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Originally Posted by retiredguy123
A total waste of money and it will weaken your garage door. My neighbor installed an attic fan and those garage door vents. Within a month or so, he turned it off and never used it again. You will get hardly any air flow through the vents. Also, you should not leave the retractable stairs down because that will compromise the fire rating of your garage.
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I did the same—added an attic exhaust fan. What was I thinking? About $700, and I used it at most five times. It can’t cool your garage below the temp of the outside air, so that might be 85°! If you leave it on all night and cool your garage down to seventy, when the sun shines on the door the temp zooms up in minutes. Morning or afternoon sun will turn a steel door into an oven, and half an inch of insulation inside the door won’t make much if any difference. (Two inches of styrofoam on the outside would help, but that isn’t allowed.) If you drive your car, then park it in the garage, it will also heat your garage above the outside temp for hours. A mini-split AC can work, but it has to work hard to overcome a hot car or sun on the garage door or leaks along the edge of the door. I’ve been told by people who work here to figure around $10,000 to install one!
If you rebuild classic cars in your garage or have a home workshop you use a lot, it might be a good idea. If not, a fan in the garage can blow air on you, and that helps, and you can open your garage door when you work in the garage. I have battery operated saws and sanders and drills and a cart where I can put stationary tools and use them in the shade in the garage or on the driveway as needed. But I seldom need to do that for more than fifteen minutes at a time. Some work I can do in the house.