Insulating The Garage Roof

You can buy insulation kits for standard metal garage doors or you can cut pieces of rigid foam insulation to fit each door panel section.

Insulating the garage roof.

Staple plastic or foam baffles to the roof sheathing near the eaves to keep the material away. Don t insulate your garage walls and ceiling without insulating the big garage door too. Regulate your garage s temperature all year by installing insulation. A garage attic also should be insulated is if there is an air conditioned room above the garage.

Make sure you have enough ventilation on your roof as well. I wrote a big article discussing whether you should insulate your garage. Adding insulation won t make your garage a perfect temperature by itself but it will take the edge off the freezing winters and the sweltering summers. Keep in mind that the structural metal ribbing of garage doors is an excellent conductor of heat and this typically doesn t get insulated.

The regulating temperature has positive effects on your cooling and heating costs. Be sure to count the spaces above doors and windows. In either case you will need to follow the general steps below to insulate your garage roof. To prepare determine the area of the space you plan to insulate and add 10 to 20 percent to account for mistakes and odd spaces you need to fill.

In essence insulation materials serve as a barrier that doesn t permit heat to move through them. For the same reason insulation shouldn t touch the roof s underside. If your garage is attached to your house you will notice a big difference in your home s temperature as well. In general if you re not heating or cooling your garage there is little benefit to insulating the ceiling because there s no costly heated or cooled air to keep in.

The airflow from the soffits to the ridge vent keeps the roof cool and prevents ice dams and the material will block that flow. The insulation will keep the naturally hot or cold air in the garage and the artificially warmed or cooled air in the room above it. If you are insulating the garage ceiling not only by the truss level but also up by the roofline then you must leave at least 1 1 2 to two inches of air between the fiberglass and the underside. Insulating the garage roof will prevent heat from transferring from the roof into the garage during the summer and prevent warm air in your garage from being transferred outside through the roof keeping your garage at a stable temperature.

However if you have a cathedral style garage roof you will need a scaffolding to get into the upper areas of the roof. The task of insulating a garage roof is not hard to complete if you follow a few tips and hints.