Garage in the basement: Seeking solutions for insulation problems

Hello everyone,

In our construction project, we integrated our garage into the basement. To avoid including the garage (because of the garage door and so on) in the thermal envelope of our house, we decided together with our energy consultant to use the interior wall between the garage and the living house as part of the envelope and accordingly add insulation above the masonry.

Our shell builder has now pointed out that insulation materials are usually quite soft. So we can't hang shelves on the walls or they quickly become perforated if you lean bicycles or other objects against them.

According to the energy consultant, we won't be able to avoid the insulation. Alternatively, we could use a more compression-resistant insulation. However, this has somewhat tight U-values and I am unsure if it really solves our problem.

Alternative ideas I have are either to build drywall/plasterboard in front of the insulation or to build another 10 cm wall in front of it.

How do you assess these proposed solutions, or are there other alternative suggestions?

In insulation, no matter how pressure-resistant, you can at most hang a lamp or house number, nothing more. And nothing that is subjected to constant shear forces. The insulation anchors are not designed for that.

One possibility would be to attach shelves or other brackets through the insulation to the underlying wall. Either you prepare mounting aids (e.g. from Dosteba) where the fastening points are planned, or you do it afterwards, for example with Fischer TherMax anchors. It is of course still a weak point in the insulation layer, but this can be neglected in an interior setup in the garage.

Otherwise, drywall is of course also possible, but you lose interior space.