Most Calgary garage enquiries are really about the room above it.
The city's suburban housing is dominated by attached garages, very often with living space directly overhead - a bedroom, an office, a bonus room. That room is almost always the least comfortable in the house, and the garage underneath is the reason.
Why the room above the garage is cold
A normal room sits on top of another heated room. This one sits on top of an unheated space, and it is exposed on more sides than any other room in the house: cold below, and usually cold on two or three walls as well, because bonus rooms tend to project out over the garage footprint.
The floor assembly is the specific weak point. It was insulated with batts pushed up between the joists, and in most cases nothing sealed the perimeter of that cavity. Air moves freely into the joist bays from the garage side, around the insulation rather than through it, and the batt ends up filtering cold air instead of stopping it.
You can add more batt and change very little. Sealing that floor cavity is what changes the room.
See bonus room insulation for the full treatment of that specific problem.
The safety side of an attached garage
The wall and ceiling between a garage and the living space is not just a thermal boundary. It is a fire separation, and it is what keeps vehicle exhaust and fuel vapours out of the house.
Any gap in that assembly is a path for both. Sealing it properly is worth doing on that basis alone, and it happens to be the same work that fixes the cold room.
Chinooks and an attached garage
Calgary's swinging winter is hard on an unheated attached garage. It warms in a chinook, cools sharply afterwards, and repeats. Moisture arrives constantly on vehicles as snow and slush, evaporates when the space warms, then condenses on cold surfaces when it drops again.
A garage that goes through that cycle all winter has a lot of moisture moving around in it, and any unsealed path into the house carries some of it with the air.
Heating the garage as a workshop
If the plan is to work in there, the honest points are the same anywhere: sealing matters more than depth, the overhead door limits what is achievable, and the realistic goal is a space that warms quickly and holds it between openings.
If the garage is unheated and staying that way, insulating it alone will not make it warm. Insulation slows heat movement; it does not produce heat. We would rather say that than take the job.
The covering requirement
Foam in a garage needs an appropriate thermal barrier over it, and garages are where that most often gets skipped because the space feels like a utility area. Have it specified in the quote. See thermal barrier vs ignition barrier.
What we do
We are a referral service. We do not install. We connect you with vetted installers - certification, insurance and WCB standing checked.
No price without a site visit. Get a quote, and say whether there is living space above the garage - that usually decides where the work should go.
See also garage spray foam insulation province-wide.