Internal Garage Insulation?

antgeez

Hi guys,

I have a little dillemma. I am a new homeowner and have an internal garage. The garage has a door direct to the hallway. The previous owners were using the garage as a makeshift room and had a thin wall by the garage door.
We intend to use the garage for our car, we had the wall in the garage knocked down but now it has made the hallway very cold.
My step-father-in-law-to-be has said that we should install a radiator in the garage but it sounds crazy to me as all the heat will be going straight out of the garage door and hitting our heating bills! I am going to get some draught excluders for the internal door but not sure how much of a difference this will make. I have looked into getting a better insulated garage door but they don't seem to exist?! I need an answer as my girlfriend is starting to think that a radiator is the solution :eek:

Thanks!

Cardew

Seems to me that it is a good time(i.e. before you are married) to find out that your Father-in-law doesn't know what he is talking about!

You need to insulate the door from hall to garage.

If you can run to installing a radiator - then put one in the hall.

antgeez

Thanks for your help. He has given us a lot of help with other stuff but I don't think saving on heating bills is his forte!
I have looked into getting general door seals but are there any other techniques I can use to insulate?

Premier_2

Your door to the garage should be a fire resisting door.

These are heavy duty, fitted with an auto closing mechanism, and should be capable of holding back a fire for a minimum of 30 minutes. If you are thinking of getting some draft excluders for it, it doesn't sound like its doing it's job properly at present. Whats more, it sounds like you could possibly suffer from poisonous vehicle exhaust gasses entering your house.

If the garage door is usually kept closed, then you have the best insulation material available between your door and the cold outside - a garage full of air.

Edit: the fire door should also probably have an integral intumescent strip, a special substance that expands to swell up within the doorway when exposed to excessive heat, effectively sealing off the door.
Make sure anything you stick around the door doesn't interfere with the correct operation of this - normally it seals direct against a hardwood surround.

antgeez

Yeah it is a 3-year old house so all the doors in the house are fire-resisting and have auto-closing mechanisms. The garage door seems like a decent, heavy door to me.

Still cold in the hallway though! On the same floor we have a kitchen and a downstairs loo which are both warm. The thermostat for the house is in the hallway. It is set to over 20 degrees.

If the draught excluders aren't the answer and we already have a heavy door in place I think I'm even more stuck than before

AGBAGB

Have you got stairs of the hallway to the rest of house?. If so all your warm air will be rising and and cold will be sinking down in to the hall.
Draftproof first then see what its like when the rest of the house has heated up. Convection should slow down when the upstairs is properly warmed up. Use a thermometer though, don't trust your body to give accurate readings.

antgeez

Yes the stairway is in the hall and leads up to the rest of the house. By the time you get to the top of the stairs it feels warm.
I have checked the internal door and we do not have an "integral intumescent strip". Is that the best form of seal to use or should I use something else?

AGBAGB

This is the type of seal you could do with Intumescent Door Seals - Fire and Smoke . But unless you are handy with a router you'll need a chippy to fit them.

I've just fitted similar (but not fire seals) to my frontdoor. Have a look here. Its not a big job but it makes a big difference in our house.

For a quick check on the differance it will make, try some masking tape around the door.

As PREMIER says though, you could do with a seal to stop smoke entering your house and killing you if theres a mishap in the garage.