Blown in insulation in garage - worth it?

[bad94sup]

My 36x23 attached garage is uninsulated except for the shared walls with the interior of the house. The entire garage, walls and ceiling are already drywalled. The ceiling is 10'4" and is insulated on the other side of the attic. There are three 8x7 uninsulated steel doors as well as a single main entry door into the house. I want to do some type of cooling/heat pump setup, but want to see if it makes sense to start doing some insulating first. The garage is only used part time for some hobby/automotive work. In the even I had heat/AC I'd probably move some projects to the workbench out there as well.

Questions:
1) Is it worth insulating the current doors or moving to an insulated door?
2) Is it worth going for the blown in insulation in the walls where there is none?

Luckily I already have a 60A subpanel installed I just put in for my 2 post lift.

My rough calculations determined i'll need right around 17,800 BTU +/- 1000 or so to make this work. Does that sound roughly accurate?

I was looking at this unit -

http://www.ajmadison.com/cgi-bin/ajmadison/18KHS72.html?infoview=reviews#tabs

Thanks in advance,
Andrew

 

[Spencyg]

Insulation is ALWAYS worth it. Always.

As for your loss calcs, that seems very low for your current condition. Don't forget air changes per hour and slab perimeter losses in your calculations...they make a gigantic difference.

I'd think for your shop in your region of the country, I'd want at least 50k btu of heat and probably 2 tons of cooling.

That is just a guess though.

 

[Gary S]

Insulation is just as worthwhile as a roof. If you don't mind getting rained on, you don't need a roof. If you don't mind suffering in heat in the summer and cold in the winter, you don't need insulation.

 

[bad94sup]

Insulation is ALWAYS worth it. Always.

As for your loss calcs, that seems very low for your current condition. Don't forget air changes per hour and slab perimeter losses in your calculations...they make a gigantic difference.

I'd think for your shop in your region of the country, I'd want at least 50k btu of heat and probably 2 tons of cooling.

That is just a guess though.

Insulation is just as worthwhile as a roof. If you don't mind getting rained on, you don't need a roof. If you don't mind suffering in heat in the summer and cold in the winter, you don't need insulation.

Thanks for the input guys. It looks like I'll be shopping for insulation as a pre-requisite. I'll also take a more detailed look at the size calculations as well, the initial calculator didn't have parameters for slab losses or air change velocity. Now to get some price quotes over the months...