Garage/Shop insulation

tkappeler · Jan 25, 2015

My shop is the attached three car garage that have one bay dedicated and the other two available as needed. The garage is currently not insulated. Insulating the walls is the easy part, however; the ceiling is another matter. The roof is made of trusses 2' on center. Of course, I could simply install batts between the bottom chords and rock the ceiling but will kill all storage above that.

What have you done to insulate garage ceilings? Do you just sacrifice the storage aspects? Am I overthinking this?

/pine · Jan 25, 2015

tkappeler said:
My shop is the attached three car garage that have one bay dedicated and the other two available as needed. The garage is currently not insulated. Insulating the walls is the easy part, however; the ceiling is another matter. The roof is made of trusses 2' on center. Of course, I could simply install batts between the bottom chords and rock the ceiling but will kill all storage above that.

What have you done to insulate garage ceilings? Do you just sacrifice the storage aspects? Am I overthinking this?

Why not use R-11/15 between the trusses...sheetrock the ceiling, add a set of pull down steps and plywood/osb the storage area?... FWIW...heat transfer in deadair space on horizontal areas is much less than vertical spaces...

KennyG · Jan 25, 2015

As we've commented a number of times before, steel liner panels for ceilings have a lot of advantages over drywall for a small initial cost increase. What kind of storage space do you now use? My experience with trusses is that the configuration makes crummy storage space. Trying to add flooring in trusses is awkward. Also, most trusses are not engineered for storage loading unless they have a attic room formed in them.

Scrambler82 · Jan 26, 2015

Plywood on top of ceiling joices (sp), sheet rock ceiling, bats inbetween.
Easiest, fastest, and only need plywood where you plan to store stuff.

byronlj · Jan 26, 2015

For storage above the ceiling I had to install trusses that were designed to do so. It cost me $2,000 extra for the engineered trusses and the tongue and groove flooring. I insulated and rocked my ceiling and walls and am very happy with the results.
Dave