Insulating the garage

[jowwy]

Are you always this aggressive in real life or is this just your keyboard warrior persona coming through, do you have anger issues?

So explaining my situation to you means I’m an aggressive keyboard warrior with anger issues.....ok.

I sometimes wonder to myself why is it only this forum that doesn’t like people having a different opinion. On the other 5 forums I am on, I have zero issues like i do on this one.....strange isn’t it.

have a nice day.

 

[JhnBssll]

I had an insulated garage at my last house, despite fitting an allegedly thermally efficient roller door it was still very cold in winter. I was also warned about having too much weight on the roof trusses, despite not having too much up there.

Yeah, the roller shutter will definitely be the weak link by the time everything else is insulated. My expectation is just to be able to heat it to a reasonable temperature while I'm in there. If I can make it 10 degrees warmer inside than it is outside it would make the space useable even on the coldest days of winter, anything more than that is a bonus. I don't need it to retain the heat for any period after I've gone back indoors either so hopefully I'm not asking for too much but time will tell

Regarding the trusses, yeah its best not to put much weight on them unsupported. They're designed to work in tension, the chord timber along the bottom isn't generally designed to hold any weight other than that of an insulated plasterboard ceiling, so if you've got no ceiling there's a bit of spare capacity to use but not much. I'm essentially building a secondary timber frame to share the load which should allow a greater margin of safety when putting things up there, myself included

 

[JhnBssll]

The timber arrived this morning for the roof reinforcement so I've made a start in between looking after mrsbssll who seems to have come down with something - fingers crossed its not the dreaded lurgy

So far I've got 6 of the 8 new joists up but have only got pictures with the middle ones in place.

The very ends are sitting on the wall plates as you can see here...

The rest of the length of each new joist is currently screwed through the boards above to keep it in place - once the cross beam goes in it will support everything across the middle too. Speaking of the cross beam, I've got it cut to length and ready to go in...

It's a decent sized bit of timber at 50x150x2550 so should do the job It's going to sit right in front of the projector so I assumed I would have to drop that down a bit or lose the top of the image but having measured it seems it will miss by about 5mm It's almost as if it were meant to be

I'm considering bolting a wall plate to the brickwork to sit the beam on rather than building up a block pier, I'll look at the load ratings of the wall bolts I've got and go from there. a blockwork pier seems overkill, it's not like I'm building a proper floor to make the roof space habitable. I will be putting some damp proof membrane between the brickwork and any timber on that end though as it's an exposed single skin wall and I don't want it rotting!

 

[JhnBssll]

I made a decision re. wall plate or blockwork pier. The decision was made easier when I realised there's an external brick pier running up the wall giving it some extra strength where the cross beam was to be installed, so I drilled some 16mm holes in to the existing pier, filled them with resin and knocked some wall bolts in. They're now tightened down, it'll take a while for the resin to cure as it's pretty cold but should be set within an hour or so

There are still a few screws to wind in, you may have noticed a few of the new joists are slightly wonky still as there are things in the way like my big fan - that will get moved later and the timber fixed in to its final position as I'm still using the fan for the turbo currently The joists/trusses are now at 310mm centres with a maximum span of 2.6m which is far more acceptable - previously they were at 620 centres with a span of 5.2m. Should be significantly stronger now, strong enough at least for the few boxes of crap I'll be slinging up there and for me to walk around without too much concern while i'm fixing the insulation

Clearance under the centre beam is 2.25m so still a decent height, I won't be bumping my head on it anyway In the photo above you can probably see why I was concerned about blocking the projector image - Seems my measurements were about spot on, here you can see how much the image misses the bottom of the beam by...

Anyway, now that's done there a few bits to tidy up before the insulation arrives on Tuesday, then I'll make a start fitting that up in the roof Once thats in I can store as much as needed back up there while I gut the rest of the garage ready to do the walls 😊

 

[jowwy]

I made a decision re. wall plate or blockwork pier. The decision was made easier when I realised there's an external brick pier running up the wall giving it some extra strength where the cross beam was to be installed, so I drilled some 16mm holes in to the existing pier, filled them with resin and knocked some wall bolts in. They're now tightened down, it'll take a while for the resin to cure as it's pretty cold but should be set within an hour or so

View attachment 569399
View attachment 569400

There are still a few screws to wind in, you may have noticed a few of the new joists are slightly wonky still as there are things in the way like my big fan - that will get moved later and the timber fixed in to its final position as I'm still using the fan for the turbo currently The joists/trusses are now at 310mm centres with a maximum span of 2.6m which is far more acceptable - previously they were at 620 centres with a span of 5.2m. Should be significantly stronger now, strong enough at least for the few boxes of crap I'll be slinging up there and for me to walk around without too much concern while i'm fixing the insulation

View attachment 569401

Clearance under the centre beam is 2.25m so still a decent height, I won't be bumping my head on it anyway In the photo above you can probably see why I was concerned about blocking the projector image - Seems my measurements were about spot on, here you can see how much the image misses the bottom of the beam by...

View attachment 569402

Anyway, now that's done there a few bits to tidy up before the insulation arrives on Tuesday, then I'll make a start fitting that up in the roof Once thats in I can store as much as needed back up there while I gut the rest of the garage ready to do the walls 😊

I got the itch to go an rebuild the front of my manporium now, but can’t until we start getting decent weather.......

 

[fossyant]

That's a lot of timber, you storing parts from a WW2 tank up there ?

 

[straas]

I'm looking forward to the next thread "How do you keep yourself cool when zwifting in an insulated box"

 

[bagpuss]

I refurbished my prefab garage 20 years ago, which was money well spent imho.
I applied for planning permission to remove old prefab and replace it with slightly larger brick built one which would have been attached to our house. Could not get it passed, due to objections from next door. So re-roofed old prefab with insulated steel cladding . That made a big difference .
Followed this up by insulating the main door and walls .
This was done with help from big brother .
Two inch batons fixed to walls at regular intervals . Polystyrene sheets fitted between them . Wiring for power points also intalled at this stage.
Finally boarded over with mdf sheets . Pva sealed boards prior to emulsion . Sealed concrete floor with floor paint . Later usde off cuts of laminate flooring .
Warm in winter, cool in summer .
Single tube heater keeps the chill off . I use a small fan heater when fettling bikes .

 

[jowwy]

I'm looking forward to the next thread "How do you keep yourself cool when zwifting in an insulated box"

John will add an aircon unit........

 

[Salty seadog]

What a rubbish shed, I'm surprised it's still standing.....

Oh wait, I misread the title.

 

[JhnBssll]

I had some spare time today so I have started installing insulation in the roof space 😊 It's going quite well so far, I've covered a little over half of the roof and eaves

I've screwed 20x30mm battens to the bottom of the truss timber to give a total depth of 90mm - with the 50mm insulation added it gives a 40mm ventilation gap above which should be enough to keep it dry up there once I've fitted some soffit vents.

Here you can see where the fan is in the way of the last few boards which need to go down before the wall insulation can be screwed to the truss and the roof pieces cut to size and fitted.

I've got two smaller fans arriving tomorrow to fit to the ceiling then I can remove this one and finish the corner off before I continue with the other side. Once the roof space is done I can shift all the stuff back up to store and have a good tidy before I think about the plan for attacking the walls!

 

[JhnBssll]

The new fans arrived today 😊 Relatively cheap, I had considered a Wahoo Headwind to make a matching set with the Kickr and Climb but £200 seems a lot for something that's going to get beaten up in the garage and eventually common sense prevailed

I plugged them both in to check they worked properly then promptly drilled two holes in each of their bases and bolted them to the ceiling

I'll run them off an extension cord for now and sort the electrics out properly once the walls are insulated, it will all need changing anyway at that point. It does mean I can now get cracking with removing the old fan and finishing the joists and boards off in that corner so I can get on with the insulation

I have the afternoon off work tomorrow for my Great Aunt's funeral (bless her) - once I'm home I might climb in to the roof and make some more progress if I feel like it 😊 I'm really looking forward to getting the garage tidy now - it's a bit depressing seeing it in this state, will be worth it though

 

[Drago]

I'm a twot. Been following this thread avidly, but despite that when i logged on this morning and thought it read "Insulting the garage". I thought youd taken your car in for some work and had a bust up with them, and gleefully clicked hoping to see the salacuous details.

I guess I was wrong

 

[JhnBssll]

I'm a twot. Been following this thread avidly, but despite that when i logged on this morning and thought it read "Insulting the garage". I thought youd taken your car in for some work and had a bust up with them, and gleefully clicked hoping to see the salacuous details.

I guess I was wrong

After my local VW dealer caused the engine to fall out of my last car while I was driving this is a completely understandable mistake

 

[fossyant]

Looking good, that should be very toasty.