Your home’s attached garage is a great asset for your home. Unfortunately, it can be a catch-all for weed eaters, hedge trimmers. paints, lawn mowers and other chemicals and outdoor equipment. And your motor vehicles, of course. If this is your situation, your attached garage requires sealing to prevent dangerous chemicals from leaking into your home.
Dangerous convenience
It is so easy and convenient to store gasoline-burning vehicles and equipment, paints, solvents, pesticides and other noxious products in the garage. But those substances produce carbon monoxide and other harmful vapors that can infiltrate your home’s indoor air, triggering or exacerbating allergies, respiratory problems and creating a toxic breathing environment. Just allowing your car to warm up for a few minutes on winter mornings poses a health hazard, even with the overhead garage door open. That’s why an attached garage requires sealing. Simply driving the vehicle in and out produces CO and other harmful gases.
Steps for sealing
An attached garage is essentially another room in your home. If there’s a bonus room or bedroom above, your attached garage requires sealing as soon as possible. Here are tips on keeping those dangerous chemicals and gases out of your home:
- Weatherstripping – Make sure the access door from the garage into the home has weatherstripping and a door sweep. When they’re worn, replace them.
- Seal shared-wall penetrations – In the wall shared by the attached garage and the home, seal plumbing and wiring penetrations with caulking or canned foam insulation.
- Ceiling and wall corners –Seal the area around where the ceiling and wall meet on the same shared wall. Any other cracks or perforations should be sealed. If there is a room above the garage, seal all the way around the ceiling.
- Install vent or exhaust fan — A roof vent above the garage allows vapors to escape on a continual basis. An exhaust fan running a few hours a day will keep gases vented out. It also will reduce air pressure in the garage, increasing the likelihood of air movement from the home to the garage, rather than vice versa.
Installing a carbon monoxide detector inside the home near your garage access door is also a good way to monitor any CO fumes invading your home.
Keep your indoor air safe and clean. If we can help with this or any other home energy-saving issues, please contact us at CCAC, Inc.. We’re always happy to help with any home comfort issues in the Coastal Bend area.
Our goal is to help educate our customers in Corpus Christi, Texas about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about attached garage sealing and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Resource guide.
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