Been a while since I've posted, been even longer since I've worked on my 914 . . . Anyway, will likely move in the next year or so, and we've been looking at homes with attached garages/living space above the garage. I've never had a house with an attached garage, and while I'm a bit concerned about grinding noise, I'm more concerned about welding/painting fumes. For those of you with attached garages, what do you do? Opening the doors enough? Running some form of ventilation system? Interested to hear about your setup!

-Chris

My wife gets pissed anytime I make the garage smell bad. Our family room is over the garage. Also the smell gets into her car overnight. She usually reminds me that's what my workshop is for - also a two car detached garage.

I have an attached garage and have done much work like welding and painting. For the welding, always have some ventilation like a door open and maybe a fan.

For painting, I put a fan in a window to keep the paint particles to a minimum.

Oh, and most importantly, I have 3 fire extinguishers in the garage. It's one thing to burn down your garage; you don't want to take the house with it.

Ceiling fan and cracking the door would work well enough. Or a ceiling fan and a through-the-wall bath fan could work. I plan on using my panasonic bath fan when i swap it for a roof-mount model.

FWIW: the ceiling fan is great on warm/hot days too. I got a metal 3-blade shop unit from HD years ago.

I have an attached (second) garage that doubles as a workshop. It has big garage doors on both north and south ends, so I can open it up and let the wind carry fumes out.

without this natural breezeway, you would definitely want some method of circulating air

With welding you can open things up & run a fan to ventilate okay, but with painting you'll not want breezes blowing crud onto the paint & causing it the dry too fast, so you've got a dilemma.

You should probably rig up a paint booth where you can control what comes in with the fresh air, & exhaust out all of the fumes in a place away from any windows & doors to the house above & next to on 1st floor of the house.

You should probably look at your local building codes for what they require for ventilating a paint booth/facility, & try to get close to that as possible. After all, you don't want to finish your painting & go upstairs/in the house to find your family overcome with fumes.

I also agree on having multiple fire extinguishers in there, & always keep one close by where you're working.

When we've design auto repair facilities for clients, they're never next to nor under residential uses, & we have to meet extensive ventilation requirements - even with use of water-based paints now required in CA & most other states nowadays.

We had a nearby neighbor blow himself up while spray painting in his garage with a water heater in there - so that's another thing to be aware of & isolate - anything with open flames. Even dust from sawing & sanding can be explosive in those situations.

So it makes sense to go a bit overboard to stay safe at your home.

Stay Safe!
Tom
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A window to the outside is very helpful for balancing the management of odors and maintenance of a comfortable temperature in the work area. Anywhere between a small opening up to putting a fan in the window can be effective and less of a temperature impact than opening the garage door.

The other thing to keep in mind is pressure differential between the garage and the house. Never pressurize the garage space by blowing fresh air into it. It will exhaust the garage into the lower pressure house. A small fan drawing air out of the garage through the window can be effective at stopping odors from migrating into the house.

Garage door open typically is enough for any fumes. Noises on the other hand would need a nicely sealed solid core door at the least.

If your worried about it you can install a roof/attic fan (yes youll need to cut a hole in your roof) which will give you all the ventilation you need. Ive painted 4 cars in my garage and my big fan has done a pretty good job of it.

Thanks for the feedback!

Fuel fumes from our vintage cars is significant over time. PO of my car had major issues as the gas smell would get into the house on every in & out of the connecting door.....he was forced to sell the car.

Hi,

Following are images of what I did when painting my 914.

The box fan is a good fit for a 20 x 20" filter taped on.

I also took into consideration which way the wind was blowing each day.

I would move the fan to the other side if necessary.

I chose to use the fan to blow into vs exhaust, as I did not want

the fumes to pass through the electric fan.

I used a hvlp spray gun. I wet down the driveway, and inside garage

floor, and a half-mask respirator is a must.

I also had my compressor outside of the "booth" .

Lighting was not the best, although, for the inside image I did not

have all the lights on. Also, better filters than what I used would be good.

An extra five feet of garage width would have been nice.


r
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Chris, with a colder climent, I would look into a Air Handler/Air exchange unit.
Keeps the warm air in (or cold) yet takes fumes out. I also have a three stall garage with shop area with extra living area upstair, same problem. All welding and small painting done outside, its a real problem in the winter. Best, Mark