Garage Ventilation

[mf01]

I just purchased a new home last October and the garage gets hot. Two things make it hot, it faces southwest and 2 cars are parked in there after driving. The temps outside seem to be mid 80's, but the garage will get up to 95 at night after the cars are parked. In the summer it will probably be over 100. I'd prefer to keep it cooler for the boat, cars, and other stuff. Has anyone done any garage ventilation? The doors are insulated, so that should block some heat. The ceiling is drywall and I'm thinking about putting a couple of metal vents in. This would allow the heat to rise to the attack. Then I'd have additional heat in the attack, so I'd put a solar powered fan on one of the attic vents. Any thoughts?

[Quinner]

You need to get the heat out of the attic. Are your soffits vented? If yes is there enough venting? If properly vented adding an attic fan in the roof will reduce the temps quite a bit.

[cedarcreek216]

You can put a temperature controlled exhaust fan in there so when it reaches a certain temp the exhause fan kicks on. I would not dump the hot air into your attic, regardles of vents or not, that hot air will make your house that much warmer. Just exhaust it out, that's about as much as you can do with out conditioning it.

[mf01]

You need to get the heat out of the attic. Are your soffits vented? If yes is there enough venting? If properly vented adding an attic fan in the roof will reduce the temps quite a bit.

It's a brand new home, so the soffits have continuous venting all the way around the house.

[mf01]

You can put a temperature controlled exhaust fan in there so when it reaches a certain temp the exhause fan kicks on. I would not dump the hot air into your attic, regardles of vents or not, that hot air will make your house that much warmer. Just exhaust it out, that's about as much as you can do with out conditioning it.

Yeah, that was my initial thought, but I'm not sure where to mount the fan. Most of the walls are a local limestone and the rest is stucco. I wouldn't be able to put lower vents in, unless I cut through the limestone. The exhaust fan would have to go through the stucco somewhere.

[Quinner]

It's a brand new home, so the soffits have continuous venting all the way around the house.

LOL, you would hope. As I mentioned in my last post, you want a roof mounted attic fan, mount centered over the attic space as high up the roof as possible. The fan will have a T-Stat on it which can be adjusted as required to turn on at temp selected.

You should not need any more venting however if the attic has insulation ensure there are baffles installed so the air can flow in through the soffit vents, into the attic and out through the attic fan. You should see at least a 10 degrees drop in temp for any space below the attic.

[cedarcreek216]

Yeah, that was my initial thought, but I'm not sure where to mount the fan. Most of the walls are a local limestone and the rest is stucco. I wouldn't be able to put lower vents in, unless I cut through the limestone. The exhaust fan would have to go through the stucco somewhere.

Is there living space above the garage or something that would prevent you from exhausting up through the roof? I know, no one wants to penetrate a roof, but it's probably composition shingle and those are no problem to flash to.

As I mentioned before, I would not dump any air into an attic space, even if you have attic vents, they just don't always work correctly. If attic and crawl space vents worked properly we would not have 50% of the mold and rotting problems we have in homes.

I would exhaust it and pipe it out either through a side wall, stucco in your case, or through the attic and out the roof.

[74green]

mf01,
Your home a single story? They make all types of ventilation products. Blowing air from the garage into the attic would be one method of doing this. But you will need an open window or a louver to allow air to draft into the garage from outside. The air going into the attic would force air out of the soffits. Or you could duct the exhaust the air directly outside.

You could us an inline ventilation fan mounted up in the attic, duct it to some electronic louvers that would be exposed in the garage and just let the unit blast air into the garage. The increased air pressure would force air out of the attic. Also you could wire the vent in with a thermostat control so it turns on as needed.

My friend has a similar system as to what I described. Its mounted in the hallway at his lake house (that’s only used on the weekends) and we use the fan to draw the hotter inside air out of the house. It works well. And really well on those nice 60-70 degree days.

[mf01]

From what I'm reading, I'll probably start by venting the attic above the garage. If that doesn't work, I'll add a vent with duct work that goes through the attic to the roof. A coworker out in the bay area said that these worked well in her house: http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product...=1&topnav=&s=1

Anyone used one?