How to finish walls in a detached garage
Q. We have a large, two-car, detached, dry (i.e. non-flooding), unheated garage with a large standing room floored loft. Are there pros/cons associated with finishing the walls on the main level and the loft of the garage by sheet rocking with green board? If reasonable to do, is there any reason to insulate or not insulate?
I'm concerned about possible effects on things like moisture, animals and insects. Regardless of whether the walls become finished, shelving and storage systems will be installed on the main level. The garage will not be heated.
A. I see no reason to insulate because you will not heat the garage. Insulation may become a welcome nesting space for rodents.
Finishing the walls with green board is fine. However, consider using plywood instead so you have more options when installing shelving and other storage systems, such as hanging tools on hooks, etc. CDX plywood should be fine and less expensive.
Q. Our second-floor bathroom has a tub with shower. When my nephew's family visits us, we usually end up with water marks and paint peeling in our kitchen, which is directly below the bathroom. Of course, they are incorrectly using the double curtains of the bathtub/shower.
The bathroom floor is tiled but there are openings where the wall meets the floor at the baseboard heater. I can seal these openings, but I don't know how to seal the opening around the inlet and outlet water pipes. I don't want to incorporate bathtub glass doors because we are older and want to avoid potential fall injury.
Can you recommend a sealant to use? Any suggestions you may have will be greatly appreciated.
A. I hope that you have educated your relatives on the proper use of the double shower curtain.
Glass doors are actually a safety measure that you should consider. If you lose your balance in the tub, the curtains will not be of any help. But shower doors are a firm support that will catch you if fall outward, and they have an outside bar on one of the panels and an inside one on the other that you can hold onto to get in and out or grab in an emergency. I feel much more secure in our shower with glass doors than I would with a curtain.
Also, grab bars in the appropriate spaces inside the tub enclosure are essential as one ages.
If the openings around the water pipes are too big to use caulking, you can get a can of crack sealant foam in hardware, building-supply or big box stores. If they are small enough to caulk - no bigger than one-quarter inch - you can caulk them with a polyurethane caulking compound that you are likely to be able to find only in masonry building-supply stores, Home Depot, Lowe's or A.H. Harris' stores if there is one near you.
Polyurethane sealants are mostly used in commercial construction and are not generally carried in paint and hardware stores, but they are better than any other types.
Q. Our house is about 2,500 square feet. There are three bedrooms plus kitchen, living room, study, dining area and two bathrooms on the first floor. We have a storage area on part of the second floor with plywood over the ceiling joists. The storage area is wide open (no walls) and one could see most of the area under the roof including the truss framing.
Daylight can be seen around the edge of the roof where the soffits are located. There is a ridge vent on all the various roofs on the house. Ridge vents and soffit vents are the only aids for ventilation.
My problem is that it gets very hot in the storage area in the summer. I got an accurate thermometer and placed it about 6 feet off the floor. The roof inside peak is about 15 to 18 feet high but varies for different roofs structures. On a 95-degree sunny day, I got readings of 120 degrees in the storage area. I feel it is too hot for household items and clothing, particularly leather and furs, with a 27-degree difference between the outdoor temperature.
I went on the internet and searched roof structures and found a site that said industry standards for an attic storage area should be 10 to 12 degrees higher than the outside temperature - it didn't specify a sunny day versus a cloudy day. Is that an accurate assessment? Or, what is the correct differential between outside and attic temperature?
What would be a good fix to cool down the storage area? Put in a roof vent fan? Enlarge the soffit vents? The width of each soffit vent is about 6 inches, and they are 3 feet long. Or, is there another solution?
A. I am not clear about some of your description. You mention plywood over the ceiling joists of the storage space and then add "one could see most of the area under the roof including the truss framing." Did you mean that there is plywood over the FLOOR joists of the storage area and that the trussed roof is open?
If that is the case, R-19 or higher Rockwool insulation can be installed between the trusses' bottom chords and a drywall ceiling screwed to them. This would greatly reduce the storage room temperature.
I am not aware of any standard dictating the temperature differential between outdoor and an attic on a sunny summer day. Much depends on how high the outdoor temperature is, the color of the roof, wind, humidity and the effectiveness of the natural ventilation.
The 6-inch by 3-foot soffit vents you describe may not be enough; it is best for soffit vents to be continuous across the full length of the roof overhangs to match the net free ventilation area (NFVA) of continuous ridge vents.
As a rule, I do not recommend roof vent fans as it is very difficult to provide enough NFVA to satisfy the fans' CFM. The result is that the fans rob warm or air-conditioned air from the living spaces below - a waste of energy.
If your roof shingles are on the dark side, you may want to consider a lighter color when time comes to reproof.
• Henri de Marne, a former remodeling contractor turned columnist and consultant, is the author of "About the House with Henri de Marne" (Upper Access Publishing). He continues to take questions from readers for this column and his website, www.henridemarne.com. Email questions to aboutthehouse@gmavt.net.