lol, I have a window unit in my garage I was going to turn into a split system. I used to work in my garage all the time but now is very rare. With my kids growing I decided to not spend as much time in the garage & more time with them. I went as far as to buy the ACR tubing & couplings to do the job but as usual it’s another project for the not-done pile.
What about something like a PortaCool evaporative cooler? More like a swamp cooler than a true A/C but they are portable, require no ducting, and do help drop temps while in use.
Cost is about $1.10/sq foot (500 sq foot model is $600, 900 sq foot model is $995)
These are often used for cooling horse barns in the DFW area.
be wary of these for shop and garage use. You can find a large amount of rust on things due to the higher humidity introduced.
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Are you renting from a private person or a complex? Usually most complexes will rip that stuff out faster than you can put it together (if they find out). I would just go the easy route and get a shop fan or two and work with the door open. I have 3 motorcycles, so I’m in my apt garage quite often. Having my garage door open gets me huge air flow and even scored me a free rolling toolbox from a neighbor. He always saw me out there working and was upgrading his toolbox
Be sure that you have insulation above your garage. Some houses do not.
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We’re renting from a private person. If love to ask if we could cut a big hole in the wall, but I’m pretty sure the answer is still a no. Lol.
Can’t hurt to discuss it with them. Done properly adding A/C to a 3 car garage in Texas is a property improvement I’d think. A heat pump would be even better 
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For not much more in cost you can install a combination Heating and A/C unit. That’s what I did in my 3 car garage, had to cut a hole in the brick wall to install it. With an insulated garage door the heating unit can warm up the garage in Winter enough to take the chill out of the air. In summer the A/C unit makes the temperature comfortable even in 100+ Degree days.
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Probably not a bad idea. maybe they’ll be interested in sharing the cost too, maybe not, but who knows, right?
Sam’s Club has a Fathers Day sale on a 3/4 ton Mini Split for $800
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If you store anything humidity sensitive in your garage a swamp cooler can make things messy, wood, metals that oxidize quickly in the presence of humidity, etc.
Do you want to cool only? As above, consider a heat pump. And also consider an inverter unit that has a proportional output. They are quite efficient but you will pay extra for the technology.
Any advice on brands? I’m always researching these things.
There are twin-hose portable AC units on the market - I’ve got one to supplement the rumor that is air conditioning in my home office and has been trouble free for 4+ years now. They avoid the problem of running conditioned air over the hot side coils and operating at negative pressure.
I recall that the DOE - or some other regulatory agency - changed the rules around rating portable units and their BTU ratings have dropped significantly since a few years ago.
Portable AC units are not as effective as window units and mine struggles to keep the ~150 ft² of office within 10 degrees of the rest of the house; some of that could be the un-insulated garage door and possible lack of insulation in the vaulted roof in the room along with generous western and southern exposure. Should I ever turn my shed into a workspace, suspect I’ll just get a cheap window unit that operates as a “through wall” unit.
I used to have a sketchy arrangement in my office like that using the window unit down the hall in the bedroom.
Duct at the bedroom:
Mid-duct booster fan:
Occasionally this happened:
I also had a box fan at the far end trying to help out but at the end of the day I just went with this:
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That mid-duct booster screams “too legit to quit!”
Wish I had a photo of the entire thing in its rigged glory but alas that was five plus years ago (and I was single).
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That ac ducting is baller!
We’re talking with the owner another installing a mini split system in the garage, with more than a little luck we can get a yes from him.
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I had a mini-split installed in my garage, went with a 2 ton unit which was about 1700 and its glorious, it’ll cool the whole garage down in like 10 minutes. It also has a built in heat pump so it’s pretty efficient at heating as long as it doesn’t get super cold out, but even at below freezing, it worked fine.
I went with a daikon unit since they’re a big company with a real warranty and they sell a ton of them overseas, but it is the kind that requires special tools to install (you have to pull the vacuum) unlike the mr.cool unit which comes pre-charged.
It only requires a single 2 inch cut in the garage through to the outside world and everything on ours was installed using vinyl ducting. It looks pretty good with minimal changes to the house. 2 ton does require a pretty hefty 220 volt outlet. only the smallest units will run at 110 which is unlikely to work awesome in a 3 car garage. I also insulated my garage door which helped, but if your target is just to knock off 15 degrees or so, I guess a smaller unit is better than nothing.
When we were considering this, we talked through a few options. if we were to go with an inefficient portable unit, we came up with a few options for the exhaust, in case you wanted some ideas:
- hole into the plenum above the garage which would naturally exhaust outside through venting in the attic.
- cut a hole into a panel in the garage to fit the pipe, this idea seemed to suck all around, but it would work and wouldn’t be too hard to replace later since we could just replace the panel and not any brickwork.
- the best solution we came up with - our dryer vent runs through the garage, we could just hook up the exhaust into the dryer vent line.
if you want an installer you can trust, let me know.
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Daiken mini-splits from what I hear in the industry are about as reliable as can be. Ive heard that the warranty claims are very minimal.
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I am more than likely going to be installing a 2 ton Daiken ductless-minisplit heat-pump in my 18x30 foot shop that is insulated all around with an insulated garage door. Looking forward to being able to actually use my workshop this summer when it really gets hot.
I have heard alot of good things about Daiken from many of the HVAC guys I know.
I installed one 2 weeks ago. It was well put together. My only complaint was you had to unbolt the service ports to get appoin valve core removers in. A plus is the gave you two service ports…most mini splits only have one.