Insulating a 3-seasons Room

5 years ago

My home office is an unheated/no AC room above an attached garage. It used to be an exterior side porch and the previous owners enclosed it with windows on 3 sides. It's a great space but in Pittsburgh, it's only comfortable for about 4 months out of the year because it's either too hot or too cold. The floor is carpet over a concrete slab over an unheated garage. The garage is only exposed on the door side. The back and left sides of the garage are underground and the right side shares a wall with the interior basement.

Before I shell out money to actually add heating/cooling to the space, I want to make sure I'm insulating as much and as efficiently as possible. First, I am thinking I should add rigid insulation to the ceiling of the garage (concrete). I only have about an inch and a half of space above the garage door opener track assembly. Does this seem like a practical solution to help keep that slab from getting so cold and transferring that cold into the office above or would it be better if the insulation was on the top side of the slab, in the office? How would you recommend attaching the insulation to the ceiling? A strong adhesive or mechanically fastened?

Thanks!

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Comments (2)

mike_home
5 years ago
If the room has windows on three sides, then adding 1 1/2 inches of insulation (R 7.5), to the garage ceiling is not going to do much in reducing the heating the cooling load of the room. The windows are a much larger heat loss and gain than the floor. Are the windows tight with double panes? How much insulation is in the ceiling?

I think it would be better to insulate the top of the slab. This would mean raising the office floor which may be problem. Reducing the window area will have the biggest impact if that is feasible.
Randy Hunter
Original Author
5 years ago
Mike, Thanks for the response. I was worried that insulating the ceiling was going to be a lot of effort and not much payoff. I actually do have room to raise the floor and insulate it as it's about a 6 inch step down into the office from my living room. This was my initial plan but the cost is significantly more than just throwing some insulation on the ceiling below.

The other thing you mentioned, the ceiling, I do not know for sure but I'm assuming there is no insulation there. There is currently like a fixed, wood panel ceiling in the room with a pitched roof above it. I have to cut a hole in it to see above to know what's going on. After I figured out the floor, I was going to move to the ceiling next. Perhaps if I can throw some batt up there along with covering the windows with plastic in the winter, I can salvage as much of the little electric heater heat that I can. There's not much else I can do about the windows. They are both the nicest thing about the room but also, as you noted, causing me the most problems in this climate. I think eventually I'm going to have to go with a more robust heating/cooling system and be done with it. Just wanted the room to be as temperature controlled as I could make it before then.

Thanks again!
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