Garage Ventilating Tips

Proper garage ventilation is essential for safety.

Garage ventilation is important to keep temperature and fumes from building up. Often your garage is used for painting, vehicles expel toxic fumes and stored items also can emit fumes. When there is not enough ventilation, your garage can go from simply smelling bad to a dangerous environment. This can cause respiratory problems, fires or even explosions.

Open Rafters

Many times, garages are built with open rafters. This is actually good for ventilation since it gives the garage more air space so fumes can rise upward. With the installation of a small gable vent on either end of the garage near the roof, it's usually enough to vent normal fumes from vehicles when you start them up and back them out. If your vehicle is left running for any period of time inside the garage however, small gable vents are not enough. Even if fans are added to the gable vents the toxicity of automobile fumes will overwhelm the gable vent capacity.

Hoses

To run an engine inside a garage, there is no normal venting method that will work effectively against toxic engine fumes. Commercial auto shops use a hose, similar to a dryer vent hose that attaches to the vehicles exhaust pipe. From there the hose is run through a hole in the wall and vented to the outside. It is the only safe way to run an engine inside a garage, such as when you are working on the vehicle and need to keep it running.

Wall-Mounted Fans

Wall-mounted fans must be used if your garage is being used to spray lacquer or paint regularly. A hole is cut into the wall at waist height, a large fan preferably at least one hp should be installed into the hole. The fan should be kept continuously running while any spray painting is being done. The object being sprayed, such as a car, should be as close to the fan as possible and the spray pattern should be directed toward the fan whenever possible. Whenever this much ventilation is being utilized however, local restrictions might apply if you are in a populated area with other hoses close by.

Windows and Doors

For normal use, if you open all the doors and windows in your garage, particularly the big door that cars pass through, you should be okay for ventilation, for most normal applications. Small aerosol paint jobs can be done this way or the occasional spray paint job using airless guns. If your garage has a ceiling in it similar to what you have in your home, regular attic vents should be installed to vent moisture, and if your home or garage was built by a competent builder, these vents will already be in place per building codes.

References

• Ask The Builder: Hot Garage Ventilation
• The Engineering Toolbox: Garage Ventilation