I've got a small Reznor hanging gas furnace. The shop is 45 by 45 with 16 ft ceilings. Insulation is the key.
Im A big fan of the oil heaters from lowes the mobile ones.....I have 2 and I inselated my garage doors last year......It gets so worm I can paint when Its 30 degrees outside http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=productDetail&productId=35277-33454-TRH0715L
Really? I can run mine alot cheaper that wood or kerosene. But, I have R13 roll up in the walls and R19 blow-in in the ceilings. insulated garage doors and no windows and everything is caulked really tight.
Even in winter its more of 'Trying to get cool' than heat the place up. In winter I just turn the fan off. Doc.
My barn is 42 by 60 and I would love to heat it but it has the large sliding metal ag doors and I think i would have to switch them over to sliding garage-type doors to make it work. Anyone have a smiliar sliding ag door situation that they have resolved?
Garage with southern exposure. When the sun is shining I open the door. Goes with my rule; Don't live where I don't want to live. Some work has to be done outside anyhow, so I dress for the day, check the thermometer, get ready before going out, if it's going to be cold, Wool sox. Hiking boots. Temp under 20 requires long handles, ear flappers and ski hat. Layers; short sleeve shirt, then long sleeved shirt, then sweater, then light jacket, then coat. As the day warms here in Paradise when I start sweating I take off a layer.............
I guess the good part about a small shop is the HVAC " problem" is not as big. My shop is only 660 sq ft but I have a total electric heat pump and 3-stage heat grid and insulation so even when I leave the unit at its lowest setting the shop stays 58-60 degrees and when I come in to work and kick it up to 65 it only takes 10 minutes or so and in the summer I keep it on 80 and drop it to 65 again to work and it takes 20 minutes or so! Life is rough! And my electric bill is only 40-60 more with the shop!
Radiant infloor heating system. Eats a lot of natural gas because it's always "on", but gives a very comforting area as the heat is everywhere. I turn it on and put it at 54° when temps get below the 50s here, like they are getting at this time around. Keeps the cold out of the building and the tools won't draw the heat out of your hands while wrenching.
Wonder about the potential for parking a beater in the garage and running it all day with the hood open and exhaust vented outside? Maybe a Big Block? HaHaHa
This thread highlights one of my "pet peaves" on HAMB, and that's "wise ass" location in signature! Not much help in a heating thread from a guy who has some location such as "middle of nowhere" or some such! As you can see, I'm in the humid Southeast where temps can be bone chilling much below 50*F. Have had a shop of one description or another for over 40 years, many were little more than an enclosed pole barn with sheet tin walls and roof! Until '86 all were rented and you don't spend a lot of money on insulating somebody else's building! So the only alternative was to overpower the cold with lots of heat. Started out with potbelly stoves and coal till the price of coal increased five fold, and we started dripping used oil into the fire. Soon we discovered that stacking fire bricks in the stove and starting the fire with a pint or so of kerosene on the bricks and starting the oil drip after we got that burning well made less smoke than the coal and oil combo. I can remember seeing over 6 feet of the 1/4"wall 8" stovepipe glowing red! In 1986 I bought the shop I have now, and would have again used oil, but for 2 problems: 1- I'm in the city limits and the fire inspectors frown on such heaters. 2- the area is mixed residential and commercial being in the minority, increasing potential for complaints about smoke and fumes. The building has 8" concrete block walls, and a tin roof over solid wood decking. It had remnants of a ceiling made of some sort of cellulose fiber that was in sad shape due to roof leaks. Found out the damn stuff burned like it was soaked in kerosene if touched by a flame, so I pulled it all out. Natural gas was/is available so I bought a used vented gas floor standing heater with blower, 85K BTU. With no ceiling it would only heat to maybe 20* higher than outside. Added a sheetrock ceiling and 8" insulation in the ceiling and that helped a lot. If I could figure a way to better seal up around my ill fitting roll-up door it would help a lot. Along about that time Nat. gas was deregulated in GA and the meter charge for commercial property went up and up till it is now over $50 per mon. plus the cost of the gas! And that meter charge is all year around! Figured I could buy a loy of propane for the $600 per year meter charge so I told the gas people to come get their meter before I threw it in the street! Setting the heater for propane reduced the heat output quite a bit, maybe 60K now. I've also over the years added a lot of machine tools to the shop (1600 sq. ft.) and it takes a lot of heat to bring all that iron and steel up to a livable temp for these old bones, especially if I'm doing a machine shop job and just sitting on a stool watching a machine do the work! Thermal underwear helps a lot. Considered buying a commercially built used oil heater, but for that price I can buy a helluva lot of propane! Maybe when I get my current roadster project finished I'll look into one of the several home built units with plans online that claim to be almost smoke free, and just use the Propane for at night to keep things from freezing. Forgive the novel, but I just wanted to relate my experiences in over 40 years of heating shops! Dave
I've read through all 6 pages of this thread. Nobody's mentioned Pellet stoves?! I have one in my house for radiant heat, it suppliments the natural gas forced air. Keeps my wife and I very comfortable. Last Friday, with the daily hi's only in the teens, I purchased an older pellet stove for the shop. It needed some work, the burnbox had been over heated from lack of maintinence. Sectioned out the melted center section of the box, reused the rest. I'll be installing the stove today after finishing the cleanup. It'll use standard pellet stove pipe, adapted into a pre-existing chimney from an old oil burner. Hopefully it'll be running today! Pellets cost about $200 a ton. In my house, we'll go through a little over 1 ton through the whole winter. Shop use, maybe 1/2 ton? I'll try to acquire that second ton just after the 'New Year' has gotten started. That's very economical in my book! Oh, the pellet stove? I got it for a very good price, because it was a bit of a problem child, (due to upkeep) $200! It came with 8' of stove pipe. Dan Stevens dba, Steelsmith
got one about five years ago work great but parts are outrages, had the "brains" go out on it and its was like $300 to fix.
This is a 125,000 BTU Pro Temp radaiant heater. I sat next to one at an auction recently and it was wonderful. Anyone with any experience with this or something like it? There are other similar items that cost more and presumably work better and might be USA made. The one that I saw was a VAL 6 that burned diesel fuel. http://www.northerntool.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_6970_200395538_200395538
If I were buying an oil burner of any kind, and I'm referring to kerosene, etc. not heating oil, I would buy one that specifys that it will burn diesel fuel. Diesel is one helluva lot cheaper than kero, especially if you get off road diesel without the road tax. Dave
I put hot water radiant heat in the floor of my 900 sq. ft. basement garage/shop (has the regular garage upstairs supported by "Core Floor" structural concrete beams) It consists of three 300' loops of 1/2" poly tubing which is heated by a 36,000 btu water heater with a pump that is activated by a thermostat/relay system. I keep it set at 64 degrees and you can fall asleep on the floor working on a car if you are tired! Very comfortable and you'll be sweating if you are working very hard. Never cold, very comfortable, no cold spots and very safe because the water heater is in the house so no flame is the garage area. All concrete constuction means you retain all the heat even if you open the doors. Also very cheap because 36,000 btu doesn't that much gas and as an added benefit, the heat that rises to my garage above the lower garage keeps it about 45-50 degrees up there, enough to keep my drivers melted off, dry and warm. It has been installed for 17 years and I have replaced the water heater ($300) and the expansion tank ($50) within the last year due to rust out because I failed to keep proper additives in the water, otherwise its the best! I'll do it again when I build my next garage!
Propane has been expensive but I have a cheap source of firewood. I wanted an outside wood furnace for safety reasons and I have always liked hot water heat. I built an outside furnace for heating water out of a Shrader Wood stove that was given to me. Last year I built the first generation model. I used a cast iron radiator, that many of you have seen in use in older buildings with hot water heat, for my heating coil inside the firebox of the stove. Inside the shop I used a car radiator and a large squirrel cage fan off of a gas furnace. This system worked okay but it used a lot of wood and took a lot of my time keeping it going. This year I added an external water jacket by fabricating 7 shallow tanks that surround the furnace. The water circulates through the tanks and then into the fire box through the cast iron coil and then into the shop. I use a Bell and Gosset recirculating pump that is normally used for a hot water circulating system in a house. The new heat exchanger inside is a coil off of a commercial freezer. I bought it from a junk man (no relation) for $20 and it included the fans. The water side of the system is vented to the atmosphere and does not build pressure. There is a heat and pressure relief valve that will dump the water to a storage tank if there is a problem. Once I set the system up I built an insulated box around the unit. The insulation came from dumpster diving at a construction site where they were reroofing a flat roof building. Eventually I plan to surround the whole thing with a metal box. In addition I am going to build a back up power supply system using a 12 volt car battery and a convertor to power the system should I lose regular electrical power. This will run the system until it cools down. To operate the system you build a fire in the wood stove. The stove has a forced draft that is controlled by the temperature of the water. When the water temperature is less that 155 degrees F the fan is on and when the temperature rises above 165 degrees it shuts off. I found this temperature to work best for me. Inside there is a thermostat that controls the fan motors on the heat exchanger. You set the temperature you want the shop to be just like you do your thermostat in your house. I was pleasantly surprised at how much better it works this year. Originally I had to be careful not to make to large a fire as I can easily overheat the water. In addition to the wood I also burn waste oil in this system. I get some heat from burning the oil and I get rid of my oil. I am going to do some more work on this system. It is the round tank just above the front of the furnace. The oil is metered in through a needle valve and drips on a large steel plate in the top of the firebox. I will continue to modify and improve this system. I am open to any suggestions for improvements and I will answer any questions you may have. John
John, that's cool or er, ahh... Hot! I just love American ingenuity and someone that can make something that works great with cast off parts!
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