Winter's on it's way- any tips for heating a garage-type shop?

[Prometheus]

Hello all,

My shop is a 20'X24' garage with two insulated walls, and no isulation in the ceiling. I live in Western Wisconsin, so it gets colder than a mother-*$&%#$ out here. I'd like to find a semi-portable method of heating my shop so that I don't have to stop working all winter. The building is a rental, so I'm hesitant to install a big heater that is going to be too tough to take with when my wife and I buy a house (probably next spring). The shop has a chimney (though I have no idea why) so I may be able to use that for a vented heater.

I only need it to be heated to, say 50 degrees or so, just enough to keep me from freezing solid, but I want the heat to be relatively safe, and to try and keep my tools from rusting when I heat the building up (It will only be heated whn I'm working). Electiric heat is out, because the electrical service is not the best, and I don't want to trip the breakers every time I use a tool, so I think I'm going to need propane or a wood stove.

I've seen the tube-type "jet" heaters before, and they seem to work pretty well, but is there another type that may be safer to use around wood that would work? I can't say that money is not a limiting factor, but I'm willing to invest in the right tool for the job at hand. I'd love to insulate and sheetrock it, but the wife says no way, since I don't own the building and we intend to move fairly soon.

Thanks for any advice!

[Lawrence L'Hote]

I've used one of those propane powered radiant heaters the past two winters. The biggest problem I've learned to deal with is condensation. I discovered my precious pattern rasps had rusted while in a drawer as well as some of my metal cutting files. Also, some moisture will condense on the cold iron of my Unisaw so I have to watch that. I put a carbon monoxide detector next to where I work and it never has indicated any CO. Larry

[carson]

5000 watt shop heaters are less than $50 and tiny (a foot square) and simply require a 220 30 amp circuit. It's pretty easy to run a cord to power the thing. Might not be legal but contractors do it.

[Edwin Pawlowski]

But he said the electric supply is questionable.

5000 watts = 17,000 Btu. (it needs 21 amps at 230V) Not enough to keep that size building warm in very cold weather. I have a slightly smaller, partially insulated garage. When the temperature is in the teens, the 30,000 Btu propane heater is not enough. You can get larger units for not a lot more money. That would be my choice today, probably the 80,000.

Other option is a wood burner. That assumes the chimney is in good shape and you have a decent supply of wood to feed it. The heat is not as instant as propane as you have to get the fire going and get that hunk of metal up to temperature. There could be a 30 to 60 minute lag to reasonable comfort. Long wait if you just want to putter in the shop for an hour after dinner. Even with my propane heater, at times I have to wait 15 to 30 minutes until it is bearable out there.

[mac davis]

I've done 2 things so far and they made last winter more tolerable.. (if you can call what we have in Calif. winters)

I added 2 of those oil filled heaters at the 2 draftiest places in the garage, set on about 3 (settings are 0 -10, I think) and on 24/7... they don't really heat, as much as break the chill and circulate the warmth..

I built a box for the end of the dryer hose, using a wood box and 2 furnace filters, so I could vent the dryer inside the garage without a lot of lint and moisture in the air.. worked good last year and I didn't notice any more rust than before... and my wife loves it, since I tend to do the laundry in the winter.. lol

Something else you might try, (HF to the rescue!), is a radiant heater that clamps onto a bbq-size (5 gal?) propane tank..

We use one on our enclosed patio and it makes a lot of difference... we use it almost every night and use between 2 and 3 tanks a winter... I don't think I'd use one in my garage, because I do a lot of painting and finishing, but it would be safer than a wood stove, for sure..

Mac

[carson]

I think he was referring to his 110 not 220. If he has an electric clothes dryer he has the juice

How warm is warm. It should maintain 50 during the day.

Can void insurance, messy and in many places illegal.

[Luigi Zanasi]

On Sun, 03 Oct 2004 15:39:17 GMT, "Lawrence L'Hote" scribbled:

I use one too for the initial heating of the shop. And I'm in the Yukon. See the top of:

what I mean. I use the 17,00 BTU unit in my 14'X28' shop.

Once the temperature is up, I use small ceramic electric heaters (which you might not want to do given your 'lectric problems). No problem with condensation, but we have really dry air. If it's been going for a few hours, I will often open all doors to "blow out" the hot humid air when I leave the shop. You should see the fog it creates when it's 40 below zero outside!

Luigi Replace "nonet" with "yukonomics" for real email address

[Morris Dovey]

I still like the solar heating option. It worked for my shop in SE Minnesota and works for my shop here in (tropical) central Iowa. Over the last year I've posted enough photos and drawings to ABPW to make design a non-problem - check the archive.

Depending on how much time you plan to spend in the shop over the winter, it may be worth looking for a good deal on insulation for the ceiling and on weatherstripping for doors and windows.

[Edwin Pawlowski]

I have a similar situation with a 30,000 Btu heater. It will NOT maintain

50 during the day in CT. He is in Wisconsin with similar climate. I can get a 20 to 25 degree temperature rise. When it is 5 degrees outside, it is not going to be 50 inside. If you live in a mild climate, it will be plenty. WI is not all that mild.

In addition, when you leave the space unheated for a long time, you lose the latent heat. It takes a very long time to re-build than especially with the mass of some of the heavy tools.

[nicksanspam]

As in "water vapor"?

That sounds like "sensible" vs "latent" heat.

Nick

[carson]

He said the ceiling was uninsulated. I would bite the bullet and stick some 6" batts in the ceiling. You can always take them with you when you leave. Get 5 4x8 sheets of the rigid insulation they put on flat roofs under T&G. Stand this up across the uninsulated front side of the garage. For under $300 you have an insulated room. You could even do the ceiling with this rigid stuff. It's actually pretty cheap for about R18. About a third of the price of the pink or blue stuff at the Borg.

[Edwin Pawlowski]

:cjpjsi$ [e-mail]...

Correct.

A tablesaw can absorb one heck of a lot of heat as it ices up on a really cold day. Takes forever to get the room warm enough to work.

[John, in MN]

[snip] The propane jet type heaters are clean, warm up the shop in quickly, and can be controlled by a thermostat. They are a bit noisy though and eat 20lb tanks rather quickly. I used one in a garage as you described, I think it was a 80k btu heater. It will take a while to warm up the heavy cast iron where your hands won't freeze to it in the really cold weather. A couple of years ago we moved and I now a have a smaller but insulated shop with a "Modine Hot Dawg" style heater and have so much more enjoyed doing shop time in the winter. Something about being warm and watching the snow fly by the shop window makes living here almost sane. A nice bonus is you don't have to worry about glue and other stuff freezing.

-- John, in Minnesota

[Kiwanda]

Our garage isn't insulated at all, so when it's -15 here in central Minnesota I just don't go out there. But when I do need to do some work in the winter, I dress warmly and heat the place with a kerosene heater like this:

It does 20,000+ BTUs cheaply (runs many hours on a gallon of fuel), which is enough to make it possible to work with a sweater on...say +45 indoors on a cold day. It's not enough to warm more than the air though, so any metal tools with much mass at all (i.e. table saw) never do warm up enough to touch. Still, it's cheap, seems safe, and it pretty nice to slide over next to my stool if I'm working at the bench for an hour or so on a day I'd rather not be outside at all.

-Derek

[Mark & Juanita]

... snip

Note to self: This is why I live in Arizona. [/begin sarcasm mode 40 BELOW zero? Like, doesn't air become liquid about there? /end sarcasm mode]

[Mark & Juanita]

No, as in heat held in the thermal "mass" of whatever it is you have kept warm. Objects with large mass tend to hold heat for a long while, thus the reason one would use rocks or water to store heat from a solar collector. Once lost, it takes a significant amount of time and energy to rebuild the heat in that mass. Since woodshops contain some fairly large tools containing a lot of thermal mass, once heated, they will stay warm for a while, conversely, once they give up that heat, it takes a long time and a lot of energy to warm them up again.

Not exactly, it is often very inefficient to have to restore heat lost from massive items.

[mac davis]

so, do you have to worry about the latent heat coming out of the closet??

Mac

[Luigi Zanasi]

On Sun, 03 Oct 2004 21:47:32 -0700, Mark & Juanita scribbled:

Fine, you can keep the scorpions and rattlers in your back yard. And the monotonous weather. When you're outside, it's a lot easier to get warm at -40C than to cool off at +40C. Fire, you know. Oops, I forgot. You can't make fires. No trees where you are. (OBWW) No thanks. ;-) Luigi Replace "nonet" with "yukonomics" for real email address

[patrick conroy]

Ah, so you're the *one*...

Waitadoggoneminnute -- ain't your name Prometheus?

I'm in a 3 car gar^H^H^Hshop - but only one is the shop. I have a little 1 unit Infrared $39 heater that plops ontop of a 20gal propane tank.

I flip it on at 5am and by 5:30 or so, it's warm enough in my Denver garage to get out there. Then I keep it on, and just aim it at my backside. It does the trick for me, with a couple of caveats:

- I've left Wisconsin for Denver, so it's a little warmer out here

- If it's biiterly cold, I don't have to work out there, this is a hobby for me

- If I had to do it over again, I'd pop for a double or triple unit

- When I get 230V or a nat-gas-line run out there, I'll switch to something like that

- Beware the CO

- Again, living in Denver means 0% humidity, so I don't worry about rust

- My garage is *somewhat* insulated. Most of it is. The door is not and about 1/4 of the walls are not.

[Scott Lurndal]

Actually there are trees in arizona. Take a drive in the snow up towards Flagstaff and drive through the piney woods.

scott