With the help of a friend/G.C., my wife and I will be building a ~3000 s.f. home this Fall. My question is about how to handle a “bonus” room over our three car garage. We initially felt that this would be a great place for our kids (now 5 & 4) and their friends to play. Other friends of ours have such a bonus room and it seems to work out very well (i.e. the parents can finally enjoy a cold one on the main floor while the kids play in the bonus room).
However our friend has pointed out that it’s going to be a long/narrow room, about 12’x26′ and it’s going to be tough to heat/cool since it’s over the garage. He thinks we should just leave it alone as storage and plan on finishing off part of the basement for the kids. We have a ~1900 s.f. walkout basement but I’d planned on saving that for a few years down the road when I have the time (and money) to figure out how/what to do down there. If we finish off the bonus room we could call it a bedroom since it calls for a closet, and market the home (some day, no initial plans to sell) as a 5 bedroom, 3 bath home.
Does anyone have any thoughts on how to handle the heating/cooling dilemma in our new home? We live in Southeast Michigan so we have to do something if we plan on using it. Thanks!
– Rob
Replies
I can't see what the issue is: insulation and vapor barrier, properly done. That's one of the two things we wish we had done, although half of the space over our garage is our master bath and closet. I can't see why it's hard to do. You are going to insulate the house, right?
The problem isn't that it's a challenge to do...it's that it "supposedly" is a waste of engergy because you're heating a room that's over the garage. Yes, the house will be insulated.
Now I see. A "waste of energy". That's for you to decide. It's going to be living space / play space, right? Properly insulated, it isn't going to cost much to heat, even though the floor is over an unheated space. Personally, I'd rather have playspace upstairs than down, but that's because I like the light.
This is a case for you to decide how you want to live. Properly insulated, the cost will be so small (what was that 12x26? 300 and some square feet?) that the energy requirements won't come into it.
I wouldn't blow the area off - It can be useful storage if nothing else.
The long narrow room can be broken up with dormers, if they fit in with the style of the house. And you can get a little more useful space that way too.
You could always start out by just framing it, and not finishing it for now.
Or insulate and finish it, but don't heat or cool it. That would make it great for general storage. You could always hook up HVAC later.
Don't judge people by their relatives.
I'm thinking that you need to spend more time with your architect/designer and less taking advice from friends, unless the friend is somehow qualified to comment in this area.
I hope that does nopt sound too rude, but I have seen way too much of friends and family trying to "help" with design issues while they don't have a clue and do not understand how the whole house works together.
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Slightly rude...but it's tough to offend me. :-)
Well, the guy building my house is a licensed builder, has built his own home three times (beautiful/functional homes) along with renovation projects for a number of other people. Granted he's not a builder with 500 homes under his belt but the guy lives and breathes this stuff and I trust him. Of course I'll be double-checking everything with the subs as well.
The other guy that mentioned a bonus-room-over-garage was not such a hot idea was my Father, who has been a carpenter (and jack of all trades) for 40 years. He's also built and re-built his home several times (due to changes in taste and needs, not because he screwed up the first time :-) He too feels that putting a room over the garage is a bad idea because you're asking your system to heat a room that sits over unheated - and darn cold in the Winter - space.
Now, maybe they're both just cheap and the true marginal cost of heating space over a cold garage really isn't that much more than heating space over a heated room...is that what you're all saying? Because if it's only going to cost me an additional $50/year to heat this pace ($50 over and above what it would take to heat the room above a heated room) then it's no big deal. But if it's $500...then I might think twice.
Thoughts? - Rob
properly designed and insulated, a figure of 50-75 annual is more like it, unless thje kids open the windows to throw water ablloons down on passersby and forget to close them when called for dinner.
;)
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Thanks much. We still plan on leaving it relatively "unfinished" so the taxman doesn't assess us on this part of the house. But we'll get it all ready for finishing and then I'll tackle it the first winter after we move in.
As for tossing water balloons...ahhhh that brings back some fond memories of the ol' neighborhood. However we tired of plain-jane water balloons and started making them out of ketchup, mustard, honey and whatever else we could find in Mom's kitchen. Thank God we were fast little kids back then, I could never get away w/that now - I'd run about 50' and drop dead.
We have the same set up in our garage/bonus room. 2 car garage. Long narrow bonus. We originally left the carpet out of it. About 2 year later got some carpet and finished the room. We love it. Kids can be up there and we can hardly hear a thing. My wife has a desk up there to pay bills. And we built some dormers in for loads of storage. Now we added a big screen so the room gets lots of use.
Heating has been a little problem. After about 1-2 years of use we had the builder out to see why the room was so cold. We ended up adding insulation in the rear stairway. That helped a lot. So did closing the window that the cat went in/out. LOL
I'd do it. Our space while a little odd shaped is very usable.
Most everyone around here with sense (that leaves me out) puts a bonus room over the garage, in our case it's the master bath. Heat pump with forced air heat. We're in Atlantic Canada, and the typical weather for Jan/Feb is long stretches of -20 to -30 C. You can figure $50-75 extra per year for heat, as long as the insulation is done properly. I can't understand why anyone wouldn't do it.
And, I'd hope that the garage DOESN"T get warmer; THAT would be a waste of energy. And bad for the cars. (Salt on roads + heated garage = premature death of auto). I made the mistake of leaving a case of beer in the garage in January. Good thing it was only Blue, not something good.
In re-readiong, I see you have lots of friends. Is the one advising that the room will be hard to deal with HVAC the same one who is helping build it and the same one that is a GC?
I don't get it if he is. it is not a hard thing to deal with. You just design and build according to what the goal/end use is to be.
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My sister is building a room like that.. it cost relatively little extra to add in floor radiant heat and spray insulation into it..
They are using it as an office and it's already working out great for them..
They noticed no increase in their heating bills. While they are sure that there is some added heat cost, darn if it's noticable..
The bonus is the garage below gets some heat and instead of getting into cold cars in the winter they are already a bit warm.. They expect to be able to keep cars longer since they will no longer get that hard cold start on a cold winter morning..
(I know it's a fact since I have a tuck under garage and I never have starting problems in the morning!)
Since one wall is already heated (the wall next to the house and all they do is heat the floor it's doubtfull in the long run it will cost much to heat.. If it does they can always turnthe heat off in that section, drain the heaters and use it as cold storage..
Anybody ever have too much storage space?
Do they heat other areas of the house w/radiant heat? If so I can see where heating the bonus room w/radiant heat would not be a challenge. But if the rest of their house is using forced air (as we'll be) then I'd like to know how/why radiant heat is used above the garage.
Thanks, Rob
Yes they do, (use radiant heat that is) but it would only add one feed lines and a couple of branches with a return line if you were to use forced air.. If the house isn't built yet may I strongly recomend radiant heat? I've lived in force air all of my life but my grandparents had radiant heat (pre-wirsbo) and I can't tell you how comfortable that was..
the energy savings are well documented and installation cost are getting nearly competitive with forced air..
The timberframe That I'm building now has radiant heat. It's actually cheaper for a do-it-yourselfer to use radiant heat than forced air!
Interesting. I just naturally assumed that radiant heat was more expensive, more trouble, etc. Do you have any informative links I could check out?
Thanks, Rob
Wirsbo is the main commerical source but radiantec sells to do-it-yourselfers..
Both have web sites but I don't know their address check your copy of Fine Home Building.
Depending on the size of house and where you are you might be able to use water heaters rather than boilers. Dramatic cost savings and some added efficency as well..
Do not fall for the myth that designing the system is complicated.. most is basic math with a dash of common sense thrown in..
I think in doing my calculations I spent about an hour and then another two hours figureing out the routing and other details. Just remember to be very conservative.
you'll want to have too much heat rather than not enough and you'll want it where you will lose most of it..
From a do-it-yourself approach it's far easier to staple up some plastic tubing and the attending aluminum than it is to fabricate and fit all that duct work in a forced air system..Just about anyplace you can drill a one inch hole you can put radiant heat to but with forced air you need to allow for those ducts in the way you design the building..
Finally the efficency of radiant heat VS forced air..
I was a fire fighter in the Navy . We would go into room that had roaring fires burning in them and yet the floor always provided cool air. In any room heat rises.. cool air settles.. thus the floor will always be colder than the ceiling..
Since our feet are the furthest thing from our heart they tend to get the coldest first.. With forced air evan at 70 degrees the floor is cooler, say 65 or so..
With radiant heat the floor is warmest, so you can feel warmth with the temp set at 68 where you didn't feel warm with forced air set at 70..
BTU's are BTU's! Every degree costs you money.. if you can heat the house to a comfortable tempurature a few degrees cooler you will save money..
Don't try to force the issue though. If your heating contractor is comfortable doing forced air do not try to get him to change for you.. get bids from those who specialize in radiant floors.. (watch those too) Some specialize in radiant floors because of the myth that radiant heat is expensive..
While a boiler is more expensive than a forced air furnace (assuming a boiler is really needed, many smaller homes can use hot water heaters) ) the duct work is massively more expensive than the plastic tubing called for..
I got several bids from heating contractors and most put a forced air system at $5000 and the radiant floor system at around $6000
(they were very nervious about working on a timberframe since none had ever done that before). In the end I wound up doing it myself and saved over $2800 dollars..
that is I've got all the pieces purchased and as I finish the house will put them in..
My builder said he'd consider it. However he asked me about a/c. In southern Michigan we get about a 6-8 week stretch in mid July through late August where it gets pretty hot and muggy. In fact this last Summer we couldn't even let the kids out for about three weeks because it was so hot. If we only had a radiant heat system how would we cool the house? Please don't respond with ceiling fans and cool floors...my wife would kill me if I offered that up. :-) And I don't think she wants to live in the basement for a few months every summer.
Thanks, Rob
We've had a ROG (room over garage) before. Was in an area they didn't do basements. It made a nice office, storage area, and bedroom at various times. It did have larger temperature swings than the rest of the house but it was nice to have.
"Decisions are emotional, logic enters during the justification stage."
My experience with temp. swings in bonus rooms has been from the fact that the top chords of the trusses weren't deep enough to have adequate insulation in the ceiling of the room. That was several years ago and the truss manufacturers here have remedied that problem. I think bonus rooms are great, as long as I don't have to get my stiff old bones up and down those stairs every day. I'm thinking that you should be able to get a considerably wider room than 12 ft. out of a three car garage, also.....
I just finished framing the exact same thing....32x32'
I extended the ridge beam out about 2-3' where I'll attach a very old almost antique pully and run a rope through it that will extend to the ground level outside.
On the inside I'll attach an electric winch to pull heavy stuff up to the "bonus room".
Opposite the pully in the gable wall I will have a sort of barn door (dutch door).
BE a wench I mean a winch
andy
My life is my passion!
http://CLIFFORDRENOVATIONS.COM
"I just finished framing the exact same thing....32x32'....."
Andy, what will the interior dimensions of your bonus room be?
In bonus rooms like this, what height can/should the side walls start at?
The reason I ask is that I saw a number of comments in this thread mentioning that the bonus rooms are narrow. I'm not a builder (obviously) but am planning to hire someone to build a detached garage with bonus room - width will be around the 28x32 range. I was also wondering how narrow the bonus room would be. If the roof is a 6/12 pitch and assuming the interior wall height starts at 5 ft on the sides, does that mean you lose 20 ft of width?
Is it reasonable / cost efficient to frame a short second story wall on each side to give a little bit more bonus room space?
Steve
My boner room seems huge to me being that its simply a boner room.
7/12 pitch.
One eave end is rafter to floor which I'll build a wall across approx four feet out and turn it all into closet area
The opposite end....a three foot wall with three windows in it and the rafters go up to that plate of that wall. On that wall I'll build a shelf/desk across the room (not where the windows are obviously))
I wanted to dormer one side but the Historic Society wouldn't allow it.
All in all it seems pretty big and interesting....theres a door to the computer room attached to the master bedroom suite.
Be psyched
andyMy life is my passion!
http://CLIFFORDRENOVATIONS.COM
i agree with piffin !!!
is this guy really a gc ??
3 car garage put a little heat in it insulate it properly !!
as far as the kids where ever you are they will want to be at that age at most times LOL then they grow up and you will lose sleep and want to be where they are LOl
In a little different vein. Do not under any circumstances use the "bonus room's" HVAC to heat or take in return air from the garage area. Provide an underfloor seal between the garage and the "bonus room". Install a very good and reliable monoxide detector in the bonus space.
I've inspected / evaluated and current own a rental as you describe. My two cents would suggest that when you install a heat duct, and a return air duct, insulate them well and have the HVAC contractor install a baffle that you can get to so that you may shut off or open these ducts for heat flow when you desire to. They should be as close to the unit as possible to avoid heating attic space. If this is a problem, then I would suggest you consider a seperate heating unit for the FROG. Of course, insulating the garage walls along with everything else would help as would an insulated garage door.
good luck
ken in Savannah
We have our master bedroom over the garage. It's worked fine. One thing about forced air nobody's mentioned - if you already have a design, has your HVAC guy done heat load calculations? Does he know what they are? Heat load calculations take into account things like how many exterior walls for each room, windows, exposure (wall on north, south,...), materials, you get the idea. The system size & distribution is based on this. For example, a 10x10 room with no exterior walls won't need as much heating as that same room with 3 big windows on the northwest corner of the house in the middle of winter, and cooling requirements will be different in summer as well. A surprising amount of HVAC guys will simply run duct based on room size or stick an outlet under each window.
There are a lot of things that go into a house - no one knows them all, but at three houses, your buddy's only getting started. And the important thing is not knowing everything, it's recognizing what you don't know, and knowing where to get the answers. Ask your gc what a "heat load calculation" is. If he doesn't know, you need to find someone who does. I don't mean replace him, just make sure you find the right expertise when it's called for.