Consider Ventilating Your Garage

As concern about healthy indoor air quality increases, proper garage ventilation is an issue many homeowners are considering. Residential garages are typically closed most of the time and may serve as a reservoir of concentrated airborne fumes and contaminants that find their way indoors. These may be vapors from stored chemicals such as paint, solvents and gasoline. More significantly, pulling a vehicle in or out of the garage may saturate the space with deadly carbon monoxide, which lingers after the door is closed.

Accumulated fumes can infiltrate HVAC ductwork routed through the garage and spread throughout the house. In addition, recent studies prove that carbon monoxide gas readily penetrates the microscopic pores of gypsum wallboard typically utilized in most residences and migrates from the garage into living spaces. Adequate garage ventilation is the only way to keep toxic fumes from contaminating your indoor environment.

What to Do

Consider installing a ventilation fan into a garage wall that exhausts air directly to the exterior of the structure. For the typical two- or three-car residential garage, a fan that moves 100 cubic feet per minute (CFM) should be adequate to remove toxic fumes and hot air from the garage.

How to Operate It

A garage ventilation fan can be installed to actuate on several different triggers.

• A simple timer can turn the fan on and off daily at programmed times. It can also permit manual activation combined with an auto-off feature that shuts off the fan after a preset amount of run time.
• A motion sensor can activate the fan when persons enter the garage or when a vehicle pulls in or out.
• A temperature sensor can turn the fan on and off based on the interior temperature inside the garage.
• A humidistat senses relative humidity inside the garage and can activate the fan when levels reach a certain trigger point.

For fan options to ensure proper garage ventilation, in Elyria and Oberlin contact the professionals at Energy 1 Heating & Air Conditioning.

Our goal is to help educate our customers in Lorain, Ohio about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about garage ventilation and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Guide or call us at 440-201-2959.

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