If one bedroom in the house is always cold, it is almost always the one over the garage.
A garage is not heated and is not meant to be. It sits at outdoor temperature, and in February that means the floor of the room above it is separated from −15 °C by a sheet of drywall and, very often, nothing else. Builders called it an exposed floor and for decades insulated it badly or not at all.
We fill the joist bays with injection foam through small holes in the garage ceiling drywall, the same technique as a wall. Nothing above is disturbed — no flooring lifted, no ceiling removed, nobody working inside the bedroom. Where the ceiling is open or being replaced anyway, batts plus a sealed air barrier is cheaper and just as good.
The detail that gets missed is the perimeter: the band joist where the floor meets the exterior wall, and the gap where the garage ceiling meets the house wall. Those are direct air paths, and filling the bays without sealing them leaves most of the problem in place.
Exposed floor insulation is on the assessment pathway and pays $300. That is not the reason to do it. The reason is that it is usually the single cheapest way to fix a room somebody in the house complains about every winter.
Amounts are set by Enbridge Gas and Save on Energy, quoted here from the programme pages — attic stream and assessment stream — checked 17 September 2026. Programme terms change without notice.
A garage ceiling that leaks air into the house is also a path for exhaust fumes. Sealing that plane is a safety measure as much as a comfort one, and it is the reason we seal before we fill rather than treating the sealing as optional.
Usually no. Injection foam goes in through small holes that are plugged and patched. If the ceiling is already damaged or is coming down anyway, batts and a proper air barrier are the better job.
It will make a large difference, and it will not make the room identical to the rest of the house if the walls and windows in that room are also poor. We will tell you which of those we think is doing what before you spend anything.
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