A garage door is the largest opening in most buildings, and Lethbridge supplies the wind to exploit it.
Why a garage is harder here
Every time the door goes up, the space equalises with outside. That is true anywhere. What wind adds is that it keeps happening after the door closes.
A loosely built garage under steady wind pressure does not simply sit and slowly cool - air is actively pushed through the gaps around the door track, the eaves, the service penetrations and the sill. A garage that would hold its heat for a couple of hours in still conditions gives it up considerably faster on a windy afternoon.
That has a practical consequence for how you spend money on it: sealing beats adding depth. Insulation in the walls of a leaky garage is insulating around a moving air stream.
The realistic goal is a building that recovers quickly between door cycles and then holds temperature. Not one that never loses heat - no amount of insulation delivers that with an opening that size.
If there is a room above it
This is the most common complaint we hear about garages generally, and it is worse in an exposed location.
A room over a garage sits above an unheated space and usually projects outward, so it is exposed on more sides than any other room in the house. The floor assembly is the weak point: batts pushed between the joists with the perimeter of that cavity never sealed, so air moves into the joist bays around the insulation instead of being stopped by it.
Under wind pressure that air movement increases. Adding more batt changes very little; sealing the cavity changes the room. See bonus room insulation.
Workshop use
Lethbridge has plenty of garages doing real work. If yours is one:
- Seal before you insulate - for the reasons above.
- Deal with the door perimeter, which is usually the single largest gap.
- Consider what is stored there. Repeated warm-cool cycling in a space that gets wet from vehicles produces condensation on cold surfaces and tools. See preventing rust in a steel building if the structure is steel.
Attached garages
If it is attached, prioritise the shared wall and ceiling over the exterior walls - that boundary is both the thermal one and the fire and exhaust separation between the garage and the people in the house.
The covering requirement
Foam in a garage needs an appropriate thermal barrier over it. Get it into the quote rather than discovering it later. 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 tell us whether the garage is attached and how exposed the property is.
See also garage spray foam insulation province-wide.