Heating a shop

[Unquestionably Confused]

I have a fully insulated 13'x24' shop that I'd like to install baseboard heat in. Tired of sniffy Kerosene fumes from either the Redi-Heater (to bring it up to temp) or the Kero-Sun heater that keeps it comfy.

Electric heat is my only practical option and I'm well aware of the cost since my entire home is electric baseboard and I've survived 30 years of bills so...

Question I have is I noted at least one gentleman here, Ken Vaughn, has used a "soft heat" hydroponic electric baseboard. Not adverse to going that route but why hydroponic? Is is safer than conventional convection electric baseboard?

Price is about 8 times conventional baseboard and guarantee is 5 years vs. lifetime. I could care less about smooth, even, quiet heat. I just want heat and no open flames.

I realize that sawdust, etc. migrating to the fins and calrod element will likely smell up the place but won't they also with the "soft heat"? Installation and clearances are similar for both.

Bottom line: If the choice is between conventional and hydroponic, am I courting disaster by installing conventional in a shop?

Thanks

Bob

[Michael Burton]

Unquestionably Confused wrote in news:bEhOd.3747$ [e-mail]:

I am thinking wood stove here. I have an all electric place also. I think I would have planty of wood from cutoffs to keep my scrawney butt warm. :-) Course, you may live in a much colder area than I do. I'm in Central Texas.

[Charlie Self]

Michael Burton responds:

Wood heat is good. A friend does all his heating with wood, in a 24' x 40' shop, and in his 20' x 20' "shed" that he uses for storage and working with welders (steel building, concrete floor, while the shop is wood and wood). But it's a PITA in several ways: you have to be exceptionally careful about the use of finishing materials when heating; you lose more shop space; it can take a long, long time to get a cold shop up to working temperature; firewood storage eats space; hauling your ashes, in this case, is a nuisance.

I know another person, a local instrument maker, who actually planned for wood heat when he built his shop more than a decade ago. He isolated it, because he needs to be able to finish instruments at any time. His wood stove is actually in the basement and heats the shop (the shop and basement are both in the same building, which is not a residence) indirectly, so that sparking off finishes is not a problem. And all the mess is confined to a concrete floored and walled area.

That's central Virginia, and right now we're in a screwy warm spell (67 yesterday, currently [4:30 a.m. or so] about 48), but normally we'd be shivering decently this time of year, though nothing like my days in and around Albany, NY.

Charlie Self "I think we agree, the past is over." George W. Bush

[Mike Marlow]

Oh Charlie - you'd love it this year. Not much snow (only a few feet all season long, so far) and the temps over the past week and half to two weeks have been reaching for the 50's. This is Syracuse I'm talking about but Albany is about the same. It's made for some pretty sucky snowmobiling.

[julvr]

I was just reading this and the first thought that comes into my head is 'fire hazard'! Unless you have a state of the art dust collector and sweep the shop daily, you're going to have some sawdust kicking around. Mix that with burning wood... hmmm... doesn't sound to safe to me... In fact, a baseboard heater mounted at floor level doesn't necessarily sound to safe either.

JMHO.

John

[Gerald Ross]

I just use a couple of those cube ceramic heaters when I need them. Most of the time just turning off the air conditioner suffices.

[Luigi Zanasi]

Me too, but only paid $20.00 for mine. But thenn, my electric bill went up by $100 last month.

You mean not all babies get borned with booster cables?

Lucky you. I guess that's one of the advantages from living in subtropical Ontario (or is it tropical BC?).

[Edwin Pawlowski]

"Michael Burton" .

If the shop is in an attached garage, solid fuel heaters are illegal. Even after the fire is "out', there can be embers in the ash the will ignite fumes from solvents.

The scrap I generate in a year would keep my stove going for only a few days. Wood is nice heat, but requires a lot of attention. Keeping the shop heated all the time means lots of trips out there.

[Mike Marlow]

Maybe some places, but they're not illeage in New York.

[Mike Marlow]

Not as much of a fire hazard as you might first think. Woodstoves are found in garages and woodworking shops of all sorts in a lot of places.

[Robatoy]

Me too.

I heat mine with a 4800 watt fan-forced construction heater. Paid 69 dollars Canadian for it, and is more than enough. I wired in a wall mounted thermostat. Clean, fast, safe heat. (They also called barn heaters around these parts) Oh... and I have a Workshop air-cleaner (from Lee Valley) on a slow speed all the time. It is sitting in the rafters and moves the heat from the nook throughout the shop.

Even when it gets so cold out that all babies are born with booster cables instead of umbillical cords, that heater does the job.

Of course, in the heat of summer, I only have the heater running part of the time.

0¿0

Rob

[Ken Vaughn]

As you have already noted, I use sealed unit 240V electric baseboard units in my

16' by 24' shop. The units (two 1000 watt units) contains something similar to anti-freeze, not water, but I'm not sure that is significant. I built my shop with this system in mind, and my shop is very well insulated and sealed, plus double pane windows, insulated doors, etc. It is also important to note that I live in Colorado, a normally dry state with more than 300 days of sunshine per year. We do get some pretty cold days, but nothing like the Northern tier states, or even the Midwest. I work in my shop almost daily, and I wear a Tee-shirt. I keep the thermostat at 60 degrees, but with two south facing windows it is usually over 65 by mid morning. By noon I often open a window.

I can't compare what I have to convection electric baseboard heaters because I have never used them. These sealed units produce a steady heat with no drafts and my cost has been reasonable -- I really don't know what they cost to run, and at this point in my life, I don't care, but they are not that expensive. My initial cost for the two units and the thermostat was just a little over $300, but that was 12 years ago.

[Unquestionably Confused]

Thanks for responding Ken and, BTW, that's one nice shop you have and great website on which to showcase it.

I've found similar units (1000 watts each -- mfg by

selling for ~ $127 each at Menard's Lumber. The hydroponic sealed units should function similarly to the standard electric resistance heat. In yours, however, the Calrod element is sealed within the copper vessel containing the mix of water and anti-freeze so the surface temperature, I think, will be somewhat less than the standard unit.

My concern, again, is that despite whatever promises I make to myself to clean up after each session of "sawdust creation" an accumulation could form in the heater and eventually ignite with totally unacceptable consequences.

The cost is not a problem in my situation as I'm used to electric heat bills and I won't be running it all the time. Like you, I have the double glazed windows which will be further upgraded (due to leakage of the glass) to Low-E double glazing this year.

In a perfect world I should have ~ 2,600 watts of heater in that shop. I'll likely round up to 3,000 if I go with the 1000 watt sealed units since they are fairly short units (ones on display look to be about 54" or so). Two of the conventional units at 1,500 watts each will cost me less than $50.

[Duane Bozarth]

Is that all? :) We'll get that plus another 5-10C come a few months...

[Alfa]

How I envy you guys. Tomorrow the temperature here will go to 33 deg Celcius

[Kevin Craig]

You might want to rethink that, in light of the global nature of this newsgroup.

Even within the US, you can't make such a blanket statement. Codes vary wildly.

Kevin

[Robert Bonomi]

After checking the building code, check with your homeowner's insurance carrier. *They* won't say 'no' -- they'll say "HELL NO!!!!"

[Edwin Pawlowski]

It was a National code, NFPA. I can't find the numbers right now but our local shopper paper used to print it right in the "for Sale" column for stoves and heater. In any case, it is a dumb idea no matter where you live.

[Mike Marlow]

Both my insurance company and my local municipality were satisfied by a visit from the fire marshal and his sign off on our stove. As well, for years I was a volunteer fireman and for part of that time a chief. During that time I attend more than a few house and garage fires. I saw many - many wood stoves in garages. Never once saw an insurance claim denied because of a chimney fire in a garage.

[Mike Marlow]

Can't speak to what NFPA might say, because I don't have a copy of it. As to whether it's a dumb idea or not, that's somewhat a matter of opinion. I don't know what it's like around you, but around here it is very common to find wood stoves in attached garages, in wood shops (both pro and home), etc. As I replied to Robert, I have attended a good number of chimney fires (the most common form of wood stove related fires) in the years when I was an active fireman and never saw an insurance claim denied because of a woodstove in an attached garage. Never saw a citation issued for an "illegal" woodstove.