can i do to insulate the ceiling garage. Can it be done by builders or can i diy it? pls help asap..thank you

Kiran

A few options spring to mind so without knowing the exact construction, it may be possible to do the following

1. Lift the floor boards in the room and fill the gaps with insulation, space blanket seems to be the weapon of choice for this job at the moment.
2. Put a good thermal underlay under the flooring in the room
3. Fit a suspended ceiling in the garage to allow insulation to be attached to the underside of the slab, this would more than likely be a job for the pros

Hope one of these options is possible

K

heretohelp

does the room above have floor boards or is it a concrete floor. i`m only asking because the garage ceiling could be asbestos to stop any fire spreading. it might not be but dont start ripping things apart if you are not sure.

Kiran

heretohelp wrote: »

does the room above have floor boards or is it a concrete floor. i`m only asking because the garage ceiling could be asbestos to stop any fire spreading. it might not be but dont start ripping things apart if you are not sure.

Very true, as I said, option 3 may be a job for the pros. Providing there are floorboards in the room you should be ok with the first 2 options.

If in doubt consult someone in the know and all that.......:D

Vindiesel

what about option 4? if the garage is an extension, it is likely the room above it will hazve a flat roof and if so, it may have no insulation, or very little/old and useless insulation. If so, fitting/replacing insulation in this room would also help

:-)

V

Becles

My bedroom is in an extension over the garage.

The previous owners had it built and had left a cheap thin rubber backed carpet, that was all frayed round the edges, so it was gradually getting smaller! I noticed the floor is made up of large pieces of wood rather than boards, but there are gaps where they fit together and I could feel cold coming up from the garage.

I lifted up the wood on the floor and stuffed the gap with loft insulation, then bought a thick underlay and a decent hessian backed carpet. The floor feels much warmer now, especially walking around in bare feet. I also put more insulation in the loft as it wasn't very thick. That has helped loads and the room is much warmer.

coolagarry

Obviously insulation is the answer. I converted the rear of a huge garage extension into a granny flat for my mom. It was single brick with a flat roof and 90% outside walls. I put wooden batons up on the outside walls, filled them with rolled insulation and plasterboarded them. Put the same insulation above the ceiling boards. The result was a really warm granny flat. All this is particularly important in your case as you probably have no cavity in your outside walls. Do the floor as per post #2

Burgundy

I have integral garage under my kitchen. My kitchen floor has wooden floor boards. I asked advise from insulation company how to insulate as my feet are freezing. Was advised - If insulating from garage then need to take plasterboard down (if asbestos then need specialistic company to remove ). Then put in insulation - loft roll. Then need to put up fire-rated board. Need to think Fireproof in garage..... I was advised by builder that this was costly to do (which builder would be cheap!?) so I have decided to leave garage ceiling as it is (no idea if it is already fireproofed but will assume it was when house was built) and take up floor boards in kitchen and push insulation ( 3 rolls space 170 mm insulation cost me approx. £40) in between joists. I want to keep my boards exposed and have a kick radiator on an island in middle of my kitchen. I hope this will do the trick and not cost me too much money. Would love to hear from anyone who has done this already -was it successful?

wywywywy

Hi.

One very first (cheap) thing to do, if you live above a garage, is to draught-proof and insulate the garage door.

For draught-proofing, you can use these at the bottom of the door, and use the "brush" type ones on the sides.

For insulating, you can get a "garage door insulation kit" from B&Q for £35-ish. It pretty much is wool wrapped in foil that goes behind the door so it keeps and reflects the heat.

Hope it helps.

smartpicture

wywywywy wrote: »

For insulating, you can get a "garage door insulation kit" from B&Q for £35-ish. It pretty much is wool wrapped in foil that goes behind the door so it keeps and reflects the heat.

This sounds like exactly what I need, but I can't find it on the B7Q website. Can you narrow it down any more please?

mallymal

I think insulation is your key...

If you don't want to drop the ceiling in the garage, how about this stuff... it looks like you'd need to be a competent DIYer, but still probably easier than fitting your own dropped ceiling...

http://www.spray-insulation.co.uk/DIY.htm

cheers