On Fri, 26 Jan 1996, Phil Ethier wrote:
> heard about people like that), they have two cars. They park them
> outside all the time and let the garage fill with junk. It snows and
> such in Mass. Don't these people hate cleaning the windows off? If I
> told my wife we were going to get along without a garage for our daily
> driver, they'd never find my body.
Non car people are *very* strange. They patiently put up with all sorts
of inconvenience and deterioration caused by keeping their car outside so
their plastic leaf rakes will stay dry.
[discussion of heating floor deleted]
> What about heat loss? Since your garage slab was probably poured without
> insulation under it, I fear a lot of your heating dollar is going to go to
> warming up the ground under the garage. So you put down a layer of
[recommendation to trash floor and start over deleted]
If you have a garage/shop that is not going to be used to park wet cars, a
cheaper solution than a heated floor would be to lay pressure-treated
2x4's on the existing concrete floor, with extruded polystyrene or some
such rigid high R insulation between them, a sheet of 6 mil polyethylene
over the whole thing, then a plywood floor nailed to the PT sleepers.
That would add about 2 inches of thickness. Heat any way you want; the
floor will be fairly comfortable. What makes concrete so uncomfortable is
its ability to draw heat out of your body. The plywood also would be
easier on your feet than concrete.
This could be done on a portion of the floor, and the sleepers need not be
nailed down to the concrete (though those of us with powder actuated nail
drivers will, of course, nail them down if only because we can). So the
whole thing could be removed if you wanted.
In the past, I have used an even simpler solution; when I replace the
carpet in the house I cut the old carpet into easily handled strips. I
roll as much as I need out out in my working area in the garage.
Eventually, it gets monumentally grungy, but in the meantime I am
comfortable. When the carpet gets unbearably dirty, I put down a new
piece and pitch the old one. If your house doesn't need new carpet, I bet
twenty bucks to a carpet installer would buy quite a bit of old carpet.
Ray Gibbons Dept. of Molecular Physiology & Biophysics
Univ. of Vermont College of Medicine, Burlington, VT
gibbons@northpole.med.uvm.edu (802) 656-8910
|