Sauna or Icebox

The garage is my man cave. I hang out in here more than any single room in my house except my bedroom (when sleeping… occasionally more time in the garage than sleeping in a given day!). Sometimes it’s working on a project, and others it’s just drinking an adult beverage and listening to the radio.

The problem is in the summer it gets crazy hot and in the winter, especially the couple of cold snaps we get here in Texas the past couple of years, it’s miserably cold.

The temperature extremes are so bad because like many houses, the garage isn’t considered a living space and is not insulated. A portable heater or window conditioner just can’t keep up… at least until now.

While getting some other work done on my house, I had my contractor blow about 14 inches of insulation in the attic. The graph above shows the past two weeks of temps in my garage. You can differentiate each day by the peaks. Over the past 5 days, you can see that the garage temp doesn’t swing so much from morning to evening or day to day. We’re in a fairly mild season right now so the real test will be those very cold and very hot days over the next year. I picked up a ventless propane heater this past spring during an end of season sale at Lowe’s (I’ll vent it anyway) and will be getting a window air conditioner. Looking forward to seeing how they do.