Should I run a dehumidifier in my attached garage?
Managing the humidity in our homes is an important part of preventing mold activity from occurring. But is the garage an area of the home to do this? Or is it different?
An attached garage is an interesting part of our homes. It is a zone between the outside and inside environments that we often use as a passageway between the two. Garages can serve many other purposes. We use them for storage, sometimes for our vehicles and sometimes for so many other things that there is no room for our vehicles at all. Usually there is no heating or cooling in this space. After all, we don’t live in our garage. And we want to keep air from the garage which has various particulate and chemical contaminants, such as exhaust fumes from our vehicles, separate from the indoor living space of the home.
A key in knowing how to handle our garage is to consider how it is constructed. Over the years, the garage has evolved from a separate simple structure detached from our house to a fully finished space that has drywall on all surfaces (though many times they skip painting the walls and ceiling). It is a part of the home constructed with the same materials used inside the living space of the home, but often without heating or cooling to control the environment. There is also the giant door that connects this part of the house to the elements when it is open, exposing it to the heat and humidity of summer. The building materials and contents stored there are often susceptible to mold growth in an environment that favors mold activity. So, what should I do as a homeowner with this information?
The basic need is to control the moisture in the environment of the garage. This would involve running a dehumidifier, preferably one that is can be left unattended, either with the condensate running to a gravity drain or self-emptying in some other way, such as with a condensate pump. The dehumidifier should be set to maintain a relative humidity around 50%.
But some might say, ‘won’t it add significant cost to my electricity bill to run a dehumidifier in my garage?’ Yes, there is a cost to running a dehumidifier. But compared to the costs of replacing your stored possessions that have been damaged by mold activity, having a mold assessment, and remediation of the walls and ceilings, it is significantly less. We recommend that you consider running the dehumidifier as a necessary expense to protect those items and avoid the aggravation and much greater cost of dealing with a mold invasion of the space.
There is an easy way to reduce the cost of running a dehumidifier in your garage. That is by keeping the garage doors closed except when you need them open to go in and out is one good example. Avoid leaving them open for long periods of time, as you may currently be doing. For instance, if you store your lawn mower in the garage, you will need to open the garage door to get it out. But instead of leaving the door open the whole time you are mowing, close it while you are outside, and then open it again when you’re putting the mower away. Think about it: Would you open the front door of your house and just leave it open for hours? Of course not. Besides letting the dog or cat out, you would be letting all the conditioned air out of your home and unconditioned air in. In the same way, by keeping the garage door closed, except when you need to open it to move something in or out of it, you avoid having unconditioned, humid air from the outside environment come into the garage. The unconditioned air that comes into your garage during the brief time the garage door is open will be brought to a good humidity level within a reasonable period of time and you will have protected your home from mold.
These recommendations are based on actual experience. While performing mold inspections of homes we have seen so many occasions where garages have, unfortunately, been an area for extreme mold growth. You don’t want that in your home. And as this article shows, you can do something to prevent it.
Dehumidify your garage.
Next Blog topic: Easy Ways to Prevent Mold in Your Home—2: Dry Basements
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