Newbe Question about Shop Heater

I have an attached 400 ft^2 (20' by 20') 2-car garage with an (electric) insulated garage door.

What is a smart way to warm it up (to say 60 degrees)? Options appear to be kerosene, propane and electric. I assume that propane may be the cleanest and/or cheapest. How concerned should I be about exhaust fumes (at this point, they concern me)?

The garage has some unfinished walls and a finished ceiling. Is occasionally warming it up likely to produce condensation on walls and lead to their damage? I assume that unprotected metal will be even more at risk.

Thank you for your thoughts, Bill

Reply to
Bill
Loading thread data ...

Solar - no fuel, no fumes, no condensation, and always warm.

(Very biased opinion)

Reply to
Morris Dovey

Bill I found that garage doors can be very drafty. With a draft you may never warm it up. About 10 years ago I replaced my garage door with a Wayne Dalton insulated door, expanding foam between an outer and inner steel layer. Additionally the door has weather stripping around the perimeter to prevent drafts. I find that a small 1500 watt ceramic electric heater can warm the garage to comfortable in about 10 minutes. Other than the door that faces north, the garage is not insulated except on the back wall which separates it from the rest of the house. I worked in a large ware house that used 2 kerosene heaters, they in no way are ever close to warming the building. They did provide a warm spot to take the chill off but I recall the fumes gave most every one a head ache.

Reply to
Leon

Hmm. When a whole beef would strain the budget, I can generally get by with a couple pounds of hamburger and a steak or two...

Think of it this way, if you were totally off the grid, you'd have a lot more stuff with inflexible maintenance requirements.

Reply to
Morris Dovey

In news: snipped-for-privacy@news3.newsguy.com, Bill dropped this bit of wisdom:

Am I to assume that natural gas is not available to you?

Probably electric is the 2nd most expensive and propane the most = expensive.

Kerosene is, for me, the hardest to find.

P D Q

Reply to
PDQ

Are the walls and ceiling insulated? If it's like most garages (uninsulated), adding some would likely not be a bad idea, and would help cut down on condensation some. It would also significantly lower the cost of heating, if the heating is used much. Ditto on tightening up the worst of the cracks and leaks around the garage door and windows.

Any sort of combustion you have going on in the garage that is not vented to the outside will produce water vapor and CO2 (and, if combustion isn't complete, CO). In many garages, this isn't necessarily a great concern, as there is often a fair amount of air leakage generally and so these gasses don't have too much chance to collect. This also makes them difficult to heat. I'd still tend to prefer heaters that are vented to the outside (or electric, which of course doesn't produce combustion byproducts), to avoid possible problems, and open flames are probably best avoided in a workshop where there may be a bunch of sawdust floating around.

I wouldn't think that heating up air without adding moisture would lead to many condensation problems in general, since the relative humidity of the air is decreasing; certainly, it would be less than with an unvented heater. However, that's more semi-informed speculation than practical knowledge, so don't put overly much faith in it.

Are wood or wood pellet heat reasonable options for you? Around here, at least, they'd be cheaper than LP or electric and probably kerosene. Wood pellets are fairly clean and easy to deal with, especially when compared with raw wood. One of these would probably be my first choice if I had this dilemma. A close second choice would be scouting out an inexpensive (possibly used) small domestic hot-air furnace and putting that in a corner with minimal ductwork but of course proper venting and letting it rip--either gas or oil/kerosene, whichever I could find and get running safely the most easily and cheaply. I would definitely have a big air filter on the cold air intake for the circulating blower, and keep it reasonably clean.

Reply to
Andrew Erickson

Warm it up to 60 from what? 58? 29? 0? -15?

Reply to
dadiOH

Bill: I have heated a 700 sf, and more recently a 1,040 sf garage with kerosene with pretty good success. The current garage is very well insulated with 6" walls and about R30 blown above the 10' ceiling. My eventual plan, with this new house, is to hang a natural gas furnace from the ceiling but I haven't gotten around to that. The plumbing is there but no furnace yet. A few years ago I did look into propane and the same amount of heat was going to be substantially higher in our area (Kansas).

If you go with kerosene, shop for prices. The big box and hardware store sell kerosene at obscene prices. The pre-packaged 2 and 5 gallon cans are as much as $8/gallon in this area. We buy ours from a local farm co op in the $2.50 to $3.00 range. Another local gas and petroleum distributor sells it at a slightly lower price but the longer drive isn't worth it. Again, shop around for good prices before you commit to the fuel. We use a 17,500 btu kero-sun type of heater. I also use a small electric cube heater to supplement it. Some milder mornings (30 degrees or above) I can bring the temp up in the garage with both, then turn the Kerosene heater off for a while or all day.

If you use kerosene or any open flame you need to keep the shop, especially the area around the heater, clean. Blow the dust off and out of the heater from time to time. When I get ready to use flammable substances such as finishes or solvents I TURN IT OFF several minutes before I start and let the electric heater do the work until fumes are gone.

If you can at all, install a permanent natural gas heater but install it well above the floor. Some codes require flame devices at least 2 feet above a garage floor and 4 feet would be better.

RonB

Reply to
RonB

I use to work in my garage(two car with insulated walls and door.) I used a propane heater attached to a small propane bottle(the type you use for a gas grill).it would heat up the room in about ten minutes and would last me a week(you need to turn it down after heating the room up) With no odor and minimum fuss it worked for me.I would try to insulate the walls(it is fairly easy to do,I weigh nearly 400lbs and I did it myself over a couple days).

Len

Reply to
Len

Sorry, I accidentally edited out the part about being in the middle of Indiana. Say, 20 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit.

Reply to
Bill

I agree with you ---- on both points VBG

Would that I could afford the 70-80K solar option to be totally off the = grid.

P D Q

Reply to
PDQ

Assuming that you will be making sure the building is pretty tight and insulated, I'd consider a forced air LP-fired suspended heater. It would vent through the roof and the blower would circulate the heated air around the shop. If you're going to use it just occasionally, then consider adding a timer or on demand control to the t-stat to let you fire it up just before you get there.

One of our people had a pretty good sized garage up in a snow-belt area and despite all the insulation and sealing, his car would still have huge chunks of snow and ice on it the next morning. He solved the problem nicely with a suspended gas fired heater and a timer. He'd pull into the garage and hit the timer. The garage would warm nicely, aided by the already-hot car engine, and the ice would melt off the car. About an hour or so later, the interval timer would shut the heat off.

He used this for the first winter, then made a change: the next winter, a timer turned the heater on at 5:00a and off after he departed. That way, he had a warm and comfortable car to drive to work.

Reply to
Nonny

Price is a prime factor. Kerosene is a non-issue, having climbed from approx $1.50 gal 10-15 yrs ago to an astonishing $10 gal!! I couldn't even give away my 25K BTU almost-new kerosene htr. Can't say about nat-gas. Ditto electricity. OTOH, I've seen propane drop almost 60% in price in last 2 yrs. Savings! Plus, propane burns hotter than nat-gas.

As for the fumes, I'm still researching that, myself. I'm in CO Rockies at 8K ft and it's an early Winter. Get up, light all 4 burners on stove, plus oven. Have never suffered headaches or shortness of breath (knock on wood), although a pretty tight abode. I had (past tense) a Reddy propane space heater and feel space heaters do not combust efficiently, so there may be issues with propane space htr fumes more than other types of more efficient propane heaters. In the end, I'd go propane.

An overhead fan, of some sort, is almost a necessity. Hot air rises. Even an inexpensive ceiling fan will bring that hot air down to you before you spend twice the money to heat the whole building from the top down.

Also, consider a digital thermostat and how often you will be using the place. It's my feeling it's cheaper to keep a place warm than to let it go cold and then re-warm it, another thing I'm still researching (I missed thermodynamics in college). Maybe someone will elaborate.

Just observations from a former sweat-my-ass-off CA expat now living in frigid CO ....and loving it!! ;)

nb

Reply to
notbob

Thank you to everyone for your replies. The ceiling is partially-insulated, but the walls are not (except for the one which is attached to the house). Maybe I'll add some to the ceiling. Gas is nearby; my hot water heater uses it, but that's all. I'm not a big fan of NG. Since you've convinced me that a propane furnace without proper ventilation is unsafe, an electric heater seems the more practical for the time being. I'll read all of the posts again, thank you!

Bill

Reply to
Bill

roof into a viable solar collector, "Lay on MacDuff".

It's possible to DIY the PV panels, and there are a number of good articles on the web with step-by-step how-to info - but the requisite charge controller, batteries, and inverter still aren't cheap.

For the panels themselves, the silicon and solder are available on eBay, the wood and glass can be purchased locally - and the enclosures can be built by an average woodworker. I was tempted to build a couple of 4'x8' panels, just for the heck of it - but decided that my money would be better spent on another (solar thermal pump) project.

I'll repeat for both you and Bill: for the cash spent, solar thermal applications (such as heating) provide the best return on investment - and offer, if not total energy independence, at least a satisfying reduction in dependence and operating costs.

If you're really eager to get off the grid, I can probably re-find some of the PV how-to web pages...

Reply to
Morris Dovey

Usually, I found that a pile of steaks cost almost as much as a whole = beef and I did not get all the parts that people are not supposed to eat =

- liver, kidney, heart and I never did acquire a taste for tripe.

With the advent of "Smart" meters, I now have to schedule my dish and = clothes washing for the midnight hour so as to be using "cheap" hydro. = When the utilities figure out what is happening, they will up the rates = to make up for the lost income and I will have to resort to other means = of keeping my costs down -- maybe a rock in the river and my wife up to = her neck in the stream.

Now, if you have any pocket pleasing ideas on how to turn my 70 foot = south roof into a viable solar collector, "Lay on MacDuff".

P D Q

Reply to
PDQ

someday. My dad would have been interested--he was quite environmentally-concious.

Bill

Reply to
Bill

Convection electric heat is clean too.

Reply to
Robatoy

Convection electric heat is clean too.

Good point!

I just typed in "Convection electric heat" (google search), and this product came up:

formatting link
appealing--even has a thermostat and auto-shutoff. I had been under the impression that using electricity was a costly way to create heat. I guess I can try the math: this thing is 1500W = 1.5kW, and it looks like I pay less than 10 cents per kWh, and that would come out to 15 cents per hour. Better than I would have expected; quiet too I assume. Please correct my calculations if I overlooked something (my home-owners insurance is paid up! )!

Bill

Reply to
Bill

formatting link

That's not a lot of heat, and satisfaction is likely to depend on how well insulated and how draft-free your garage is.

Since warm air rises, I'd suggest taking notbob's advice and also buying one of these:

formatting link
lifetime warranty and $19.95 price are attractive.

(I don't have any connection with Lowes)

Reply to
Morris Dovey

HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.