Winter's here. Do you heat your shop? How?

A pair of these and a lot of coffee,.....

 

My shop is 40 x 60 and I'm mostly a weekend warrior and heat as needed with 350,000 btu salamander during winter. I built a "winter room" in one corner thats 15 x25 and heat with a pellet stove. Not trying to heat up all the metal in shop that way. The pellet stove runs on a thermostat and can set temp from 50 to 90 at $4.00 a day/24hrs, $8.00 for the hole weekend.

 

I moved to Miami

 

1088 sq. ft., half with 12ft. ceiling, other half with 8ft..Two Unit Heaters in adjacent corners [one for each half], hot water plumbed into the house oil furnace hot water base board system..On its own zone [of course] with temp set at 58° with thermostat on center of wall common to both halves, I bring it up to 61° or 62° if needed..The fans on the heaters have variable speed controls to bring the fan speed down to about 70%, which I found to be more effective as the run time is shorter do to not "cooling" the water so much at initial start up of each cycle; and allows me to dial either fan up or down depending which half of the garage I am messing around in for little more heat....Average run time is 2.4 hrs per day over the six month time frame that I have the heat turned on..

 

Yup. Sometimes I have to close the garage door.

 

And learned how to speak Spanish.

 

I usually just open the doors.

 

3 weeks almost...and the shop is still standing

Typical new england yankee goes to scrapyard and finds a used indoor wood boiler and put it in the shop, and then finds enough used mismatched brands metalbestos chimney pieces....then bought new underground piping and a bunch of fittings/valves....and I am now heating the shop and the house. Got some tips from some hambers on this, so it's not all my fault. Free wood, where we can get it, so far.

I was using 150 gallons of oil per winter month at 60 degree setting, for the last 4 years in the house, plus heating the shop with a small wood stove.

It may all burn down, but I can't take the cold house anymore

 

the floor heat is the best but i suggest you dig around the foundation and put 2" pink foam to keep from losing heat to the ground. i did this along the inside of my foundation before i poured the floor.
neat thing about the radiant is everything touching the floor is warm. so when the doors get opened or the exhaust fan is run it takes a long time for the temperature inside the shop to drop.

 

Wood furnace and a well insulated shop, and lots of hot tea.

 

My 165000 btu furnace crapped so i'm down to a 220 volt construction heater. I does the job even up here in Canada. Trick is not to turn the heat off altogether as recovery takes too long. I like it warm to.

 

A ceiling hung 75000 B.T.U. garage heater from Menards, its on a thermostat so I turn it all the way down when when Im done.

 

Wood stove with quality chimney, only burn the stove when I am in there. Otherwise, Rinnai direct vent kerosene heater. Size of shop 1200 sf, ten foot ceilings. 6" insulation in walls, 18" in the ceiling, all blown in. I live in Maine, we have long cold winters. I spend about 400 a year for kerosene, the wood is free, just labor involved there. Leave Rinnai at 50' except when I am in there, I turn it up a little. But I have to maintain some heat because of stuff I have in there that can't freeze. Beats the shit out of 10 below zero in an unheated garage!
I have other outbuildings unheated just for storage of projects, materials etc.

 

Has it's own hot air furnace, bathroom, fridge, cable TV and oh beer in the fridge and a lift. I'm thinking of moving my bed in there as well

 

a KWEROSENE! WELL! I Never!

 

How much do those Modine Hot Dawg heaters cost to buy? I can install myself, but wondering what the price is to buy outright. I see them online from $500 to $850.

 

Small bay and a half garage, well insulated. My electric ceiling hung unit heater heats it up pretty quick to about 50 deg. Good enough for working.

 

Overhead heater and a kick ass wood burner with dual fans on it. Only use the overhead to start with while building a fire in the wood stove. Go through around six or seven cords every winter. But it stays very nice in there as I work in it every day all winter and in Nevraska it gets cold...

 

Easiest way to get the air out is pull a vacuum on the system.

 

wood stove keeps me nice and warm like 80 and my shop is 30 x60

 

I have a vacuum pump too. Tell me more please?

 

Garage/shop - I plumbed into the house heat, just ran a duct out to a 3rd bay ceiling vent.

Hangar - large electric heater.

It doesn't get REAL cold here - maybe dips below 20° once or twice a season.

 

Central heat & air. Stays 70* year round.

 

I have a 50 x 52 shop split with a wall down the center. I have a radiant tube heater on one side and a forced air house furnace on the other side. Both LP, which by the way I bought this summer for $1.09 per gallon. The radiant heat is used the most. It is strange heat, as you can still see your breath but be warm as toast. It heats objects, not air so it is like being out in the sun on a cold day. All the car dealerships have these in their shops around this area.

 

I has a geothermal heat/cooling unit put in my shop when I had it built 8 years ago. I highly recommend it as long as the installer knows how to size it and put it together. JC

 

Air will accumulate at any high spots in the system. It's very tricky to get all of the air out of a loop such as a radiant heating system. I'm an engineer and I've worked with similar systems, but with a reverse intention. The systems I've worked on are a closed loop grid of PEX tubing filled with refrigerant under a concrete slab, used to form the sheet of ice in an ice rink. We had dedicated air bleeds at any high points in the system. After filling the system with a secondary refrigerant (in my case, a calcium chloride brine solution), I'd circulate the refrigerant with the pump and bleed the air from the high point every three hours for a few days. The amount of air released will be less and less every day until you eventually get it all.

In your case, I'd pull a vacuum with your vacuum pump and set up a vacuum gauge to monitor it. Use the vacuum you've created to pull the liquid into the heating loop. Circulate the liquid if you can with a simple pump set up. Air will naturally work its way out of the system at the high point if you circulate it. The same principles I used should apply to your system.

 

I use a ceiling mounted Electric heater, have fairly good insulation and am on a program where on occasion they can shut me of for a few hours during peak demand.
I get the power at 1/2 price and it works okay, especially if i remember to turn it up in the morning (from ~55 to 70)if it it cold and i plan to be out in the evening.
you can see in in the upper view of my avatar

 

Kool! I'll have to give that a shot.

 

24 x32x8 insulated walls and ceiling. I bought a brand new PTAC or PTHP (forget which) like they have in motel rooms. Packaged terminal air conditioning/ packaged terminal heat pump; it was around $700 a couple of years ago. I don't run it every night, but when I do it warms it up to 55 unless it's really cold out. I'm usually shutting it down after about an hour. If I'm going to spend a whole day out there I turn it on the night before, or at least a couple of hours before I go out. Never have noticed a big jump in the electric bill. It's 220 volt, so it runs pretty cheap.

my 2¢
.bjb

 

Separate heat and air unit for finished 3 car garage--gift from my wife---works very well both summer and winter.