Garage Heating and Winter
If you have ever tried to work in your garage, you know how different the temperature can be from the rest of your home. Unfortunately, the interior of your garage is not a space that is typically climate-controlled. Yet, many people do use their garage as a project space. Whether that is auto mechanics, bicycle repair, woodworking, or even as a painting studio; the temperature extremes of seasonal changes are magnified in a garage. With winter swiftly approaching, you may be wondering if it is worth it to heat your garage through the season. Even if it makes working conditions a little more bearable, is it worth the expense? Before you make any decisions, let us take a look at some pros and cons of heating your garage.
Pros
Creature Comfort
Perhaps the biggest reason that people heat their garages over the winter is for creature comfort. If you spend a lot of time in the garage, adding heating will keep you more comfortable assuredly. After all, why should you have to suffer just because your work or hobby occurs in the garage? Instead, why not make the time you spend out there a little more enjoyable?
Maintaining Indoor Temperature
Another good reason to heat the garage over winter is that it can help to stabilize the temperature in the rest of the house. Adding insulation and heat to the interior of your garage acts as a buffer between the outside and the rest of your home. Heating your properly insulated garage can potentially lower the cost of heating to the rest of the home as the temperature does not fluctuate as much.
Prevent Damage to Stored Items
Certain items, like cars and lawn equipment, are powered with batteries or gasoline. Both of these power sources have temperatures at which they function best. If they are stored outside of these temperatures, they can not only lose power, but they can also take damage or deteriorate the item itself. To protect your equipment from cold damage, heating your garage to within the safe range of your specific power types can help to ensure longevity for your items and peace of mind for you.
Cons
Though the benefits to heating a garage seem appealing, any homeowner should also take note that there are also negative aspects to adding a heat installation into your garage. These changes can be difficult by nature to perform, or simple. The head cost is determined by your method of addition.
Expense of Garage Heating
There are a couple of things to look at here. First, and perhaps most obvious, is that adding a room to heat costs money. How much depends on what temperature you are heating the garage to and how big the space is. As long as you are not turning the room into a sauna, the cost should be negligible. However, upfront costs are not to be overlooked. If your garage is not properly insulated, any heat added to the room will leak through the cracks and seams. This means that you will need to ensure that your garage door has the proper insulation and no cracks or gaps form around the door and walls.
Space heaters vs. Ducting
Depending on how much time you spend in the garage, it may not be worth spending the time and money to run ductwork from your existing HVAC system to heat the garage. A space heater is an option, but they have a finite range. So if you are looking to work in the garage, you will either need multiple space heaters or shift the location now and again to heat the space fully. Either way, you will need to do some research to make the most of this decision.
