I am thinking about putting radiant heat in my detached four car garage in addition to a wood burning stove. Any suggestions on brands of tube heaters and btu?
We filled the tubing and heater with 50% antifreeze just in case the power is out for several days. you MUST start it up before cold weather and keep it on all winter to keep the concrete warm. Just keep in mind you are heating very cold concrete otherwise and it just can't recover in a few hours....it could take a few days to get the heat you need.
Heater? We don't need no stinkin heaters.......... ha, ha, ha, ha...... It did get down to 48 last night. Ah......... Phoenix. In the summer, I just jump into the swimming pool. Cools me off for an hour, and then I just jump right back in.
I have Dayton units in my shop. They work great. I have two 20' units but only use one to heat my 2500 shop, even on the coldest days. My shop is very well insulated also. The one down side of tube heaters, as opposed to forced air units, is it takes a little longer to heat the shop. I have electronic controllers I bought from the local big box store for around $30-35. I have them set for different times of the day. The heaters idle at night at 50°, a half hour before start time they go up to 60° but go back down to 50° at start time. I do this because I want to take the edge off and it doesn't take as long to warm up the shop when I come in in the morning. I work away from my shop a lot of times and I don't want the shop heated when no one is there so that is why I have it set to back down to 50°. When I do work in the shop I turn up the heat to 65°. The controller is set to drop back down to 50° at quitting time but if I work past quitting time, which I normally do, I goose it back up to 65°. I have it set to turn back down two hours later and then two hours after that. Before I had the electronic controllers I'd forget to turn the heater down before I left for the night and come into a nice warm shop in the morning. I was nice to have a nice warm shop in the morning but knowing $$$ was blowing out the vent wasn't.
electric wall mounted heater with blower. One car garage and works fine...very well insulated though...Ohio. I run it up to about 65/70 when I am in there working and keep it at 40 when not in there. (I like to work in my shirt sleeves)
dayton G30. 5000 watt electric. 220v. looks small, but will run you out of my 30X30. No fuel, no logs, no mess. it also has a thermostat.
Propane has been expensive but I have a cheap source of firewood. I wanted an outside wood furnace for safety reasons and I have always liked hot water heat. I built an outside furnace for heating water out of a Shrader Wood stove that was given to me. Last year I built the first generation model. I used a cast iron radiator, that many of you have seen in use in older buildings with hot water heat, for my heating coil inside the firebox of the stove. Inside the shop I used a car radiator and a large squirrel cage fan off of a gas furnace. This system worked okay but it used a lot of wood and took a lot of my time keeping it going. This year I added an external water jacket by fabricating 7 shallow tanks that surround the furnace. The water circulates through the tanks and then into the fire box through the cast iron coil and then into the shop. I use a Bell and Gosset recirculating pump that is normally used for a hot water circulating system in a house. The new heat exchanger inside is a coil off of a commercial freezer. I bought it from a junk man (no relation) for $20 and it included the fans. The water side of the system is vented to the atmosphere and does not build pressure. There is a heat and pressure relief valve that will dump the water to a storage tank if there is a problem. Once I set the system up I built an insulated box around the unit. The insulation came from dumpster diving at a construction site where they were reroofing a flat roof building. Eventually I plan to surround the whole thing with a metal box. In addition I am going to build a back up power supply system using a 12 volt car battery and a convertor to power the system should I lose regular electrical power. This will run the system until it cools down. To operate the system you build a fire in the wood stove. The stove has a forced draft that is controlled by the temperature of the water. When the water temperature is less that 155 degrees F the fan is on and when the temperature rises above 165 degrees it shuts off. I found this temperature to work best for me. Inside there is a thermostat that controls the fan motors on the heat exchanger. You set the temperature you want the shop to be just like you do your thermostat in your house. I was pleasantly surprised at how much better it works this year. Originally I had to be careful not to make to large a fire as I can easily overheat the water. In addition to the wood I also burn waste oil in this system. I get some heat from burning the oil and I get rid of my oil. I am going to do some more work on this system. It is the round tank just above the front of the furnace. The oil is metered in through a needle valve and drips on a large steel plate in the top of the firebox. I will continue to modify and improve this system. I am open to any suggestions for improvements and I will answer any questions you may have. John
The Radiant heat in the floor works great. One shop I was in ,24,000 sq/ft. used it. Used a Gas fired boiler. Cost was good considering the size of the shop. Working on the floor was pleasure and the cars dried up quickly. I always thought I would be good Idea to heat the Anti-freeze with solar collectors. The Old Tinbasher
Since posting way back, post #155, I sold my shop and moved into the pole building on my property. We insulated the walls and ceiling and doors and installed a Detroit Radiant 100K/65K BTU dual stage gas fired tube heater down the middle of the building. This unit is better than the Dayton units I had in my old shop. I don't have natural gas so I have to run it on LP.
what a timely thread bump. I just got the swamp cooler working on the house a few minutes ago, and will do the one on the shop soon.
I want so badly to build this, but every time the local scrap yard gets a stainless container just about the right size or shape for a start, it is so doggone expensive even at scrap prices, that I am saddened to think I may never get to build this. I know it looks outdoor bbq grille design, but I can easily change it a little to make it controllable for indoor use without ruining the cool style. In the meantime I have been using a thick metal fireplace insert, free standing without the actual house fireplace around it. I did some welding to make it free standing on a concrete pad to radiate much better, and put it on a concrete base in the corner. It has the the cool looking well sealed glass and iron fireplace doors that came with it, and looks like a cross between a tight control fireplace with glowing fire-glass windows and something out of the Nautilus nuke furnace in 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. In the winter I like sitting in front of the hot fire doors with flickering glowing windows, while grading papers, or enjoying a hot meal after a nice cold bike ride. The fire glass sure adds atmosphere. WHY BE ORDINARY ?
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