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Toolapcfan · 10-23-2005, 03:02 AM

If your garage is mostly unfinished, as in, the outside walls are not sheetrocked, I would at least insulate those, then put up styrofoam sheets on top of that and lastly your wall board. I wouldn't use drywall, I'd use that 3/8" thick OSB that has an MDF type woodgrain finish that's prepainted. It's typically used for soffits but would be perfect in a garage. Or better yet, use fiberglass panels like you see used in commercial bathrooms in gas stations, etc. If your outside walls are unfinished, you could also consider furring the wall out deeper and then insulating and putting up wall board. If you can afford the slightly decreased dimensions of the garage that would be a good way to increase the R value of those outside walls. You could even do that in a finished garage, just build another wall over the old, insulate and wall board. Also, consider blowing in some cellulose insulation in the attic above the garage if that's how your house is laid out. If you have rooms above the garage then you've got no problems there, there won't be any heat loss to the house since it will be warmer than the garage. You might be able to run a supply duct to the garage and install a damper so you can shut it off when not in use so cold air doesn't flow back into the duct, although, in the winter, with the heat on, your house will be higher pressure than the outside, so it's not like cold air comes in, it's that warm air gets out. You could buy those Johns Manville plastic wrapped batts and hang them in front of your garage door inside the garage. It'd be crude but if you could keep them tight together it'd make it like the door isn't even there from a thermal standpoint. Fact is, there's no neat and easy way to keep a garage warm. It really takes design forethought before the thing was built. Thick outside walls, radiant heat in the concrete, styrofoam boards put down before the concrete is poured, a seperate HVAC system or just a heater, etc. Considering the cost of natural gas anymore, and the expense of a lot of the options available to you, an electric furnace might be a very cost effective choice. There's no exhaust gases to vent out, and there'd be little to no duct runs since you'd essentially build a closet and put the thing in there, you wouldn't even need to hire an HVAC guy to put it in if you weren't going to be doing A/C with it (sorry nismo1997).