How to Keep Fumes from Your Garage Out of Your Home

You don’t want your garage to make you sick. Clearly.

But if some of the fumes from your toxic cleaners, paints or fuels are seeping into your home, you have got a serious air quality issue on your hands.

You can open your garage door to help air out of the space. But you can’t open the front of your house. So what can you do?

Make sure your home was built right, from the start

TV’s Mike Holmes says that you could be facing your first hurdle, based on the way your home has been built.

“You never want to use the inside of your garage as an air return”, said Holmes.

“First, you get minute particles being pulled inside your home. Your family breathes this in every day. Not to mention that having an open cavity — which means there’s no metal ducting — can draw the off‑gassing from running vehicles in the garage into an open space behind the drywall.”

How to keep garage fumes out of your home

According to HGTV, you should:

1. The first step may seem simple, but it's an important one. Identify the walls of the garage that need sealing. These areas are rooms above the garage, or rooms adjacent to it. If they are attached to the garage, it's a good target for air‑sealing.
2. Next, insulate these walls the same way the exterior walls of the house are insulated.
3. On the garage side of the wall, use a 5⁄8" type X (fire‑rated) gypsum board. Later, when you're finishing the interior portion of these walls, you'll want to use a standard gypsum board.
4. Next, identify any penetrations in the walls. Essentially, you're looking for anything (e.g., switches, plugs, light fixtures, etc.) that pokes a hole in the gypsum board on either side of the wall.
5. Use a fire‑rated caulk, adhesive, or expanding foam to seal up these penetrations. For example, use the caulk to fill the space between the electric box of a switch and the drywall that is cut around it.
6. The door between the living space and the garage is also a key component to the air‑sealing strategy, so we want to select an insulated, metal, fire‑rated door with a good weather seal. The door should also have a self‑closing device on it. Install the door according to the manufacturer's instructions.

Keep all that heat inside

While you’re making improvements to the air quality, maybe you’re thinking about getting a new and more energy efficient garage door. We can help you with that.

Door Systems Metro Boston provide beautiful, contemporary doors by Garaga, one of the most trusted names in the industry, and we can help you find the door that best suits your needs.

Browse through our variety of residential garage doors, or even design your own online with our handy tool. Then, get a free quote, and upgrade your garage!