Technical Small garages and how you heat them?

Here in Maine we have some pretty severe winters and this one is a bear. We have been sub 0 for weeks. My garage is 24' x 48' with 8' ceilings insulated on a monolithic slab. The heater is a Monitor 41, exterior vented, heat exchanger running on K1. The tank and exhaust/intake are outside. I have a 137 gal tank that I have not filled since January 2016 and is still 1/2 full. I do not usually leave it on all the time as it only takes a 1/2 hour or so to get the garage up to 60 or so (warmer if wish). I have a Monitor 22 in the garage attached to my house which is 24' x 24' and it too does a great job. No smell, no noise, just warm.
It is a Monitor 41 which is kerosene fired, heat exchanger, exterior vented and cheap

 

[QUOTE="Fabber McGee, post: 12384816,

46international, I imagine that in this case, a 10 dollar a cord wood permit would allow you to cut firewood on public land.[/QUOTE]




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Correct



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following

 

I may go this route myself.

 

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It's March now, and I getting towards the end of my unintentional winter stay in Minnesota. My shop is 40X30 with 14 ft ceilings and is insulated. I don't have permanent heat in it so I had to improvise. I do have a 70,000 BTU propane heater on the wall for fall and spring use, but that doesn't quite cut it. What saved my bacon this winter was a 5800 (17000 BTU) watt electric heater that I could plug into my welder outlet and let run. It kept the shop above freezing all winter (remember, I'm in North Central Minnesota), and when I wanted to work, I'd turn it up and fire up the propane unit. There was not a day I couldn't get it up to a reasonable temperature.

Since this is a thread about small garages and auxiliary heat, I submit that this is the winner. If I had an insulated two car garage with 220 service, this would be all I'd need. Since it is an infrared heater (it move large volumes of warm air instead of small volumes of very hot air), it is about as safe as it can get. I bought a 30 ft welder extension cable that allows me to move it around to where I need it. Both the heater and the cable were about $100, the cable a bit more. Strongly recommended.

 

My shop is 24 X 32. I originally heated it with a really neat Waterford Parlor stove that burned wood or coal.
Then, last year a friend gave me a really nice pellet stove because his wife wanted a new fireplace (gas fired) It uses about a bag (40#) every 2 days. A individual bag costs about 6 bucks. Very clean & quiet. I'm getting too old to cut & split wood any more. Wish I had NG available here.
Every season (Winter) I buy at least 1 ton of pellets, as we heat the house with a pellet stove also. A ton (50 bags @ 40# each), costs $275.00 + 15 bucks delivered & stacked.
I live in Norcal at an elevation of 2400' & yes, it gets real cold (snow on the ground as I write this).
Jim

 

I am in north central MN/WI right on the border. This last summer i bought my first home. I have a 2 1/4 garage. This summer i insulated and installed prorib (polebarn steel) inside. I didnt get to blowing insulation in the ceiling. I went for a 50k BTU beacon morris ceiling mounted heater. The thing works great BUT if you only turn it on when you need it, the fan is loud for a minute or so (whines in the extreme cold) it will get my garage to 65 degrees in about 25 minutes. I had a 17k btu chest style unit and you couldnt even tell the thing was running on full blast. it just wasnt up to the task. Maybe that's ok for a mild climate but in the extreme cold you need to go big, and have forced air to get it warm fast. I tried to keep my garage at 45 degrees but the heater ran every five minutes. It was taxing my propane bill pretty hard. However like i said i haven't gotten the ceiling insulated so that will make a massive difference. Hopefully next year i can have it tight enough to run heat in there full time. (enough to keep liquids from freezing, anyways.)

 

I have one of these, too. 75,000 BTU. Works great. The garage is 15 degrees warmer in about 45 minutes.

 

how do you heat a shed....

just put it out in the sun .....
how do you cool it....now thats another story

 

I'd agree. I have a 15' x 24' garage. I insulated both the walls and the attic. I have a similar heater that sits high on a shelf pointing at a fan. I don't run it full time, only when I'm out working. Within 15 minutes, it's cut the chill in the garage, and after an hour or so, I usually have to shut it off, as the garage is getting too hot. I have it pointed at the fan, so that the heat gets dispersed the length of the garage fairly quickly.
My next garage will have a furnace, but this has done the job without issue.

 

look into outdoor forced air wood burners.

 

I would be more concerned with the spark from the relay that turns on/off the fan motor than the motor its self, unless it is a brush type motor. Almost every type of heating device will have something that could ignite flammable fumes, whether it be a flame or an electric control that can spark when the contacts open or close to turn on or off the fan motor or heating elements (if it is an electric heater).

 

I'm amazed a lot of you guys have the floor space for a heater. I'm crammed in like a can of sardines.........

 

Curious..Some info?

 

I have three shops, all insulated to some degree-it's hard to insulate big doors. My 16x20x12 "auto shed" and the 16x36x12 wood shop both have wood stoves. Great heat, woods free or cheap, but you have to plan ahead. You can't just bop out and work for half an hour. My 16 x 36 x 10 car garage has a trailer style oil burner-lots of heat, but I don't use it much.

 

Not trying to sound like a smart-arse here, but if you're worried about open flames do you never use a gas torch (oxy torch here in Oztralia) to cut or weld? Sparks from a grinder have been known to start a fire. Hands up anyone who hasn't done that. Can't see any hands, just as I thought.

 

But the grinder and torch don’t create sparks when you are sleeping in your bed.

You can see and smell the leaking gasoline or paint thinner and stop welding, not so much when a heater is running unattended.

 

I believe insulation is much more important then a heat source and money should be spent on R-value vapor sealing the air space. I had the same 5500watt heater in my old garage and couldn't keep up with the cold drafts and never really got warm. We foamed the garage and now a 1500watt heater is Too Much for it I know it's crazy what insulation will do.

I use this heater DR-988 dr inferred when it's below freezing and keeps the garage at 65-70. I use a 1500 watt heater when it's a but warmer and is only 110v in my 25x34 garage ..

 

I use a fairly simple way,work on back padio some in the sun,but if its rainy in my garage or driveway has a carport cover ,it's all in Miami Fla. Do have too put shocks on a few days a year though. Just warm thought for yu'all.

 

I have an insulated garage that isn't heated. Suprisingly, unless it gets down to under like 25 degrees outside, all I usually have to wear in the winter is a sweatshirt with a hoodie on top and I'm fine. But when I do heat it, I have a propane bullet heater.

 

Genius to wire the heater to use the same plug as the welder, so I have to kill the heat if I want to fire up the Lincoln. I'm doing my garage over and this looks like a good safe heater. My buddy has a similar one in his garage, but his place is well insulated.

 

Only concern is ignition source must be 18" off floor by code as gasoline vapors hang low. I spaced my stove up on a couple cap blocks. In case of fire you would not want insurance to deny payment saying heater not properly installed.

 

I just looked at these an Amazon and saw this note...."Requires a 220V plug in and not for general residential or household use, cannot be mounted on the ceiling"

Why cant you mount it on the ceiling???

 

Don't know, but since heat rises, it doesn't seem to make much sense to start the heat at the hottest point and then try to get the rest up to a temp you like.

 

I dont see any reason you couldnt, likely liability disclaimer. You get a 4 ft warm zone around it, until it heats the area up. For the price and ease of use, it works well. If you need to heat a large garage or maintain temp for long periods, theres better options.

I run it off my welder 220 plug, may need the end swapped to match your outlet.

 

When I was trying to keep some semblance of heat in my old garage with zero insulation and open rafters and as we all know heat rises I used a portable old Aladdin heater made in England and if you worked within a few feet it helped although using it all day the fumes did get a little overpowering.

It was better than nothing. HRP

 

I use several heat sources in my little old 2 bay (380sqf/3000cuft +/-). First line of defense is a Passive Solar Air Heater that I built out of the windows I replaced in the side that doesn't get much sun. The primary source is one of those little 25000 BTU Propane fire stool things (Dyna-Glo 15K - 25K BTU Propane Convection Heater). I run the supply hose under the doors and leave the bottle outside. It works pretty good now that I've got a little insulation up. I have a couple electric milk house space heaters and a ceiling fan to move the heat around. I also have a Carbon Monoxide Alarm in there.

 

For a few years I had a Jungers kerosene stove like the one in the picture. It worked great but cost a ton to run. I also wasn't a fan of having the flame that close to the floor.
Ori
Now a 1950's Trane natural gas unit heater. I have used it for the last 4 winters. I'll have to take a current picture with the pipe hooked up. Never took one it seems. The chimney thru the roof is class A since I used to have a Jungers oil heater. That was a sweet unit but I couldn't afford the Kerosene. I adapted the class B to the class A when I plumbed in gas.