Let’s face it: Dust is one of the most annoying things in life. No matter what we do we can’t escape the relentless build-up of dust on everything. It’s a constant battle of dusting and vacuuming, moving things and wiping the surfaces they sit on, to keep our lives feeling like we have the dust situation under control.
It’s bad enough inside our houses, where you would think they were fairly well protected from dust, but the reality is that dust is absolutely everywhere. Even in a well-sealed, nice clean house it doesn’t take very long for dust to circulate every time a door or window is open, or be kicked up from the floor, shaken off our clothes, sheets, blankets and towels and find its way back onto every available surface. So, when it comes to garages, that are usually nowhere near as well sealed as houses, the problem becomes huge.
As much as we dislike dust, it is actually an essential part of life. It is thought that every raindrop and every snowflake begin with molecules of water attaching themselves to airborne dust. It is estimated that 5 billion tonnes of dust is transmitted through the atmosphere each year, and a lot of that dust actually ends up fertilizing the earth’s rainforests. Amazingly, dust also falls on us from space, with around 40,000 tonnes of dust per year coming to us in meteorites burning up in the atmosphere and filling the aid with space dust.
So back to our garage! How can we hold back this onslaught? Most garages are not designed or built to be sealed very well from dust. They often can have big gaps around the doors where a builder might think that it is safe from rain, so it doesn’t matter. Of the garage door itself has been installed without worrying too much about any small gaps – after all it is just a garage! Well, these days garages are way more than that – and even if they did server no other purpose than to keep the car out of the weather, we still need to try our best to minimise the dust build-up.
Sealed floor
Many garages have cement floors and it is not uncommon to leave the floor unsealed – maybe just to save money on sealant and maybe because again whoever built the house didn’t seem to think the owners would mind if the floor was a massive contributor to dust levels.
Here is a great how-to from Bunnings about sealing your garage floor with epoxy: https://www.bunnings.com.au/diy-advice/outdoor/garage/how-to-apply-epoxy-to-a-garage-floor
That should stop a great deal of dust build up from within the garage itself. For the external dust that continually blows in and finds its way all over everything you have stored in there, it would be advisable to try some clever solutions from Cleverseal. Depending on the type of garage door you have, you can try the bottom door seals (Cobra): https://cleverseal.com/products/by-seal-type/bottom-of-door-seals-cobra/
..and check out the range of top and side seals to complete the picture: https://cleverseal.com/products/by-seal-type/top-and-side-seals/
All of our products are DIY and can also be professionally installed if you like. We’ll never win the war against dust completely, but with some easy and clever solutions, we can certainly take the pressure right off and give ourselves the garage spaces we deserve; easy to maintain and keep clean and have the confidence that our valuable possessions will be taken care of as they should.