Heat for the Shop

[Tony (Charleston WV)]

Having recently retired (hold your applause), I expect to have more time in the shop.  Along with wisdom, an expanded waistline, less hair in most places and more in others, age brings an unwillingness to freeze one's butt off in a (mostly) unheated shop.  (A 2-car garage.  I get half.)

We have gas heat so I'm thinking of installing some type of ceiling mounted vented heater.  

Any recommendations?

Thanks

[Boatman53]

What is this heat you speak of? Isn't that what happens in the summer?
Congratulations on your retirement.

Jim

[MichaelMouse]

Insulate.  Ceiling especially.  Do the whole garage.  Throw up some wall insulation on the shop side and some visqueen down the middle if you can't see your way clear to some moveable insulated panels.

After that, pretty much any hanging forced air will do.

[MarkSingleton]

I second the insulation idea. That is the first thing to do
no matter how you intend to heat the space. The benefits
are there forever to keep you warmer, or cooler, year-round.

[JimReed@Tallahassee]

Congratulations on joining the retirement club. Shoptime can keep you out of the way of your spouse, who may be making a list of house chores. Store some snacks out there and all you have to come in for is bathroom breaks.

As for heat, I am not much help. Even in the dead of winter I get by with a flannel shirt in my garage shop. You might check into one of those oil filled electric radiator heaters. It might radiate enough heat to keep you going. Or you could get a scrub plane and some rough lumber. That will have you sweating.

Good luck and post some pictures of those new projects.

[cputnam]

Since the new software did not bring location across and most folks have not updated their location, it gets difficult to make useful recommendations. IIRC, you are somewhere in PA, Pittsburgh maybe? Anyway, IMO, the suggestions above are good. Insulate 1st and foremost. Here, in SoCal, cooling tends to be the major issue and heating becomes an issue only when gluing stuff together and, in that case, a small space heater and a blanket do the job. In PA I suspect not so much. You will want some sort of fan to direct the heat to where you are either most of the time or better yet, where you are at any given point in time. Out here, at least, gas is the cheapest way to go for anything more than occasional use. If you are feeling flush, look into one of the "split" units. Some spendy but they are basically a heat pump so you get both hot and cold. Just thinking out loud - used to live in eastern PA.

[barryvabeach]

Tony, can't help you on the gas,  I only use the garage on the weekend, so I went with a 220 volt ceiling mounted heater, works pretty well for my side of the 2 car garage.  Insulation is great, so is flooring,  I found that the concrete just sucks the heat out of me, so I bought the cheapest laminate flooring I could find, that made a real difference ( though it is slick, so I use a rug near the work bench.

[DaveBeauchesne]

Tony:

As a gas fitter, may I ask the shop dimensions - -

If you have a high ceiling ( which I do not ) - hands down I would install low intensity radiant tube heat. But, you need at least a 10 foot ceiling.

I retrofitted our main warehouse ( 200 x 100 x 25 feet tall, poorly insulated, etc. ) at work from rooftop forced air - the total BTU input was just over 2,000,000 btu. They were  never comfortable when it got to 32F or below. We live on the PNW coast, so it does not get much colder than 10F in the winter, but even at that, the place is very comfortable. That was 12 years ago, and the issues have been very minimal.

We set up a plan to install 190 feet of radiant tube heating, totalling about 680,000 btu. Viola! everyone was happy - the propane supplier told me later his deliveries for the following years were cut by nearly 50%.

The radiant heat warms like the sun does - everything in the sight path of the radiant tube absorbs the heat and in turn radiates the heat back out ( to a lesser degree ). The floor warms up, the bench warms up etc.  Low intensity is key, and if the ceiling is not high enough, you will have issues if you are in the path of the radiant heat.

Try and find some installations near you and check it out. YMMV, but it has been proven technology for over 20 years now.

Good luck

Dave B

[Paul-in-Plymouth]

Congratulations on your retirement.  Enjoy! 

When I retired I had a third stall added to our tuck-under garage and lengthened the house above it for a shop.  I put in small a wall-mounted gas furnace, separate from the HVAC in the rest of the house.  That kept things comfy in the depths of winter (we still have them around here, sort-of), but I found the summers got pretty hot and sticky out there. 

After sweating it out a few summers, I added a mini-split heat-pump/inverter.  This transformed things for uniform comfort and humidity-control year round - almost.  I still use the gas furnace when the outside temp goes below about 10F.   The mini-split was a little pricey, but it’s a really nice solution to controlling the climate in a small space you want to keep separate from the rest of the house.

[Tony (Charleston WV)]

Thanks for the replies, folks.  Insulation isn't really an issue.  The 2-car garage is "tucked in" on the ground floor of the house.  Two walls in common with the house (heated spaces), third is the outside of a "bump out" of sorts that is insulated, with two pretty good Anderson windows.  (My monthly budget gas bill is $25 for 2300 sq ft.)  The fourth wall contains the two garage doors (no windows) to which I tacked insulating panels from the borg.  There is no native heat to the garage, but I have installed two of the Lee Valley radiant heaters on the ceiling, aimed generally at the middle of the space I use in the one bay I occupy.  (No luck yet with the argument that living outdoors builds automotive character.  We just bought her a new subaru forester that has the bun warmers, and still no love.)

This is the newest version; mine are pretty much the same.



I don't really don't care for the radiant heaters..  They warm me up when they're aiming right at me, but once I'm out of range, my nose and butt get cold, even when I supplement with one of the oil-filled plug-ins.  I'd really like to have some even, thermostatically-controlled (if possible) heat that doesn't require a long warm-up period.  I have a feeling that when I price out a vented hot air system, I'll learn to be satisfied with what I have.

Dave B:   Entire garage is 21 x 23 x 9.  

Barry-the laminate flooring sounds interesting, although lifting/moving everything around doesn't sound like much fun.  Any special prep  (e.g. etching,) required?

Retirement is a blast.  Forty years of arguing for a living (for the good guys) was more than enough.  I pinch my self several times a day, and every day is Saturday (or one of the other ones.  I can never remember what day it is.)  Yippee!!