ShareThisQ: My husband and I just purchased our first home. We hope to use this house to build credit and generate cash for a down payment on a long-term home when he gets out of the Navy. Our house is quite small -- 1,020 square feet of heated space.However, there is an attached garage where our laundry is located. The garage is not heated or cooled. It is finished on the side that shares the interior wall of our living room, but the other sides are just the open wood studs and such.We were hoping to heat and cool the area so that we could put the office in there, as well as a pullout sofa for guests. We want to finish the area just enough to be comfortable, but we want to convert it back when we sell the property. What would we have to do? What goes on in trying to get the heating and cooling in the area?A: First of all, a great big thank-you to you and your family for choosing to serve this great nation.I understand that a small home is not suitable for overnight guests, but your grandparents raised their large families in similar-sized homes and hosted overnight company from time to time, and the kids loved it and somehow we all survived. Since then, we have discovered that living and sleeping in a room shared with a gas-fired furnace or water heater is not safe. Even electrical appliances might be unsafe in a garage where gasoline fumes can accumulate.Modern building codes require that appliances that generate a flame or a spark be at least 18 inches above the garage floor. Codes also restrict the location of many of the fossil-fueled appliances, which require oxygen to burn. A fossil-fueled furnace or water heater cannot be located inside a bedroom or bathroom.To convert the garage to a sleeping area, you would have to build a wall to separate the furnace and water heater from the garage and provide an outside air intake for the appliances.A typical gas-fired appliance requires a minimum of 11 cubic feet of makeup air per hour for each 1,000 British thermal units of heating. The Btu rating is listed on each appliance's label. Consider that a 60,000-Btu furnace and a 40,000-Btu water heater are 100,000 Btus of heating. When both are operating, not including the clothes dryer -- which pulls air from the room through its fan system -- the appliances would need 11,000 cubic feet of air just to burn the fuel.To give you an idea of what you are up against, a 12-by-20-by-10-foot one-car garage has only 2,400 cubic feet of air when the doors are closed. Once the furnace and water heater are isolated, the two-by-four stud walls can be insulated and covered with wood paneling rather than drywall, which has to be taped, sanded and painted.When you're ready to sell the home, the paneling can be left in place or easily removed. The Universal Building Code only requires that the home and garage be separated by a smoke barrier such as the drywall, which you already have. Also, a sleeping room requires at least two emergency exits, usually a door with access to the outside and at least one window located close to the floor.Check your local building authority for additions to the code that are enforceable in your area.(Dwight Barnett is a certified master inspector with the American Society of Home Inspectors. Write to him with home improvement questions at C. Dwight Barnett, Evansville Courier & Press, P.O. Box 286, Evansville, Ind. 47702.)
Garage project requires careful reading of code
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