I need a safe electric garage space heater. Any opinions?

It's been so damn cold here that I haven't spent any time in the garage. I need to beef up the insulation, and add some heat.

My 2-car garage is immediately beneath my house. I have a decent amount of gasoline, thinner, and other solvents stored there. My wife might object if a fire started, especially if she didn't have much warning to get our toddler son out of the house in time.

So I was thinking that an electric heater might be the safest, and make the most sense. I'm considering the oil-filled radiators and the quartz indirect heaters. But I'm open to any ideas.

I'd like to turn the thing on when I get home, then go and have dinner, give the kid a bath, and then walk into a decently warm garage. Maybe also turn it on when I wake up on Saturday morning, and spend most of the day there. Most importantly, I'd really like to leave it unattended and not worry about it.

What's a good solution, and how can I re***ure my wife that it's safe for her and our son?

Thanks in advance,

Matt

 

i just picked up one of the quartz heaters on sale...it works pretty good, but not as good as i'd like it to. the nice thing about the quartz infrared heaters is that they heat the OBJECTS in the room...not the air. same as the sun, if you wear dark clothes then you will actually get warmer too.
maybe i'm paranoid about leaving potential fire hazards on and plugged in, but i don't know that i would leave it on unattended for any good length of time.
if the garage is directly beneath the house, chances are good that the garage is going to be better insulated already than a freestanding garage. i wonder if you might be further ahead to run a duct from you home furnace into the garage.
you could use an on/off flap in the ductwork to the garage so that it wouldn't be on all the time, yet when you opened it, it would blow some nice warm air out there.
it may be fairly cost effective too, since your thermostat wouldn't be in the garage, and your furnace is working anyways.
then you could just use a portable or quartz heater while you're out there for further warmth.

just a thought.
chris

 

I have a 220 volt heater a found at Home Depot for around $200 in my 960 square foot garage. It brings it up to comfortable temperature in about an hour. Safe and clean. I'd recommend it.

 

Why not put in base board heaters?

 

I got this heater at Grainger a couple years ago. They have it listed at $124. I have seen it on sale for $99 from time to time. It is small, but puts out a lot of heat and has a thermostat built in. You will not be disappointed if used in 1000 sq ft or less.

grainger link

 

bsaeboard heaters are NOT a good idea in a garage, gas fumes ac***ulate on the floor,ignite and go boom.

 

[ QUOTE ]
I got this heater at Grainger a couple years ago. They have it listed at $124. I have seen it on sale for $99 from time to time. It is small, but puts out a lot of heat and has a thermostat built in. You will not be disappointed if used in 1000 sq ft or less.

grainger link
I'm going to check this out today !!!








[/ QUOTE ]

 

I have a small 1500 watt quartz that works fairly well if it's not too far away from the work space.
At least I used to have it, Sweetie stole it for the back bathroom which is the coldest room in the house.

This wouldn't apply to you, but in the garage I use a 50,000 BTU kerosene heater to take the cold-soak out of it.
Takes about 15-20 minutes to do that.
Works well if you point it to the side of the garage you're working in.
Bad part is, you need a door open for fresh air make-up and to vent the carbon monoxide.
Two doors open on start-up, one at each end of the garage does a lot to dispel the kerosene fumes that are present right after start-up. Once the heater is up to temp the kerosene fumes aren't noticeable.
(When I say doors open, the walk-in door on the south side is fully open and one of the 9' doors on the north side is open about 2 feet.
I see a lot of commercial shops using these heaters with doors closed and you can smell the fumes.
Not a good situation I'd say.

Since the turbine makes a lot of noise and it gets tiresome after a while I tried a couple of propane heaters geared towards use inside a camper or tent.
They have an oxygen deficiency detector and will shut off automatically. I wouldn't go to sleep with one of them running though.
They turned out to be too small to create a warm area in the shop even after using the turbine heater.

I've been helping my friend get his shop insulated, dry-walled and wired.
He has one of the single reflector 'Mr. Heater' propane heaters.
It does a nice job in making the shop comfortable after running about an hour.
These have three levels - high, medium & low - and running on low will give you 35 hours on a 5 gallon propane tank.

I tried to find one, but with the cold spell we've been having all the hunters and construction guys have bought them out.
Sprung for the double reflector 'Mr. Heater' unit and it works very nice in my shop.
Best part is it's quiet.
If I remember right it runs 9 hours with both units running wide open and 18 hours with both on low.
The double unit has the nice feature of running on either unit so as to conserve fuel.
Once the temp is up - doesn't take too long - one unit on low does it.

Kerosene in my area is $4.00 per gallon.
Propane is $1.50 a gallon.
Since the 50,000 BTU kerosene heater burns fuel at the rate of 4 gallons in 11 hours you can see why I went for a propane unit.

Aside from all this nifty kerosene & propane stuff and a small recommendation for a quartz heater I'd like to see you get the gasoline and solvents out of the ba*****t.
There's a real potential for disaster there.
If you have a lawn/garden building, store it out there.
I'll store paints and their solvents - not too much is allowed to ac***ulate - in a vented locker, but I never store gasoline in the garage.

Once upon a time a fireman friend told me that a teas**** of vaporized gasoline in a closed up ba*****t was enough to blow the house off the foundation.

Something to think about....

 

Thanks for the replies, guys.

I'll take a look at ducting warm air from the furnace. That should work if I add some insulation.

I think I'll also take another look at the oil-filled heaters.

I'll also take Jay's advice to heart. There shouldn't be any gasoline in my garage. Acetone, thinner, and that sort of stuff is already pretty safely stored.

If you need to recognize me, I'll be bundled up like Ralphie's little brother in "A Christmas Story." But with a HAMB t-shirt on the top layer.

 

Lowes sells some of those radiater style heaters that have oil in them. They are supposed to be pretty safe.

 

I to like the radiatior style heaters for your application... Your mileage may vary...