Technical Shop heat question

My shop was built in 2 sections, Me and Dad built the 1st 24x36 with 10 ft ceilings. Later I had the Omish to build another 24x36 with 13 ft ceiling on to the 1st. I have a large wood furnace in 1 section and pipe heat in the other section. Due to some health problems, the wood cutting is getting harder to do. Can't afford to buy it around here, $100 for a small pick up load is crazy. Has anyone had experience with the pellet stoves? A friend of mine son heated his house last winter for $250 with one, 1 story with basement. I know nothing about them but plan to do some research. Thought maybe someone on here may have 1 in his shop to give me some insight.

 

You would be better off with a fuel oil or electric heat. HRP

 

Pellet stoves are awesome . Cheap and efficient but you are at the pellet manufacturer's whims. Right now it is cheap but you know all good things come to an end.

 

I used a pellet stove to heat my old 1000 square foot home in the mid west. It was in the basement. Got hot as all get out down there. But with house fan running it pulled the heat up stairs.
They heat very well. This was in the late 90s early 2000s when gas company's were jamming us up on natural gas. Pellets were about 2.00 a bag. 50lbs. I would buy a pallet at a time to get that price.

I've since sold that home and moved on. We now are all electric and I heat my garage/shop with a 220 hanging heater.

How well you've insulated your space is very important.



Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

I heat my shop with a wood burning stove as well but have always been concerned about painting in it in the winter months when I have the stove going. I sort of work around it and do all my prep work etc in the winter and then paint in the summer months.

 

They make inserts to burn pellets in your woodstove or make your own insert. A lot of people use pellet stoves around here. We are lucky to have a pellet manufacturer close by. I don't use them. Yet.

 

I heat my house with 2 infrared heaters, 3 if it gets down around 0 or the wind is bad. It's just me and my wife so we only heat 3 rooms and a hallway. Can't afford the base board heat, my electric bill is crazy anyway. When they came around and put digital meters on, it went up. I found a pellet stove that heats 2800 sq ft, 65000 btu at Tractor Supply for $1299. Cheapest place for pellets is Rural King, $3.19 a 40 lb bag. Didn't check what they were by the skid. Kerosene, natural gas, and electric around here is high. That's why I bought the wood furnace, I couldn't afford the heating oil I had before.

 

I don't have any experience with pellet stoves personally, but I know up my way in the Northeast, folks will buy the fuel by the pallet (around $250/50 bags) and burn the whole thing in a season in addition to running their gas or oil furnace (a bit less). The bags weigh about 40 lbs I think. The hoppers usually hold 50 to 150 lbs. Some will burn Corn and other grains (biomass). They need electricity to run. Most units are rated for 2000 - 2500 sqf.

As far as your shop goes, what's your insulation situation like? That makes an enormous difference. You've got 4872 sqf (56028 cubic feet). I run a little 15,000-25,000 BTU propane fire stool heater in my 380 sqf shop and get pretty toasty now that my ceiling has R30 in it. With little to no insulation, you're looking at needing over 150,000 BTUs to get up around 63º in January. With reasonable insulation it's a little less than half that and if you're really buttoned up, around 45,000. Having your heat sources adequately sized makes a big difference in efficiency.

This big bastard looks up to the task if you've got insulation though:
http://www.woodlanddirect.com/Wood-...2000-sqft/Breckwell-SP8500-Multi-Fuel-Furnace

I hate Oil heat, personally, because you never know when they're going to show up or what the huge bill is going to look like ($400 or $700?) because prices tend to fluctuate quite a bit. My house has it and I'm trying to get switched over to gas before winter. Oil is also usually more expensive than Propane which is more expensive than pellet/biomass if I remember correctly.

You could look into those Mini-Split Heat Pumps too.

 

IR heaters aren't all that efficient in my experience and electric baseboard is THE WORST. I'd suggest looking into heat pumps and particularly the mini-splits if you're handy with plumbing/wiring or have friends/family who can install it for you (HVAC companies gouge for these installs).

 

In Iowa most every insurance company will not allow solid fuel heat in garages/shops because of the fuel in vehicles. I had planned to install a wood furnace in my 25x38 garage until the insurance appraiser said "absolutely no solid fuel heat". So I would check with your insurance to see what your options are.

 

Winter already?

 

100 degree heat index here today.

 

Cheapest, easiest, safest way. I heat my barn, cellar and enclosed porch this way. Barely adds to the electric bill. The Woodshop series are the scratched and dented bargains. 110v or 220v. Simple wiring with Romex. I used to woodwork and paint in my barn, so I couldn't have anything that would ignite combustibles. Now it has gas and oil fumes all over the place. (I'm not good with gaskets).
http://www.sshcinc.com/woodshopseries.htm
This system heats the floor/objects and people first then the heat rises and warms the air. Feels like you're standing out in the sun.


I just wouldn't turn my back on a solid fuel burning stove, my luck would dictate that my house/garage would burn down for sure.

Sent from my iPhone using H.A.M.B.

 

I totally agree with this. I'm in north central Minnesota, but I winter in Florida. My shop is well insulated, and I don't heat it when I'm gone. My friend and neighbor uses it occasionally to work on his snowmobiles. He says he has never seen it below 20 degrees. inside. There are twenty below days up here a lot.

 

Winter is around the corner! Heating oil went out of sight a couple years ago around here, gas or propane was cheap. Everybody switched over and then you know what happened, gas went up. My shop is insulated except for the one side. It has a metal ceiling and I haven't done it yet. I'm going to blow it with about 10 inches. The wood stove is on that side and it'll get to better than 80 degrees in no time. You have to keep the wood furnace shut down most of the time unless it's real cold and the wind is blowing hard. I try to keep fire in it all the time so the dang concrete floors stay decently warm. Wish I had the heated floors like i've seen, wouldn't take much to heat a shop if the floors were heated.

 

Insulating the ceiling will be like night and day as far as keeping it nice in there goes.

Another thing to look into is passive solar air heating. I built a small hot box off the side of my shop (about 24 x 48 x 6") that only gets about 4 hours of direct sunlight in the winter and it kept it from getting a deep enough chill for fluids to freeze out there without me having to run the electric radiator last winter.

If your south facing wall gets good sunlight, building one would pay for itself pretty quick. You basically build an insulated box on the side of your shop with ducts at the bottom and top into your shop and a clear glass or plexi face (they make stuff specifically for this now too) and put 3 layers of black screen on a frame at an angle inside. The sun heats the screen and convection pulls cool air from the bottom of your shop and pushes warm air out the top.

 

I've used heat in my main garage for years (30x40 with 9' ceilings). Aded on another 26x34. The last 12' of that addition is partitioned off for nothing but model building and magazine collection and I use a single 110V oil filled baseboard heat in that single room with good success. I also have AC in just that room. 12'x26' of fun!

The main 26x22 left of the new addition had no heat in it. Walls are batt insulation and ceilings have 9" blown fiberglass in them. I would crank on a LP 2 burner "Mr. Heater" bottle mounted heater and have the room in shirt sleeve temps in a half an hour or so. Did that for a couple years.

Last winter I bit the bullet and put a hanging heater in the 26x22 section and liked it so well I put another in the original 30x40. There is a wall between the 2 additions with a 9' door so I can open it into one big room or treat it as 2 separate rooms. Works fantastic! Shouldn't have waited so long. I had a gas line (city utilities) run to the garage. Requires almost no electricity, bill for heating both rooms is less for the balance of last winter than I spent the year before on the original single room. No comparison. The heaters I used can be run on natural gas or propane. Come with the conversion kit.

Very happy with these:
http://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_200577749_200577749

Shop around a little, I found my second one with the thermostat kit for less than I found the first one. Tractor supply, Farm King, Northern Tools, etc all carry them.

Spark

 

Those tall ceilings eat up the heat for sure, mine are 11 feet also. I have this 220 volt unit to heat my shop but the fan could be a little more powerful, I built the mount to direct the heat to the area I'm working in.



Ceiling fans can be bought used at garage sales, that's where I got this one, they really help distribute the heat.




I've thought about those acordian room dividers like you see in conference rooms etc, they would be handy to close off areas not being used but I'm sure they aren't cheap.
Also considered those plastic hanging strips like you see in big walk-in freezers.

 

Check out corn burning stoves. They burn dry corn. A friend has one in his house and it burns less than a bushel on the coldest day. It will also burn pellets and rice coal. You can buy whichever is cheapest depending on the year. Sometimes corn is way cheap. Especially if you can buy it by the ton at the grain mill.

 

With corn stoves you have to have good closed storage for the corn or you end up with rats and mice everywhere. I heat my 50 x 52 shop with propane. It is divided with a wall at the 20 foot mark. Have a forced air house furnace on that side which has my paint booth in it. The 32 foot side has a LP radiant tube heater down the center of it. It is well insulated and I burn about 400 gallons of LP a winter if I am out there a lot. I tried a wood furnace, but it took hours to heat it up if I hadn't had the heat on for a few days. Now I can go out there flip a switch and have heat in about 5 minutes. I buy the LP in the summer when it's cheapest and it has been under $1.00 a gallon for the last 3 years.

 

I would look into solar elecricity and electric heat..Around here there are deals, installation free with set 20 year monthly fees..Check around..

 

i use to heat my 1500 square foot shop with a pellet stove. it did ok. on the border when it was really cold below 30 degrees to do body work, below 20 forget about it. shop is block with 8' insulated ceilings. it was not bad over all and much better than a noisy propane torpedo or a stinky kerosone.

 

I have a 60 x 40 shop in Oregon and I use Gas IR tube heater and I cant say enough good about it. I would do it again in a heart beat, best decision I have ever made. The highest bill I ever have had is $128.00 when it was 20 degrees outside for about 3 weeks keeping the shop at 60 degrees. Avg heating bill is around $65 to $80 for about 4 months here in Oregon. I only have 3 inches of insulation in the ceiling as well.

 

I realize Mike is not asking about anything but pellet stoves but I gotta agree, radiant heat is the way to go. You can have some ventilation and not lose all your heat.

 

Of course a wood stove is radiant but doesn't have those long tubes heating everything under it.

 

Gas, and good insulation. $40 a month average. 30 X 60 shop with 14 ft. eves. Shop's warm in 30 minutes on a chilly mourning.

 

Have you considered a waste oil furnace?

Fuel should be free to cheap.

 

Think ahead to the summer time, while you are planning how to insulate your garage/shop in the winter to keep that heat in...in the summer time, that heat stays with you, so set up a good roof style vent ahead of time before you start sealing things off.

 

I have a Mahoning outdoor burner and heat my house and tow story 32' X30' garage with it using both wood and lump coal. Use the wood when not so cold and coal when needed. Two overhead heat exchangers on each floor in the garage keeps it at 50 degrees and heat exchanger in the whole house system of the two story with heated basement house at 72. Worst winter went through 12 Tons of coal and about four cords of wood. Used to have gas but with the Marcellus shale gas lost it due to the liquid content. Back up heat in the house is propane and oil in the garage.

 

I use wood in mine, for painting and stuff that I worry might go bang around flames I found an old whole house heater unit that I changed to run on propane and installed it in a small room and it draws in outside air so not to suck in the fumes from the garage. Propane is cheaper in Oklahoma in the summer so that's when I fill up the tanks. both heat up a 30 by 50 garage.