How Can I Keep My Garage Cool During a Middle Georgia Summer?

Middle Georgia summers make garages unbearably hot, affecting comfort and stored items. Combat the heat by keeping the garage door closed, upgrading to an insulated garage door, and relocating heat-generating appliances like refrigerators. Use fans strategically—directing airflow outward to push hot air out. Overhead Door Company of Macon-Warner Robins offers expert solutions like insulated garage doors to enhance cooling efficiency. Stay comfortable this summer—call us today!

There’s a lot to be said for living in Middle Georgia, but “comfortable summers” aren’t one of them. June, July, and August (and in most years, May and September as well) are notoriously hot, humid, and generally unpleasant anywhere that air conditioning isn’t.

Since most of us don’t air condition our garages, summer temps tend to climb rapidly in this one room of our home. If you use your garage as a workspace or hobby space, that means you either have to put off your activities until cooler weather or have to get very well acquainted with ice water. If you store things in your garage, the excess heat and humidity can cause mold growth and mildew and even speed up things like dry rot, plastic degradation, and corrosion of metal objects.

But there are some things you can do to keep your home’s garage at least a little bit cooler during the unrelenting heat of a Middle Georgia summer, and the garage door experts from Overhead Door Company of Macon-Warner Robins are here to share!

Where’s the Heat Coming From?

Summer heat makes its way inside through three different mechanisms that you might remember from science class:

• Convection: When hot air from outside comes into the garage through an open door or window, that’s heating by convection – the movement of hot air.
• Conduction: When heat from outside warms the exterior of your house, it transfers through the walls, doors, and windows, heating the interior of the space. That’s conduction—heat moving through adjacent objects.
• Radiation: The heat from the sun reaches the Earth as high-energy light that can pass through air, empty space, and transparent things like glass – also known as radiation.

To prevent your garage from heating up too much in the summer, you have to take steps to reduce all three forms of heat transfer between your garage and the world outside.

Cool Garage Tip #1: Keep the Door Closed

If you don’t have to be in and out of your garage, leave the door closed as much as you can. Just keeping your door shut significantly reduces the impact of two types of heat transfer: convection and radiation.

Your garage door is an effective barrier against letting hot air flow into the interior space. Even an uninsulated door, if it’s well sealed, can prevent some convective heat from making its way inside.

Unless you have an all-glass garage door, the solid parts of your door will also hinder radiant heat from making its way inside. Choosing high-efficiency glass insulated glass for the lights/lites or windows in your garage door can also limit the amount of heat that comes in through the glass.

Verify that the vinyl stop mold trim around the perimeter of the door is not cracking or coming off the casing of the opening. Having vinyl trim around the perimeter of the door keeps the door sealed with an opening and is the number one way to help cool a garage.

Cool Garage Tip #2: Get an Insulated Garage Door

While keeping your door shut effectively blocks convective and radiant heat, it doesn’t do much to prevent conducted heat from raising your garage’s temperature. That’s where an insulated door comes in.

The materials that make for a strong, solid garage door—like steel—are also great conductors of heat. All day long, your garage door absorbs heat from the sun and conducts it directly through the door and into the garage.

An insulated door pairs a durable, structurally sound exterior surface with an interior surface coated in a poor conductor of heat, such as polystyrene or polyurethane foam or fiberglass batting. This layer of insulating material prevents most of the door’s heat from escaping into your garage. All insulated doors carry a U-factor value that denotes their efficiency in keeping the garage insulated from outside temps.

Cool Garage Tip #3: Lose the Fridge

Earlier, when we said there were three ways heat gets into your garage, we left one of the most significant sources off the list: the typical garage refrigerator or deep freezer. While probably more than half of homes with a garage have a second fridge or freezer, most homeowners don’t realize precisely what that means in terms of keeping their garage cool.

You may think that a refrigerator or a freezer makes food and drinks cold. It really doesn’t—because cold doesn’t exist. Instead, these appliances pull heat out of food and drinks. Since that heat has to go somewhere, the refrigerator vents it through the evaporator into the air surrounding the appliance.

If you have a garage fridge or freezer, finding a new place for your appliance to live can dramatically cool down the inside of your garage.

Cool Garage Tip #4: Use Fans Smarter

If you must spend a lot of time in your garage, you’ll want to have a fan or two to help circulate the air and help your body’s natural cooling mechanism – sweat – work more effectively. If it’s incredibly hot in your garage, you may even want to make a temporary violation of Tip #1 and open your door up to allow for better circulation.

If you make that decision, let us offer you a quick pro tip when it comes to using fans. In addition to a small fan or two that are positioned to blow on you, invest in a large box or shop fan – and aim it to blow out the open door. By actively forcing air out of the garage, you’re using convection in your favor: blowing out air that’s been heated by radiation, conduction, and your own body heat. Even if the air outside is only a degree or two cooler than that inside, the continual venting of stale air and the introduction of fresh air will help it feel much cooler.

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