Shop heat

[Craig Leach]

What do you guys use to heat your garage for the winter. My concerns are with gasoline leaks & shop chemicals what do you find is a safe heater?
Craig.

[su8pack1]

I've always used a kerosene torpedo heater, but this year with kerosene $6.00 a gallon I' won't be using it that much.

[TXGOAT2]

I use an AC/propane heat forced air combination unit that sits outdoors. It's designed for something like a doublewide mobile home or small business, about 2,000 sq ft in this climate. There is no flame or pilot burner inside the building. All combustion takes place outside the building. The air intake is 3 feet off the floor. It works very well, but it's possible that the heat exchanger could ignite a flammable mixture. It's certainly safer than an open flame or a red hot resistance heat element. The burner lights off, and after a minute or so, the fan comes on. When the unit cycles off, the burner shuts down and the fan runs for a couple of minutes. I don't think the heat exchanger surface ever gets hot enough to ignite fumes, unless the fan were to fail. It never smells hot. It costs too much to run all the time, but I can turn it on in hot humid weather and the building is comfortable in about 30 to 40 minutes. The heat function takes about the same time to warm it up in cold weather. The building is insulated and does not get extremely cold or hot when the unit is off. In freezing weather, I set the thermostat at about 45 F. It runs very little at that setting. I only run the AC when I'm using the building. Cost? I shudder to think what it would cost today, but it's a rather large building, with 2,000 sq. ft in the main floor area. Walls are 13' high and the attic area is open, with no ceiling. Insulation is spray foam. A ceiling would make it much easier to heat and cool.

[Burger in Spokane]

Wood stove. Heats my yet-to-be-insulated 30x36 space nicely to about 25ºf.
Outside temps below that make keeping areas farthest away warm not so warm !
As for chemicals and gas fumes, etc., it takes a pretty concentrated fume situation
to be of worry. In my space, even with dripping carbs, or painting lacquer (that
makes for some thick fumes) it still hasn't been enough to cause problems. There
is still enough fresh air movement to not have an explosion. Of course, I keep the
stove way over in a corner, away from the fume sources and run fans above the
stove to circulate the heat around the shop.

[Marv K]

'Frozen Tundra Country' here..... Did an additional 26'X24' detached garage with a 10' ceiling which I built almost 30 years ago. 'Over-lit & over-wired', it is insulated and gypsum sheeted. I was able to wrap copper piping going underground from the house for natural gas, and then had a 35,000 BTU Modine 'Hot Dawg" ceiling mount furnace installed. Thermostat gets turned completely down to 42 degrees when not there, 'cranked' to "55" if I'm going to be out there for a while. A T-shirt shortly becomes the working attire. Later, I did add 'spring' hinges to hold the 8'X16' insulated sectional overhead door for a tighter seal to the outside weather strip. 3 windows provide enough natural light for the winter. (It gets darker sooner further north of the equator!)
Quick & comfortable heat in the winter, and a 28 pint dehumidifier in the summer almost makes it too cold, allows for comfortable hobby time. Nothing gets frozen, nothing gets cooked! The 'energy-audit people' were very surprised by our usage. At today's prices, I do suspect it could add $40 for the month if we got 2-3 weeks of below-0 degrees weather. Note: I'll still be comfortable.
Just use common sense when there's paint or gasoline involved......

[Loftfield]

Here in Mama Bear country (Brevard, North Carolina), which is to say not too hot and not too cold, I choose to not heat the garage in winter. My experience across many decades has been that heated air is dry air, dries out the wood in the wheels and in the body, causing some serious problems. One Model T I bought came from Columbus, Ohio, had been in a heated garage for quite a while, (years). Wood spokes were completely loose, had to let them swim for a couple days in a $10 kiddy swimming pool to get them back to tight (and they are tight). Then had to go in to re-glue all the joints in the body frame. When it is very cold (it can get down to single digits, but very rarely) and I want to work, I use one of those kerosene torpedo heaters, mine designed to also burn diesel, cheaper than kerosene. The area in front of the blast heats in ten minutes, the rest of the 2,000 sq.ft. building in less than 30 minutes. Steel building, very high roof (barn shape), but well insulated. As a side note, last year it got down to 0F one night, water in plastic bottles had some small ice on the edges but nowhere near frozen solid. Lots of double pane Lexan windows provide much solar gain, building usually warm enough to work when the sun comes out.

My first Model T's were done as a teenager living in northeast Ohio, unheated, uninsulated, garage, kept tools on top of a very old electric heater; never again!

Sage advice for Yankees: move south, but not too far south. Tennessee and mountains of North Carolina are perfect.
We drive all year round but don't walk around all summer with wet underwear as do our more southern cousins.

[CudaMan]

I use a ceiling mounted, 240V, 17,500 BTU electric heater from Northern Tool in my 3 car insulated garage. Works great!

https://www.northerntool.com/products/p ... -50m-27553

[Bill Dizer]

I have a combination of 96% efficient propane furnace, 80,000 btu, and a 2-1/2 ton heat pump in my 30x48’ garage in central Indiana. The furnace uses a 2” exhaust plastic pipe, and if you need, the intake air for the furnace burner can also go to the outdoors. In my case, because the building is one open room, I didn’t need to provide the outside air. It has no pilot light, the burner flame is three feet off the ground, in a sealed enclosure with the intake air port on top of the unit. This gives me heat and A/C, with the heat pump as the primary source, and the furnace as backup. Total cost with me doing all the installation except for the Freon lines, which I paid a professional heating person to do, was about $4000.00. The furnace installation is pretty straight forward, following the instructions that came with it. The building is insulated with just 1/2” double foil backed styrofoam, but holds heat very well. The snow never melts off the roof! Another thing that helps is about thirty tons of pea gravel under the concrete floor for thermal mass. It stays warm most of the winter, and then helps cool the building a good part of the hottest weather in the summer.

[Rich P. Bingham]

Wood / coal stove in the "machine shop" 10'x14' room adjoining the garage space keeps it comfortable with the door open. Like Burger, enough ventilation and circulation to avoid concentrating fumes. Besides, Lizzie doesn't leak gasoline, and I drain the tank for the winter anyway.

[TXGOAT2]

My building is so tight that I found that I could not use unvented propane heat in it. In cold weather, the double pane windows and metal doors and metal electrical outlets would sweat and run water. The combination unit solved all that. If I open the outside air inlet on it, it actually causes overpressure in the building. If I had the money, I'd add a full ceiling and cover the walls with 5/8 sheetrock with 3/4 plywood around the lower 4' of the walls. That would make it a lot cheaper to heat and cool, and it would make it easier to get bright, even lighting.

[TXGOAT2]

Automotive/machine shops, like attached garages, are natural fire hazards. I'd want to be VERY careful with any space heater or hot water heater or anything else that maintained an open flame or hot element.

[Mopar_man]

I've got a mini split LG heat pump. I live in VA, so the winters are not that bad. Issue I had was that the garage was always cool in the summer and the AC didn't kick on, so I had humidity. I put in a dehumidifier and the problem was solved.

[Norman Kling]

Having lived in an area where once in my lifetime it got down to 18F above zero and most winters not often even below freezing, I don't heat my garages. But I do know of cases where the T's were parked in attached garages, even worse in garages under living quarters, where there were gas hot water heaters and the vapors from gasoline leaks caused the whole house to burn. Since we drive the T's all year around, we don't drain the tanks. One thing about the T, is that you can just have one incident where you do not turn off the gas and the float happens to stick and you get a leak unexpectedly. So if you park a T in a attached garage, use electric water heater.
It probably would not be a problem if you drain the tank before you use the heater.
Norm

[ironhorse]

I scavenged an old solar water heater set-up and put a one hundred gallon tank in the corner of the shop. When the sun heats the solar panels the pump turns on and circulates the water in the tank through the panels heating the water then when the water reaches 100 degrees another pump runs it through a fan coil unit purchased from T-Bay and hung from the ceiling. when the sun goes down the circulating pump shuts off and the water drains back down to the tank in the shop. then the pump for the fan coil unit shuts down. even on the coldest days I can keep the shop at 60 degrees somewhat cool but workable. not a solution for night time or for 2+days of overcast conditions.

[Craig Leach]

Thanks everyone,some great ideas.
Craig.

[AdminJeff]

Well... since nobody mentioned it yet, I use a modern Pellet stove with a built in convection fan in both my house and my shop. Shop is 30x50, insulated, and even when it's 15F outside (like it is right now) and the ground is frozen solid, I can get the shop to a comfy 68F. Takes about an hour each morning when the shop is freezing cold, but the pellet stove has an app that I can trigger & set the thermostat from my iPhone in bed when I wake up. I'm literally in my shop every day and it gets damn cold all winter here in Idaho. Costs me about $250 to heat it every day, all winter long. Pellets are still about $5 per bag by the pallet load (50 on a pallet) and I go thru about 50 bags each winter heating it 6-7 days a week.

If I had to do it over, I'd do the same thing again... I love wood stoves, but I hate dealing with firewood! So this is a great compromise. Stove was about $1600 with the venting piping all in. Easy to install. I clean it out about once every couple of weeks. The flame is contained and enclosed. The Stove is vented and draws its combustion air from the outside.

Jeff

[havnfun]

I have a wood stove, that I installed when I had the shop built in 2004. Shop is 24x36, open ceiling well insulated, two years ago I had an electric central HVAC installed for $7k. I keep the temperature set to 40° and turn up to 68° via WIFI thermostat each morning I plan on using the shop. Takes about an hour to warm things up while I stay in the house enjoying my morning breakfast and coffee.

Wood became way too expensive for the main source of heat, HVAC runs about $100 a month, wood was $200 a month or more.

[ironhorse]

Joe, in northern Florida and Southern Georgia wood is "FREE" just wait for a storm to come through then help your neighbor who does not have a fireplace clean up the mess!

[Rich P. Bingham]

Here, it has been mostly in the single digits either side of zero. Night before last, it dropped to -15f. My shop heating system is all set for the cold weather !