Why You Should Ventilate Your Attached Garage?
If you ever walk into your attached garage and smell gasoline, paint fumes, fertilizer, strong chemicals, or even just musty air, you should consider ventilating your attached garage. Or if during hot summer days you notice your garage is hot and humid, it’s likely due to a ventilation problem. While you may not be aware of it, poor garage ventilation can cause a number of problems. Below, we’ll go over some of the most important reasons to ventilate your attached garage.
Toxic chemicals
Lots of us keep many of the most toxic and dangerous chemicals in our household concentrated in the garage. This can include paint cans, paint thinner, pool chemicals, gasoline, herbicides or insecticides, cleaning supplies, and more. All of these items are toxic and we should always limit our exposure to them.
Unfortunately, all of these chemicals create toxic fumes and these fumes build up and concentrate in the air of a poorly ventilated or unventilated garage. That means every time you step into your garage you breathe in a concoction of various toxic chemicals. If that’s not bad enough, these fumes may be leeching into the rest of the home without you knowing.
Keeping a properly ventilated garage will bring fresh air in and push polluted air out so that toxic fumes don’t build up inside the garage or your home, keeping your family and pets safe.
Carbon monoxide
Carbon monoxide is another toxic chemical, but it is markedly different from other toxic chemicals. It’s produced by gas-powered engines and is completely odorless. If you or one of your family members likes to run their car or motorcycle to warm up the engine before heading out, this can be very dangerous, particularly in an unventilated garage.
Carbon monoxide can be lethal so it’s important to ventilate your garage, limit the time you let your engine run inside, and get a carbon monoxide detector.
High temperatures
If you notice your garage is hot and stuffy, it’s because of poor ventilation. Hot air makes working in your attached garage more unpleasant, plus it may be heating up your house too. If hot air is seeping into your garage while you have your AC going on hot summer days you’ll find it harder to get relief from the high temperatures inside your home. Also, this means that your AC is fighting harder to cool down your home plus your garage which means higher electricity bills.
A great way to ventilate your garage is through a garage exhaust fan, like the QuietCool GA ES-1500. The GA ES-1500 is specifically designed for garages with attics. As the most energy efficient garage exhaust fan on the market today, just one single unit can simultaneously cool both your garage and attic.