Today we’re going to take a look at something a little bit different. There’s a company called Falcon Foam that has come out with a really simple and elegant solution to garage door insulation. They’ve got a kit and that hits all the right buttons:
- It’s inexpensive
- It looks great
- It looks professional
- It’s easy to install
- It’s easy to clean
- You only need tools that you already own
You can get their kit for less than $100, and if you live in the hotter or colder parts of the country, and you like to use your garage for something more than storing cars, I think you’ll agree that that is a low price to pay for the energy savings and comfort that insulating your garage door is going to give you.
Garage Door Insulation Kit
Let’s see what’s in the box:
Each garage door insulation kit contains eight door insulation panels. The panels measure 54 inches long by 20 and 1/4 inches high by 1 1/4 inches thick. The panels are manufactured with EPS insulation, and the side of the panel the faces out where you can actually look at it is finished with high impact polystyrene laminate. This is going to give you a really clean, finished, professional look.
When they’ve also taken the trouble to score the panels so that you can easily bend them. This makes it easy ot insert them into the gaps in your metal garage door. An added bonus of using polystyrene for the exposed face is that it can be cleaned with nothing more than a little dishwashing liquid and a rag. Also, even though the panels and are only 1 1/4 inches thick, they have an R value of 4.5 at 75°. Not bad at all.
They also have extra panels available if your garage doors are oversized like mine, or if you simply have a very large garage with two or more doors.
The tools list for insulation couldn’t be simpler, and I’d be willing to bet that you have most of the stuff in your garage already. You’ll need a tape measure, a box cutter, and a straight edge. They recommend that you use work gloves and safety glasses as well.
You going to need one kit for each garage door you want to insulate, and there’s no need to worry about your kit affecting your garage door opener, as each kit weighs a little less than 10 pounds, well within the capabilities of most commercially available garage door openers.
Their kits have eight panels which are good for a standard 7 foot high garage door. Don’t worry if your door is bigger or if your door is taller than 7 feet or it’s got a lot more than the supplied number of panel cavities or even if the individual open areas in the door are taller than the measurement of the supplied panels – all you have to do is buy extra panels and cut them to fit.
If the door has bracing rails that run from side to side, you can still use this kit. All you have to do is pull the bracing rails off, (as long as they’re not attached to the torsion spring of course) install the kit and then put the bracing back.
If your garage door has windows you have a couple of choices. You can either skip that area, install the insulation panels over the windows, or you can get a little artsy. I can see where it would be pretty darn easy to just take your exact own knife and make cutouts in the insulation panels to let light shine through. That’s totally your call. Depending on where you live, it might be that you would rather just turn on a light to make up for the covered windows and keep the heat retention.
I think this one is a winner! Waayyy better than dealing with itchy insulation, and so easy to install I can do it! You can buy it right here from us, too.
If you want to take a shot at this project, please Buy Your Garage Door Insulation Kit Here and we’ll send one right out.
Don’t forget to finish the job, by the way. You will also want to take case of the garage door seal and threshhold as part of your upgrade project.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
My 3 garage doors are 10′ X 8′ with eight 5′ x 2′ panels on each door. Don’t they make panels that big? Your suggestion to get extra panels and cut and piece would look terrible as each panel would have two added fillers for width and length.
I would really like a kit that is made for 10′ doors.
Walt
Yeah, I hear you Walt. But they can’t make insulation panels in all sizes, so they just do the most common measurements. It occurs to be that you could do this with extra pieces as we discussed. but maybe you could cover the seams with soem plastic tape. If appearance is a real concern, such as if this is a garage used as a rec room sometimes, you can cover the insulation sheets with sheet plastic. That would give yo ua slick, complete look to your insulation project, and it would be easy to clean as well.
I installed the insulation kit yesterday, everything went great. But I do have a heads up for you: two panels in one box and one panel in the other were badly covered with mold or mildew on the plastic covered side. I cleaned off what I could but it did stain. You might want to check some of your boxes. Thanks for the quick shipment and the good directions.