Cooling your garage

pokey

pokey

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I know many of us heat our garages in the winter to work on our rides, but does anyone also cool it? It was 87 today and humid and the garage felt like an oven. My wife and i were out there together and I brought up the crazy idea of installing a couple of large ceiling fans to get air moving. Anyone else get creative when cooling their garage?
 
pokey said:
I know many of us heat our garages in the winter to work on our rides, but does anyone also cool it? It was 87 today and humid and the garage felt like an oven. My wife and i were out there together and I brought up the crazy idea of installing a couple of large ceiling fans to get air moving. Anyone else get creative when cooling their garage?
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I just have a huge oscillating fan to keep the air moving. Works quite nicely
 
We have an old box floor fan like this one that I put on top of a couple Rubbermaid bins

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Works pretty good.
 
I have a friend that has an air conditioned garage. It's like buffing out a car in your living room. Too bad he lives in Florida and I now live in Colorado. Oh yeah, my garage is cooled - I just open the door!


Colin
 
I bought a dehumidifier to lower the humidity on bad days. I have a regular oscillating fan out there. Going to install a windo A/C unit soon for when I'm working out there.
 
I have a window air conditioner in my garage, along with a decent sized electric heater for winter. I can get the garage down to as low as 60 degrees when it's 90 outside, and up to about 70-75 in the winter when it's 20 degrees outside.

Works out perfectly for detailing purposes.
 
Shiny Lil Detlr said:
I have a window air conditioner in my garage, along with a decent sized electric heater for winter. I can get the garage down to as low as 60 degrees when it's 90 outside, and up to about 70-75 in the winter when it's 20 degrees outside.

Works out perfectly for detailing purposes.
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Impressive! A window unit is out for me given the only window is to the front elevation of the home.

I am researching ceiling fans tonight and will have the electricians come by this week hopefully. An ideal solution is to have our central air unti flow into the garage as well. I can only imagine the electric bill though! Your window mount has inspired me into at least looking into central air for the garage. Thanks!
 
Try the 9$ to 12$ Box Fans From Walmart. Two of those posistioned correctly may do the job. If they don't donate them to a local hom;ess shelter and take the next step.
 
I took a large industrial sized fan (about 36"-42") from our shop, and put that in our pole barn. It definately cools the place down, but creates too much air turbulance (if that's the right word) that it blows all kinds of stuff into the air, and on the cars. It's even worse if I have my dogs with me when I'm detailing... Between the gallon of slobber my dog can throw on my car, he also covers it in hair.

I need to find a smaller unit that will still cool down a 60x40 pole barn...
 
Having your garage too hot can be deterimental in several ways. Menzerna does not like high heat and humidity so if you use that, it will adversely affect it. The other thing of course is that it makes you uncomfortable which takes all the fun out of detailing. I installed a portable air conditioner in my garage. I cut a hole through the garage door and put a dryer vent in there to exhaust the gas. If I let it run overnight, it can get down to 70 degrees. Now THAT'S comfortable detailing!! They are not that expensive and damned worthwhile if you ask me! FYI...I started out with a large overhead fan and found it useless.
 
I installed a commercial AC/heater. Similar to the ones you see in hotels. Toasty in the winter, perfect in the summer. And a big plus, it filters the air and reduces dust.
 
I too live in a hot region (south Florida) and do alot of detailing in the garage. I was worried about space (to store something) and while those nice portable A/C units looked inviting I chose two Vornado fans. They move alot of air and one being on a pedistal and other without and they store easily in their respective boxes. It appears they now even offer one especially for shop purposes.

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Here in south florida it's way too hot and humid to detail in the garage and a fan(s) won't cut it.
I have several customers with airconditioned garages which helps but when i detail at home i used to suffer.
Went to Home Depot and got one of their floor models, no need to install in a window or wall.
They run about $600, worth every penny.
 
Advanced Detailing said:
Here in south florida it's way too hot and humid to detail in the garage and a fan(s) won't cut it.
I have several customers with airconditioned garages which helps but when i detail at home i used to suffer.
Went to Home Depot and got one of their floor models, no need to install in a window or wall.
They run about $600, worth every penny.
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Never heard of a portable unit before. Just looked at home depot on line. Looks like I found my father's day present. Thanks!
 
What temperature and humidity level does it need to reach before I need to take measures that will benefit the product? I am getting ready to start detailing my ride in the garage and it's getting into the mid to upper 80's with roughly 60% humidity. I'm going to use the WG swirl remover, WG glaze, and the WGDGP.
 
I believe you want your humidity to be 50% or lower and the temps are best around the mid-upper 70s for most detailing products. I believe that's the "sweet-spot". Anymore than 50% humidity though and most products start doing strange things...a LOT more than 50% and they just start doing "WTF" types of things...drives me bonkers.

We use a LOT of fans in the 12,000 sq/ft. garage I work out of...sort of helps, but it's not really "comfortable" per-se. If I have to start working out of my own personal garage though, I'm insulating the walls and putting a window-mount unit in one of the windows to cool it off and a portable heating unit for the winters to warm it up.
 
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