I have an integral double garage that is already robbing the adjoining hall and room (and bedroom above) of lots of heat.

The external wall is cavity insulated, but the huge double door is a 60s metal up-and-over. This has to be the exit route of a lot of heat. I won’t change the door – it’s original and fantastically heavy with concrete counterweights – but I’m happy to insulate the back of it.

Googling hasn’t really helped (I clearly don’t know what I’m after), so any recommendations/tips?

Cheers

two choices really some celotex glued to the door and a set of decent seals all round it or look at some sort of insulated floor to ceiling curtain that runs across the garage and does the job. You can get old heavy velvet curtains cheap from charity shops and stuff.

duck-tape a load of loft cavity insulation to it?

Big thick curtain running the length of the door on the inside? This assumes you have access to the garage from inside the house of course.

I used a load of the silver padded insulated stuff from the local DIY place and stuck it on in portions used silver foil tape.

Certainly seems to have made a bit of a difference (single garage door). I also have a couple of layers of offcut & used carpet on the floor as well which also helps.

ir_bandito – not sure I’ll be doing that. Don’t fancy breathing in the fibres..!

wwaswas & geoffj – yes, I do have internal access, but I’m not sure a curtain will work. Not enough room at each side of the door (and it would foul the counterweight mechanism). Oh, and I’m not touching the ceiling – asbestos.

What about something like THIS glued to the back of the door? It cones in different thicknesses which could be good if you have a mechanism you need to avoid.

The other thing that comes to my mind is the foil bubble wrap stuff.

When we had a new garage door fitted, they wouldn’t paint it because it would invalidate the warranty. Apparently, because of the extra weight of the paint. Sure it wouldn’t be a problem, but probably worth thinking about weight.

What about those reflective/insulated sheets for putting behind radiators?

You’ll probably be better off insulating the house/garage join. Use insulated boards to line the inside of the garage? Extra underlay on the floor of the room above, so you can avoid touching the ceiling?

Have you got some kind of draught excluder round the edges of the door. I put plastic edging on mine and it made the garage considerably warmer

Those garage door seals are damn exensive.

No draught excluder. That deffo needs doing. Need to work out the best way to do it.

mike – didn’t know about that..! I’d have thought it could cope with the weight, but perhaps not. It’s a monster of a door, though – without the weights raising/lowering it would be a sod..!

rusty mac – I’ve seen some of that foil bubble stuff. Is it any good?

You’ll probably be better off insulating the house/garage join. Use insulated boards to line the inside of the garage? Extra underlay on the floor of the room above, so you can avoid touching the ceiling?

This is likely to be the best option for the room adjoining the back of the garage – I could build a stud wall against the garage side of the wall and insulate that. Will make bike storage tricky – they’re all hanging off that wall..!

Can’t easily insulate the side adjoining wall of the garage (hallway on other side) due to electrics and water being on it. Would be a PITA of a job.

ourmaninthenorth

Sorry i don’t know how effective it is. But HERE is a link to thermawrap one of the brand name companies that sell the stuff and they have some figures that may mean something to you?

I just thought that it is light weight, doesn’t take up to much space and would be easy and clean to install so may fit the bill.

When we had a new garage door fitted, they wouldn’t paint it because it would invalidate the warranty. Apparently, because of the extra weight of the paint.

I know bugger all about the subject (nothing new) but it seems remarkable that the opening mechanism would be that close to its maximum load that a couple of kilos of paint could knacker it.

the opening mechanism would be that close to its maximum load

does seem odd – maybe it was more to do with the door itself and moisture getting trapped behind poorly applied paint and causing corrosion?

or being cynical, any excuse to get out of the warranty

you know with the Thermawrap stuff – why do you have to put battens down on the inside once you’ve stapled it to the rafters? ❓
http://thermawrap.co.uk/loftinstallation.php

to stop condensation building up between plasterboard and thermawrap.

That Thermawrap stuff is what i used. Makes the door a fair bit heavier even on a single one like mine.

Also put a ‘skirt’ on the outside of the door along the bottom which stopped a lot of the draught coming in at the bottom (around £10).

I have a thermometer in the garage (i’m in there a lot as it’s integrated and my dart board and bikes are in there) and it always seems a few degrees warmer since i did it last year.

The cat seems to like attacking it though (it is kind of a bubble wrap after all!) so it now has lots of little claw holes in it at the bottom. 🙁

or being cynical, any excuse to get out of the warranty

I suspect this.

MrTall – cheers for that. I’ll investigate. I need to understand how much the door mechanism can take.

Like I said, it’s already a heavy thing – there’s a 3″x3″ metal beam running horizontally along it to give it rigidity (which the first owners chopped* to get their camper van through the door..!)

Cheers all..!

*properly – bloke who built the house was an engineer.

Actually, MrTall, got any tips on installation? Did you just run it edge to edge, or did you cut it out to get round bracing, etc?

Cheers

wwaswas: I suppose that makes sense for Diagram 2, where it’s covered with plasterboard, but why in Diagram 1?

both diagrams show plasterboard – you don’t need the battens unless you’re boarding over.

Cheers. I don’t understand the difference between the two diagrams, then. 🙁

one shows using battens to give the air gap by buliding up on top of the rafters with the insualtion run straight across, the other wraps the insulation slightly around each rafter so that the air gap is ‘between’ the rafters rather than outside of them.

ohhhhhhhhh