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Garage Door Sweating

02/05/2000 03:25 PM dnweld

I have a northern exposure for my garage door. My garage is insulated and drywalled, but it is not air tight nor is it heated. I live in MN.

My garage door continually sweats in the winter months and I have pooled water all winter on the floor. The garage door also freezes to the ground.

Do you have any ideas on how to stop the garage door from sweating?

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Garage Door Sweating

02/05/2000 07:47 PM GlenO

The first question that comes to my mind is, are you heating your garage? Sounds like the garage is to warm creating your moisture problem at the garage door. Do the walls that do not face the interior of your living space have insulation in them. I'm thinking that it may be keeping the garage to warm. Maybe the door that leads to the garage from the house isn't sealed very well. Sure hope this helps you to resolve your problem.

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Garage Door Sweating

02/07/2000 08:33 PM dnweld

The house that the garage is attached to is airtight. No heat escapes it. The garage is cold but usually stays above freezing. The garage door it self has a foam rubber covering on the inside. The steel braces on the inside of the door seem to be where the condensation is building up.The garage doors are not air tight and you can see light through them around the edges.When the temperture outside gets very cold, the steel braces get heavy frost on them. But when it starts to warm up outside, enough where the inside is above freezing, then the frost melts and comes running down the door.Another thing is that my garage floor is done in sections and maybe theres heat rising out of the ground between the gaps.My house was made very well, but I am desperate to find a solution to this problem. It is ruining the both large garage doors, and maybe the trim around them. Maybe this new info could help you come up with something. My personal opinion is to make it even colder in the garage by adding some vents to the outside.What do you think?

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Garage Door Sweating

02/07/2000 09:45 PM GlenO

How about trying molding on the outside of the door(s) with weather stripping on the edges. We have Home Depots in my area of the country and they carry that molding. That would seal the edges of the door and help stop the cold air from coming in.

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Garage Door Sweating

02/08/2000 09:30 AM dnweld

Won't work! That would allow the temperature inside the garage to get even warmer. The condensation would just be a continuous stream running down the door. I need to balance the temperature inside with that outside, minus the insulation factor of the door. This way there would not be any condensation created on the door.But is making the garage colder the only way to go?

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Garage Door Sweating

02/08/2000 10:52 AM The Insulator

To some degree, the problem described is inevitable. You live in an area given to extreme cold, making condensation, even frosting almost unstoppable. You have a garage that is tempered to the cold, being insulated & attached. You drive in snow, which gets on your warm car, bring it into the garage, where is melts increasing the relative humidity of the air in the garage. Whenever you open the door to the house, warmer, moister air enters the garage, increasing the Relative Humidity. The garage door is made to be movable, increasing the likelyhood of air infiltration, effectively making the areas where the cold air enters even colder & more given to condensation (The areas that you probably notice this the most are the spots that leak most: the panel joints & the edges).

With all these things against you, it's difficult, if not impossible to completely solve. There are 3 ways to minimize: 1/ Reduce the relative humidity inside the garage. This may be done by installing some sort of ventilation, perhaps controled by a humidity sensor. 2/ Not allow any surface to reach the dewpoint. Increasing the weatherstripping may help (Tis is done by elliminating the even colder air from cooling the inside surface). 3/ Move to a less severe climate. Such a situation is part of living in MN (or WI, where I live). It's part of the price we pay for living in these areas.


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