Mike wrote:
So long as the adjoining walls in the living space that share a common
wall with the garage are insulated to normal exterior wall specs for
your area, and the door from the house to the garage is an insulated
door, then the only downside is that it gets really cold in the garage
in the winter.

How far North are you? Do dipstick heaters get used around there??

Insulating the garage walls and ceiling is a daunting challenge with
little energy payback to the household. Adding the garage to the
conditioned space is NOT a good idea!! Garage doors are very energy leaky!!


We are in SE Minnesota so it's not like we are north of the Arctic
circle, but it gets cold and it's quite windy. The wall between the
living area and the garage is insulated correctly, as far as I know.
The door is insulated, as well, but I am considering maybe a storm door
into the garage, now.

Not sure what a dipstick heater is and while I have no plans to add the
garage to the conditioned space I was a little annoyed to see that the
builder sheetrocked without insulating. I'd have thought if he did not
want to insulate at least it would have been left unfinished to give
the owner the option.

Thanks,

Mike


Ok, not far enough north for dipstick heaters.

Oil gets very viscous on sub zero weather. A long time ago, I visited
in eastern Quebec (north of northernmost Maine) in February. The hotel
had outlets at every outdoor parking spot, and every car that drove in
had a extension cord hanging out over the radiator. Plug the cord
into the outlet and oil temps stayed above freezing. Seemed like when
the weather warmed up to 0, it would snow. Most of that week, it stayed
below -20F