what do you about your cold shop?

I rent a one car non insulated "garage". a hot angle grinder is the only thing to keep my fingers from falling off!

 

Keep it warm...I am installing raidiant floor heat powered by my outside wood boiler I heat the house with...It is cheap even with buying wood from the local pallet factory. there scrap is avaliable for 140 bucks a load takes 7 loads a year..and yes we run it year round because I heat the water for it too...

 

Montgomery Ward gas stove. $17.00

 

......I have hot water heat from the house.....

 

I've got a 30x40 shop and bought 3 heater/ac units from a motel 6 when they did a remodel, paid 50.00 a piece for them, keeps the shop 73 degrees year round, highest electic bill 73.00

 

125000 btu coal furnace works great for a32x48 garage

 

My shop is 24x48 and fully insulated. Our winter consist of a couple frost so winters are a blessing for me to get a break from the heat.

 

I am just like you. At my age I hate working in a cold shop. For the past year I have been insulating my stud walls with R19 fiberglas bats then, over that I added 3/4 in polystyrene sheets with an R5 value. Over that I have added 1/4 in hardboard (pegboard without the holes). My small natural gas heater does the job keeping it warm enough now. I spent about $500. My ceiling was already well insulated.

 

I've got a 1000 sq. ft. block garage, 12 ft. ceiling with blown in in 16' insulation. About 7 years ago, I had a heat pump installed. It is great-will keep the place 45° to 50° down into the teens without the emergency resistance heat. I've found it's cheaper to run a wick type kerosene heater (well up off the floor) overnight if it's going to be around 0° for any period of time. This way my peak usage rate stays lower. Costs so far have been a max of $140.00/mo., usually under $100.00/mo. plus you have AC in the summer.

 

I'm in work this week getting insulation hung and sheeting put up in my 24'x24' detached. (Also have an attached 24x24, but that's just for the daily's.) Have an old LB White propane, unvented hanger that I fuel from a pair of 100# cylinders, but have also ducted the heat down to the floor. I'll also need to install a carbon monoxide detector as a safety alarm, and do plan to add a combustion air intake duct from the outside.
Last year, I used up a bunch of propane, not having any ceiling. Just getting into the 30's here, so jury is still out on how well my setup will work. I plan to run it at about 45 until I'm in it, but I'll have to see how much that old pilot flame will use up in gas.

For those of you with hangers, I have a thought procees that it makes no sense to vent that heat up near the ceiling, even with the directional louvers. Heated air rises, so it seems to me that it should be ducted down to, and blown across the floor. Seems that it would be quite a bit more efficient that way.

Also.....SAFETY, SAFETY, SAFETY! Get a carbon monoxide detector in that shop, especially you guys with torpedo heaters or wood stoves. You might be surprised how much carbon monoxide can get built up in a real short time.

Roger

 

Built my new garage last year, insulated it well and hung a gas furnace inside. even on real cold days I can keep it very comfortable and only need to wear normal clothes to work in.

 

Resnor natural gas heaters are the way to go, its -10 here now but its 60 in my garage

 

It's 10F as I type this. My Summer project was to insulate the garage and install heat so I'd be able to work on a Winter project. I got it insulated and sheetrocked, but didn't stumble across an inexpensive source of heat until yesterday - a hanging natural gas heater.

Now to install it...

 

well, by comparison, 100 for me is "nice outside"

 

That reminds me of when the wife and I go someplace in south in the winter and people are bundled up because it's only in the 50's. To us at that time of the year that's warm

 

I just built my attached garage, and I put in r16 insulated overhead doors, r50 in the roof and r30 in the walls.

For the actual heat I have in floor, and its in the process of getting hooked up to my house's geo thermal system.

Should be nice and toasty!

 

Propane 200 gallon tank feeding my 50,000 btu wall mount heater with fan. Summer an old window unit to cool ,works fine both summer and winter.

 

Hydronic radiat floor heat, nothing like laying on warm concrete!!