Shop update #353 (8-14-24) I insulated my garage door!
Insulating the garage door in my shop has been on my list of things to do all year but I knew that it would be messy and time consuming so I have been putting it off. I finally bit the bullet and went to Home Depot and picked up 3 – 4×8 sheets of 1 1/2″ thick foam insulation and 1 – 4×8 sheet of 1″. I’ve seen kits online but this was the cheapest method that I could come up with to do the job.
I brought it out to the parking lot on one of the flat rollers that sits about 36″ high so that I could cut it in half to fit in my car. That would have worked out great except for the wind. I didn’t account for the damn wind. After they completely blew off of the flat roller, I moved them to one of the vertical rollers and was then able to score the boards lengthwise and then fold them in half to fit in my car. The entire inside of my car got covered in small foam balls.
The top section of my Garage Door (GD) has cut out window sections that are raised about 1/2″ so the 1″ thick foam board is going there. Overall, the GD is 16′ wide so each sheet of foam should stretch across each row of the door. I started by cutting 23″ off the end of each 2′ x 8′ strip using a framing square and 2 different bladed knives.
All of the 24″ strips got trimmed down to 20″ wide.
The 23″ x 20″ pieces of the 1″ foam got cut in half so that I could install them in the center section which is cut in half with a T shaped bar down the middle. The top row got installed with the silver side facing out to reflect the sunlight and hopefully the heat from the sun as well.
The 1 1/2″ insulation got installed with the silver facing inwards because I like how it looks. I’m eventually going to pull the 1″ foam from the top row and cut some other kind of thinner material to place in the window section to block the light and then reinstall them with the silver side facing towards the shop like the other pieces.
Cutting the foam boards on the table saw was incredibly messy but it saved a lot of time.
