Question for you folks who live in the sunbelt: do you have a way to cool your garage so you can work on your cars in the summer? Here up north, many of us have some means of heating the garage in the winter. Most folks don't want it as warm as the house, but just into the 50s. In the winter, I have a small electric heater, a set of hot work lights, and I leave the door to the house open. During the hot part of the summer, I do stuff early on weekend mornings.

 

no. if i need to do stuff in summer in the garage like you i do it early in a.m. or late at night.

a/c would cost a bundle, but ceiling fans would help a lot.

 

OP: http://www.sylvane.com/soleus-air-lx-140.html

 

Wouldn't you need to insulate the garage if you wanted to efficiently a/c the garage?

I never have a problem working on the car in the 90 degree summer weather if I open the garage a bit to air out.

 

Down here we have to insulate our garages pretty heavily in order to work in the worst of summer's heat. A/C is definitely on the list for my "dream" house, but we have to make do with one or two of these while working under a convenient shade tree:


A large wet dog parked in front of the fan helps provide additional "swamp cooling" effects . . . the downside of which is the smell of wet dog. Oh, and hang onto rags and small hand tools - if they get away from you, you'll have to chase them down. Well, unless the dog's a retriever . . . .

 

Don't forget the cinderblock jack stands and your uncle Cooter who offers advice on how they used to soup up cars for the moonshiners.

Oh, and forget about that old coon hound retrieving anything. The only motion you'll get out of him is sitting up and howling whenever someone turns into your 1/4 mile long dirt driveway.

 

Exactly. Most garages are so poorly insulated, especially around the garage door itself, that any A/C system would be working overtime.

Your best bet is airflow - ceiling fans and/or a powerful floor fan.

I have a tandem garage - one car wide, two cars deep. The back of the garage is where my bench/tools/compressor is so even with the garage door open there is no airflow. I got a pretty powerful floor fan to keep the air moving and it makes it tolerable. It's mostly work on the motorcycle that I'm doing though.

Working on a car in a one car wide garage is a pain. It was real fun doing brakes on the wife's SUV with my back against the wall in the dead of winter.

 

Swamp coolers work well in the desert (dry climate).

 

The way my house sits, the sun is always shining on the front yard. So even as the sun moves through the sky I never get shade to the front, so it's always very hot outside. My garage manages to stay pretty cool though. When we built our house we made sure to heavily insulate every single nook and cranny, including the garage. As a result, we haven't had the need to have a heater or A/C unit in there.

The upside to having the sun always facing my house is that I get a lot of natural sunlight in the three stall garage, so I actually just open up all the doors and keep a big fan running. Works well enough for me most of the time.

 

A keeeeey keeeeey keeeeey

 

Was flipping through a Northern Tool catalog today and seen this which is kind of awesome.

http://www.northerntool.com/shop/too...9615_200359615

 

I mentioned in a past thread I installed a heating system in my garage when I moved in to my current place. The garage isn't well-insulated, but the lack of insulation was actually not a big deal. Sure, the heater might run very frequently, but it still can maintain a very large temperature differential compared to the outside. The heating system has been really good in the winters for washing my car inside the garage, and it also made me feel OK about leaving my LFA in there since the temps were still so bad when I took delivery earlier this year.

I put in a standalone dehumidifier before this current summer because I wanted to keep humidity levels down for the LFA. While it doesn't lower the actual temperature, the lowered humidity at least makes the garage feel more comfortable.


The problem with evaporative/swamp coolers like that is they are not very effective when there is high or even moderate humidity. I remember a warehouse I used to have to go to a lot had a bunch of them, but they were totally useless anytime it was humid.

The problem with portable A/C units (not evaporative cooler type) like the one vntperform posted earlier is they still need an exit path for the heat. Usually, those come with an air hose that needs to be directed outside. So for garages that don't have any vents or windows or things like that (like mine), even the portable units aren't workable.

 

I have radiant heat in my garage set at 50 in the winter, nothing for the summer

 

I've talked with these folks at several trade shows - a lot of football teams use these portable fan units that include a water misting spray, and now they are going after the industrial market. They are really effective, even in Houston's 95°+ heat and 90% humidity. While you will get a little damp standing within a few feet of the fan, about 12-15 feet back, the breeze they generate is pleasantly cool. They aren't cheap but I've about reached the point I'm going to barter for one of the smaller units for the patio.

http://airchiller.net/index.html

 

OP this is what you want. These are meant for cooling an open area - do not enclose it or it will get very humid very quickly.

http://www.port-a-cool.com/