Technical Winter shop heat

5000 BTU 220 volt electric ceiling mounted heater with blower fan for my single car garage. Heats the place up pretty nice after a while. Turn it on. Walk away for an hour or so. Come back and get to work. Works great and is cheap enough for the amount of times I actually have to use it. Think it cost me under $300.00 to purchase. good investment.

Andy

 

I use a double barrel stove which I made from a kit I picked up at Northern Tool to heat my garage. The garage is not insulated, 26x32 ft, and I can easily get it up to 65° F in below freezing weather.

I painted it with Rustoleum BBQ paint and it has held up really well for the past two years of use.

On the top barrel, the lid comes off so it can double as a smoker too. And yes, the barrels were food grade containing coconut butter.

 

That is exactly what I am building this week end for my shop.

 

You will not be disappointed. They put out some serious heat. The first time I used it I sweated myself out of the garage.

I found the best way to go about it is to put in a bunch of kindling and several split pieces of wood. This will give it a good size fire that will get the garage heated up. Then, I just add a piece of wood every 45 min to an hour, kind of like letting it idle, to keep the garage warm without too much heat coming off it. I put a fan behind it set on low to keep the air moving across it.

 

Nice, my shop is like an ice box and the propane heaters just are not cutting it any more. Thanks for the tips

 

There are a lot of setups that take up a lot of space here. Like the double barrel contraption above.
I have a 24 x26 garage and am glad I don't have the space eating thing like that or even a dangerous hanging open pilot heater.
I have one of these gas fired electronic pilot hanging radiant tube heaters.
They are not affected by shop fumes because they take in outside air for combustion and they don't have a standing pilot flame. (electronic ignition)
They intake and exhaust on the end wall of the garage.
I have a 10' tube and it works great.
They warm the floor and everything in the garage, not just the air.
Hard to beat and cheap to run.
http://calcana.com/garage-heaters/garage-heater-gallery/

 

You know, I got crazy lucky when I bought my house. I was looking for something with a shop but never dreamed what I would end up with. It came with a four car garage, that is deep enough to easily park cars in normally but with enough room to squeeze cars in front of them sideways up against the wall. Plus the property also came with a two car work shop with 12' doors and about 30' deep. That building had been set up for climate controlled car storage with a double and single wrack. So 6 cars could be kept. I kept the single lift and converted the building to a work shop. I think it is better insulated than my house. It has a small hanging natural gas heater on the ceiling in the middle and a variable speed 6 foot ceiling fan. If you turn the furnace and the fan on, it will run you out in a matter of minutes and hold heat for hours. Even with no heat on for a week or more in the winter, I have never seen the temperature drop below 45 degrees. I count my lucky stars every time I head out there!

 

With a shop like that,I wouldn't need a house!

 

I'd love to have one of those but 2 to 3 Thousand is not in the budget right now. And the drum set up is about 200 bucks.

 

My 40x60 shop will go from -20 to T shirt in 4 hrs with my wood stove.


I enjoy cuttin and splitting. Ground the rakers off my saw and now it takes two or three hours for a weeks heat.

 

BCT, my telephone poles here aren't even that straight!

 

Make a cup of tea...hilarious, I read that and thought..."this guy HAS to be back in the UK". Looked to the left, sure enough.

 

Only thing boiling in my shop is my blood! Joe

 

I'm going to be building a shop in South Dakota - will have water heating pipe put into the concrete when it is poured - for a radiant heat based system. There is nothing like having radiant heat coming out of the floor - makes it a whole lot better when you're lying on it working on some damn contraction we call 'Hot Rods'.

 

When you lay out your tubing on the floor, be sure if you ever plan on installing any equipment lift, tire machine, etc that you want to mount permanently to the floor, you have a drawing of where to drill so you don't hit your tubes. A buddy of mine installed that type heating system in his new shop. In his haste to pour concrete (trying to beat the weather) he neglected to do that. Now when he wants to install his lift it's going to be a crap shoot, or he may just use a four post that doesn't necessarily have to be bolted down. He did mark where the bathroom and office walls were going to go. Just a thought. Joe

 

I have a 28 X 24 "shop" garage that is well insulated and I have a nice hanging gas heater. But every winter I put up a curtain (actually ii is an old car cover for a Chrysler Imperial) over the entire garage door because all the cold air comes in around the door. You wont beleive how much that helps keep the heat in! Its a little inconvenient to take down when you need to use the garage door, but worth it. Plus in the winter I seldom have to get in thru the garage door after I have my project car in there.

 

For new construction on a concrete slab, I think that's one of the best options out there.
My bro-in-law did that with his 30' x 60' and runs it off-peak with an electric water heater. He keeps it at around 65 degrees all winter and it's dirt cheap to heat.
Wish I'd have done that with my garage when I built it.

 

the radiant heat is the best except you can't really use it for part time heat. the floor takes too long to heat up and cool down so be prepared to set the thermostat and leave it alone. my barn is heated this way and in the spring and fall when the temps here fluctuate [one week warm/ one week cooler, one cold night/warm day etc it is hard to regulate. when it is a steady cold temp , tho the furnace might not run all day.

 

Really good information from you guys on the radiant heat! I would not have thought about having to drill anchor holes for things like lifts, pedestal machinery mounts, etc -- you guys just saved me some REAL drama! Also, the point about it being a long and steady process - not something to rapidly heat up . . . great point. Maybe the ultimate system is to have a radiant heat setup, with a more traditional propane/natural gas 'kicker' to help when you need to rapidly raise the temp. I can see me keeping the temp around 60 or 65, but might need more warmth in the building if I was getting ready to paint or something like that. Good stuff gang!

 

my thought was to tap in another zone with just a small hanging water unit for those times i need quick heat. i have in the past just used my portable propane salamander.

 

Been using a 125,000 BTU kero/diesel torpedo fueled by #2 diesel for several years, but a mishap put it outta commission a few weeks ago in my 1600 sq. ft. shop. It did a great heating job but noisy as all hell.
So when I went online shopping for a replacement I found a radiant heater fueled by kero or diesel. "Pro Temp" brand @ Northern Tool, $250. Did a good bit of reading and decided to try it, as I was gonna have to order parts to fix old one, and figgered I couldn't get by without heat till I got parts and fixed the old torpedo.
Well , I'll tell you now, that new heater is great! Almost no noise at all, economical fuel usage and plenty of heat. At 70,000 BTU, it doesn't bring heart up quite as fast as the old 125K torpedo, but it's great not to have to listen to a 747 taking off in my shop! LOL!!!!!!
When I do get around to fixing that torpedo, it's gonna be for sale!

 

I have the in floor heat. My garage is 24x24. A friend helped me put 600 ft of plastic pipe under the new floor and we run it with a small pump and a hot water heater. set the thermostat at 62, and leave it there from fall to spring. Works great and its cheep to use. Bob

 

I have the option of installing gas heater but I have continued burning wood in garage so in the event of armageddon I can continue with my project during the cold winter months. Newer baffled wood stove such as mine can be placed 6" from wall if cement board is applied to wall and meet requirements of insurance. I was attending a inspection and the insurance company had one more hurdle for victim..they wanted a bollard in front of stove?

 

100% put good money in the slab if you are building new. Preplanning is a must. Put plumbing under floor even if you don't plan on a bathroom for 20 years. Even if you don't have gas, water and sewage now. It will make your or the next guy's life so much easier down the road. You can put the radiant heat tubing in the slab and hook it up years later when you add a furnace. I say to put reinforcing wire and the fiberglass strands.

WHATEVER you do make SURE to put plastic under the slab and go thicker than 4". I would say 6".

Put an electrical panel larger than you will ever dream of using.

 

I have a 10' and a 20' both given to me (new). My ceiling is only 10' high so I will mount these along one wall (28') at 45 degrees. It will heat the area of the shop (28x30) that I work in. The 10' one will be used to augment the 20' one or simply used separately on cooler days. I should be able to paint in that enviroment.

 

Thats how I set mine up Dale. There are times you just need some quick heat.

 

one of the best things i ever did...used freezer panels for insulation. they were 15 bucks apiece for 4x9's, i have 9 foot ceiling, 5 1/2 in thick yellow foam. i cut them to fit between each stud and sealed around it with spray foam. air tight, bug proof. i was out of town 2 weeks, no heat on , below zero outside and 45 inside. also, 2" foam down 4' around the cement keeps the frost from getting under the floor. wood heat, always wear a t shirt no matter what it is outside. 28x36-should be 30x40 !

 

I went slab heat in my 28x44 shop I built in 2012. Keep the thermostat at 55* all winter long. When I'm working on stuff, it's often still too warm. Even if you don't plan to use it, Pex is so cheap, there's no reason NOT to put it in when pouring a slab.

 

Many moons ago a friend and I rented a 40 x 40 drafty, with many wall holes building to work on our race cars in. This place had a concrete floor.
We built a 2 barrel stove similar to Hussey's except it was air tight.
In the winter when we went in there after work and it was freezing or colder, it would take 2 hours to get comfortable with a roaring fire so we devised a quick boost system to get started.
After getting a big fire going in the stove, and with the cars moved to the far side, we poured about a quart of old 50% drained out alcohol/nitroethane on the floor...After it spread out to a thin film about 6 feet in diameter we touched it off and stepped outside. It burned with a very low flame about 6 inches high and almost colorless.(slight yellow tinge). after about 5 minutes we went back in. The fumes had cleared and the place was tolerable warm. The stove kept up easily after that.

 

Sounds like a Darwin Award candidate