I know there are quite a few of you guys that are working and building in one car garages. I just bought my first house and im very happy I have a garage, but would be much happier if it wasn't so chilly! What are you guys using to heat your small work spaces, where did you get it, and what did it cost? Thanks in advance!
I've been working in the driveway. In the garage I have a quartz heater that cost me 49.00 @ Sam's Club. I also have a propane convection heater (Lowe's about the same price if I recall) I run it for 5 minutes to knock the chill off then the quartz heater is all it takes to keep me comfortable with a sweatshirt on.
There's a Heating and A/C section on the Garage Journal forum with a lot of information. http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/
An old Mobil Home Furnace works great in my 2 -car garage, converted from LP to natural gas and tap into my home gas line, The nice thing is that it has the fan on bottom of the unit to blow heat over the floor and you can use the fan in the summer for cooling also. I picked my unit up for about $60.00 and spent another $200 for hook up parts and stainless steel chim. Chris
Im in wisconsin and use a torpedo heater with kerosene. Kinda noisy but it heats up fast. It has a thermostat so it wont run constantly. I picked it up on cr##gs##st for a reasonable price. It was 8 degrees today and it was 65 in the garage.
......I did mind for about $2,000....all depands if you have power and gas to it,insulation,good doors and windows.....buy a good heating unit....
I like the torpedo heaters too, but I think it may be overkill. A few guys with one car garages run one baseboard heater on each side and it works pretty good. Im looking for something fast, cheap, and easy for now. Ill look at real heat over the summer when I can spend more time instead of shivering, haha.
Make sure its fully insulated & that the door seals pretty good, please get a carbon-monoxide detector, the best way is prob a hanging heater, but it depends on you buget.
couldn't afford chimney pipe for my wood stove this year, but for now i am using a little torpedo style propane heater. keeps the uninsulated one bay warm even with temps in the teens. borrowed it from a buddy he paid under $200 for it at lowes.
I would tap into the house heater for this garage you talk about ,If the layout is not tricky .......
Overkill? Nope, that sucker will warm up your space right away. Just make sure that you have your side door sorta' cracked open. On a cheaper budget, get one of the round kerosene heaters, I have a 20X20 studio and it warms it up real nice in the middle of the midwest winters. http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs...27X-_-100045793&locStoreNum=3021&marketID=129 Chris
Probably the best two pieces of advice listed. A very well insulated one car garage shouldn't be too hard to keep up to comfortable working conditions. If you are working at a work bench one or two 500 watt halogen work lights will keep things warm enough right in that area to be fairly comfortable. I've got no insulation in the little one car garage at my place and the door is a royal pain to try to open from inside so it's a small torpedo heater aimed at the door that will keep things up to working conditions when I get time to work out there.
get yourself a a/c split unit unit with a heat pump application- that way you get two in one- in summer you get the cooling and humidity control, and in winter (if you are in a milder part of the state) you reverse the flow- evap becomes condensor - and you blow the heated air indoors.. just make sure its sized properly
Yeah, Chris, I think that what im going to end up going with. I was trying to avoid kerosene until I found out a gas station within a mile of my house has it. We used to run those round ones when I was a kids when mom didnt want to pay the gas bill, haha. They do some damage and a great cost. I think eventually I will tap into the houses gas supply and do something a little more permanent. Insulation is pretty good. The house next door to me burned down and if had a little affect on my garage. Mew siding and new outside wall fully insulated with a new triple pane window. The door is okay at best, but its at a bit of an angle on the ground, so I can only do so much.
I thought about the vent too John, but there are non that even com close at all. Thats the first thing I looked for, but I have a gas line on the inside wall of the garage and figured I could get a small furnace in there somehow. Who knows, im young, dumb, and broke, but im brave and like to experiment, haha.
I've got a small oil filled radiator type electric heater I leave on all the time this time of year - doesn't keep the shop warm but it does keep it 10-15 degrees above the outside temp. Cuts down on how long it takes to knock the chill off when I get ready to work.
You'll likely be breaching some construction and fire codes going that route, and this could give an insurance company grounds to walk away from a claim if anything rotten happens. The main problem is that any ductwork directly connecting the house to the garage provides a potential pathway for toxic fumes and gasses to be pushed back into the house during a fire. We tend to store some nasty stuff in the garage sometimes, and if a fire starts out there it could be bad news for anyone sleeping in the house. edit: Just an afterthought, but I think carbon monoxide was also a major driver for isolating garage areas from the rest of the house in the building codes. A car left running in a closed garage was a danger recognized long ago, and the codes were adapted to prevent this. Ken
just remember, young dumb and broke wont work on the insurance report should the place burn down- get any heating install cleared with your insurance company
go with the a/c unit- no open flames, and only fire hazards I came accross in Iraq was acouple overheated circuit boards. but there were reasons 4 that that shouldnt apply in the real world. probly need 4 tons- but could get away with installing a 2 1/2 ton on opposite walls. start out with one and add another if needbe and when finances allow- for the most part u can install yourself, not a biggy if you can flare a copper line
Ken hit the nail on the head, Always better to be safe than sorry! Kerosene should only be used when properly vented. A propane heater would propably be safer and produce far less fumes and residue in the garage.
I use the same radiator electric heater when I work in the garage on weekends. Turn it on when I get up and after breakfast and coffee the garage is warm enough to work with a sweatshirt. Might be different next week when it is supposed to be in the 20s in North Texas
Make sure any heater with an ignition source is at least two feet off the ground. You don't need a fire if you spill some thing with flamable fumes like gas!
I put in a sealed unit forced air furnace, it pulls air from outside and has a sealed box so if you spill some gas you won't kiss the sky, I hung it up in the rafters. The only real trouble with it is that you have to keep the heat at 34 or the water from the condensate line freezes and locks the damn thing out. Other than that the unit is safe and keeps the joint warm. It might set you back a grand for this unit plus run some gas lines out. Consider something than does not have the capability to ignite your shop on fire through vapor flash.
kerosene heater here, just have good insulation and the heat stays a long time between the firing of these heaters, works great. make sure it is run really lean so theres no fumes and you're set.
I bought a used home furnace ,tapped into the natural gas,installed a flue pipe and it heats a 14x23 inclosed carport just fine
Not good, You do not want your garage heat sharing the house. Your wife will kill you because of the smell. I went on Craigslist and bought a used electric house furnace, ran 220 to it, installed duct work and a thermostat. Works great for about $300.00
This 220v electric unit heater is what I use in my garage. I was lucky, I found this at the Waterdown swap meet a couple of years back for 50 bucks, so I think I spent more on the wire than I did on the heater itself. This little unit is terrific, it'll heat my un-insulated garage up to 60 degrees within 30 minutes on the coldest of nights, and turns on with the flick of a switch. This heater works for me because I don't regularly spend 8 hour days out there all the time, so I don't have to worry about the electric bills eating me alive. Someone who needs heat out there all the time might want to look at making the investment for a combustable gas system with appropriate venting for cheaper fuel costs. I'm not sure how much they want for these units brand new, but when you look at the price of installing properly rated venting systems for combustion furnaces, you might just find something like this to be competitive if you aren't going to be out there all the time anyhow. Ken Here's a pic of the heater and the line stat.
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