The only thing you are overlooking is the Btu output. In my garage, it would raise the temperature about 1 degree.
1500 W = 5100 BTUI use a 35,000 BTU propane heater and if it is very cold I still cannot get it to a working temperature. Given the cost of electricity in my area, that comes out to about $1.15 an hour if I had enough power to run electric heat.
Not where I live. Electric is double the propane cost.
Well, what do you mean by "very cold"? Considering how few days it is very cold in central IN, I can do something else on those days. About how much do you pay per kWh in your neck of the woods?
Bill
The heater above is a cute little toy, would probably work well in a desk cubby hole for an office.
Trying to heat an un-insulated, 2 car garage in central Indiana in the middle of winter with a 1500W heater has about as much a chance of doing the job as you have trying to smell an ameba fart from 100 ft away in a hurricane.
Haven't run the numbers, but even 15,000W would probably be very marginal at best.
Lew
Well, there's your problem, you need to move 600 miles south of where you are.
On second thought keep two places, Indiana in the summer and Gulf coast in the winter.
basilisk
On Mon, 2 Nov 2009 14:52:41 -0500, the infamous "Bill" scrawled the following:
Extremely concerned. Do watch it. Propane also produces a damp exhaust.
Yes. Insulate and finish the walls. It will create an entirely different environment for your shop and won't cost very much. Warming won't condense much except on the metal. Do protect all of your steel tools with Johnson's paste wax. $4 or so at Wally World.
And insulated shop can be heated with a small ceramic cube heater. No exhaust, no moisture, no idiots with carbon taxes jumping all over you.
On Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:04:22 -0600, the infamous Morris Dovey scrawled the following:
PV and electric, right?
I live in the "deep south" (zone7) and have a 420 sq ft insulated and finished garage with insulated doors (x2). A 1500 watt heater will keep it at a given temperature, but would take days to bring it from mid 30s to 68. (Lots of thermal mass in the form of cast iron, concrete, and such.) And the cost would be prohibitive. I use a kerosene heater (condensation but 26,000 BTU's) and then electric to maintain. A fan to move the naturally rising heat to lower levels is recommended.
Kerosene used to be about the cheapest per BTU with natural gas running a close second, but subsequent mergers of various "energy companies" into monopolies has resulted in almost all forms of energy being priced with a cent or two per BTU. Funny how that worked out... Bastards.
I want this solar heated building:
Next place I'm going to bury a 1/2 mile of pipe underground and use it for geoheating/cooling combined with solar. Bastards.
Greg G.
I can get a 30 degree rise. That means much below 30, the shop is cold. At
10F, the shop will reach 40F. Electric in my area is about 19¢.
Two of those will keep my garage above freezing, barely, in CT. I have a
135,000 BTU propane heater that brings it up to 80 in about a half an hour on the coldest days I've encountered. Note that a heater that size needs two gas grill sized portable tanks to keep it fed at full blast, one won't maintain a high enough flow rate.I really need to finish insulating and replace the door.
I use a 150,00 btu forced air kerosene heater made by Dayton (Grainger). It runs on a portable thermostat. I left it on last night so that my glue up could cure. This morning it is 61 degrees and 37% relative humidity in the shop. It is 37 degrees outside. People complain about the moisture added by the combustion process but I see it as an advantage. I recently bought kerosene for $2.49 per gallon. I keep two CO meters running in the shop. My main shop area is about
900 square feet with a pitched roof that runs from 14 feet in the center to 8'3" on the sides. The kero doesn't smell bad to me but I service the heater every Fall and use only #1 clear kerosene in it.Regards,
Tom Watson
On Mon, 2 Nov 2009 20:26:20 -0800, the infamous "Lew Hodgett" scrawled the following:
Are you guys doing the math only on getting a room up to temp? What about maintaining heat in a previously heated space? A small heater will take awhile to heat a large space, but once heated, it will maintain it easily. We're not talking 40x60' outbuildings here.
Insulated, a shop will stay warm with minimal input, but it's gotta be well insulated. My gar^H^H^Hshop is attached to the house and gets colder than the house due to leaks. I had an HVAC duct routed there but it stays about 8 degrees cooler or hotter than the house. I use a small (1500W) Patton fan/heater and it brings my shop to a toasty temp in no time. A person working in a shop also adds plenty of BTUs.
Bill, as I said, insulate that space and use a fan-blown electric heater or two (on separate circuits, yeah?) to get the space heated so you can work. I saw you link to a convection heater. Forget that. Forced air is the only type of heat to have, period. I worked in a shipping and receiving area in a warehouse in '75. It had radiant heaters and we were always cold. I moved to Oregon and the house came with 240v baseboard heaters (convection). When they were running, my ankles were cold and when I stood up, my forehead instantly broke out in a sweat. I immediately installed a nice Carrier HVAC. It's my first air-conditioned home/shop and I love it. (For $6k, I'd better, huh? But I wouldn't have it any other way. I'm gas heated.)
Convected air stratifies, forced air blends. For comfort, go with forced air.
On Tue, 3 Nov 2009 06:52:00 -0500, the infamous "J. Clarke" scrawled the following:
Well, DUH! For the price of heating one season, you could have _paid_ someone to buy and install that insulation for you, JC.
Troublemaker! ;)
I really like the idea of being able to permanently buy-down energy costs, but PV doesn't seem quite ready for that yet - except for far off-grid locations where the cost of extending the grid would be comparable to the cost of the panels.
PV technology is poised to take off as soon as we produce either of two breakthroughs: [1] a halving of production cost or, [2] a significant improvement in conversion efficiency. One or both of those /will/ take place, but the headache with breakthroughs is that they happen on their own schedule - either could happen today, or (with equal probability)
200 years from today.Solar thermal technology, on the other hand, doesn't need either of those breakthroughs - only the effort to put it into use where it offers some real advantage over other technologies.
I don't see the two as competitive - I just lack the patience for waiting quietly until someone else comes up with a breakthrough.
Probably right Lew! But not all of us work in the shop only wearig out swim trunks. 60 is plenty warm for me. LOL.
In most garage/shops, folks aren't in there every day, all day long. A good sized heater will let you heat it quickly, just when you want it heated.
Now that's a mental picture I didn't need to see. LOL!
Electricity would be the cleanest and the safest. It would also be the most expensive.
If by unfinished you mean uninsulated, fix that problem first. Saves on both heat and AC. What kind of insulation is above that finished ceiling?
You must have a very large garage or not have much in the way of insulation. I have a much smaller shop, but 5000 BTUs will overheat it in about 3 hours with an outside temperatuure of 30F. Thats about
3.5-4.0 BTUs per cubic foot.At that efficiency 35K BTUs would heat 10,000 cubic feet. Or 1000 square feet with a 10 foot ceiling. That's plenty for a 2 car garage.
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