Cold bedroom above garage

katy123

We've just moved into your new house but realised that the room above the garage is very cold and unuseable. The rest of the house is around 22 degrees whilst the room above garage is around 12 degrees. What type of insulation is best? I heard it's spray foam as it fills all the gaps? Many thanks. Hoping to use the room soon.

Alikay

Ours is a bit cooler, yes, but I wouldn't describe it as cold. We have a radiator in the room set to the same temp as the other bedrooms and a good dense carpet with quality underlay. Is there any other reason the room could be cold, such as gaps around the window, ill fitting floorboards etc?

Doozergirl

No, not spray insulation! It has a terrible reputation in the trade. It blocks ventilation, can cause condensation and effectively rules out any type of repair on the building fabric when it's stuck to everything. I don't know anyone that would recommend it other than the people selling it.

Make sure you have insulation between the garage below and the bedroom floor. There's nothing wrong with rock wool or you can use solid insulation which fits really nice and tightly when cut to size. Again rock wool is fine in the loft area.

It's hard to advise on the walls when we have no idea what this building looks like or what it is made of, but loft and floor insulation will be the main priority.

Furts

The garage should be fireproofed from your bedroom floor. Typically fire resisting plasterboard or two layers of conventional plasterboard. This will need removing and the insulation put in.

Celotex/Kingspan/Eurotherm type is best, but the issue will be wiring or plumbing getting in the way. You will have to work around this and ensure all gaps are sealed adequately with expanding foam. Buy a gun and gungrade foam. The thicker the better but you want 100mm minimum

Rockwool/fibreglass is cheap and easy but less effective.

Insulating your garage door will also help. Frequently these are wafer thin steel and conduct away heat in a terrible manner.

tacpot12

Fitting good seals to the garage door will also help with heat loss. Insulating and even heating the garage will also help.

Robin9

We had the same issue (in 1996) only our room is the lounge - it's an upside down house

We removed the existing roof lining of the garage once we had confirmed it was not asbestos - stuffed the rafters with fibreglass and then overlapping plasterboard to meet fire regs.

Later replaced the standard upandover garage door with a electric roller.

katy123

Hi, thank you so much for the replies. I've been away from home so apologies for the late reply. The house in question is this one:

https://www.google.com/maps/@52.0139771,-0.6786759,3a,69.4y,248.07h,84.74t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sv7AXpXB2F6NCArPLRlX1Lw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

It's got slate covering the top half of the extension, does this help with what options we have? I think replacing the garage doors to rollers:

costco call it Duratherm:

https://www.garagedoorsystems.co.uk/sectional-garage-doors

thick carpets with good underlay, does anyone know which type of carpet material and underlay is best for retaining warmth?

VfM4meplse

Out of interest, what do you use the garage for? Car or general storage or might converting it into a living space (eventually) be an option?

katy123

VfM4meplse wrote: »

Out of interest, what do you use the garage for? Car or general storage or might converting it into a living space (eventually) be an option?

At the moment storage, but will use it for storage and car in the near future.

katy123

Ok, so we’ve decided to carpet, do we a. remove the existing hardwood floorboards before we carpet or b. just carpet over it. These are the factors I can come up with:

1. Additional height, the hardwood floorboards are around 1 inch thick.
2. Do the hardwood floorboards act as an additional form of insulation? We’re going to replace the garage doors with thermal doors which have a much better seal
3. Ongoing maintenance? Not sure if we would ever need access to the floor but removing the hardwood floorboards may help. Also, given that the rest of the house suffers from squeaky floorboards, we might have this problem in the future so removing the hardwood floorboards will make it an easier job.

Any thoughts?