What is the Best Way to Ventilate a Garage?

Every veteran homeowner knows that garage ventilation is crucial. Poorly ventilated garages can cause a wide variety of problems including:

• Slippery floors
• Rusting equipment
• Mold and mildew
• Rot
• Poor air quality
• High temperatures
• Damage to equipment or supplies (rust)

For these reasons, an unventilated garage can damage your health, your equipment, or supplies, cost you thousands in repairs and leave you feeling hot and uncomfortable during the summer.

To prevent these problems, you need to invest a little time into ventilating your garage. Luckily, there are many ways to ventilate; however, some options are better than others. If you’ve got a sealed, unventilated garage, read this article to learn the best way to ventilate your garage.

Ways to Ventilate Your Garage

Open doors and windows. The simplest way to ventilate your garage is just to open up the garage door and open up garage windows if you have them. Doing so will allow the air inside to naturally circulate. Wind and shifting air will allow the garage air to move outside and be replaced by fresh outdoor air.

Use a standing fan. Opening doors and windows will help with ventilation, but it’s not the most effective way, and you’ll need to keep the door and windows open for long periods of time to ensure the air has fully circulated. To speed up the process, you can put a standing fan in the garage facing the open garage door.

Install garage vents. Garage vents are a way to improve ventilation without needing to always be opening up the garage door or windows. Garage vents allow air to passively move through the garage whenever the vents are open.           

Garage vents can be installed in the garage door or on the walls of the garage. One vent should be installed near the floor of the garage, and one higher up near the ceiling. This will allow rising hot air to escape and cooler outside air to be pulled in through the lower vent.

While garage vents can be effective, they can also make the garage cold during the winter. Furthermore, they don’t quickly exhaust air but rather allow air to just naturally circulate into and out of the garage.