Technical Shop heat question

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It may be expensive to buy firewood, but how much will it cost to go out and buy new heating equipment, get it installed, and then pay for whatever fuel that equipment uses? Think about your return on investment, how much firewood will you be able to buy for the price of that new equipment.

 

This thread is sure to be closed soon and you will probably be told to go to the garage journal.
In the meantime the best way I have found to heat a shop is with a radiant tube heater using either natural gas or propane.
They're efficient and cheap to run. (Electronic ignition- no standing pilot)
On top of that they are sealed taking combustion air in from outside so gas fumes or painting in the shop isn't a problem.

 

When I built my new shop in 2004 I wanted to be comfortable in an season,28 degrees or 99 degrees,so I installed a all electric heat and air system.

I also insulated the walls & ceiling to the max,installed sheet rock and used insulated doors & windows.

The power bill averages about 40 dollars a month. HRP

 

I see somebody likes those kneeling pads from Princess Auto!

 

I will ship you a load of Florida heat this winter . Shouldn't cost much for freight. Just let me know when you need it. Be careful when you open the box ,it gets out real easy.

 

My old shop that i had for 20 years had no heat or air and barely any insulation . We tried burning wood ,salamander heaters and inver red heaters,all were a p.i.t.a. When i built my home shop i decided that i had enough of working like a cave man and installed a Fujitsu split air/heat unit. Its quiet, easy installation and cheap to run. The biggest problem with wood stoves is that once you walk over to it you can't seem to leave.

 

They're cheap and when you're an old welder like me your knees don't like concrete floors so much any more

 

And we will ship you a truck load of snow

 

No thanks, I grew up in the U.P. of Michigan and saw my share of snow.
We used to heat our shop up there with a double barrel stove setup .One 55 gallon drum with a fire box on the bottom and a heat exchanger barrel piped in on top of that. We burned a combo of wood and waste oil. If the shop would have been better insulated it would have been comfortable in there.
Too many drafts and not enough insulation. Kept the frost off the tools though.

 

Have a 24 x 32 pole barn garage with 10 ft ceiling. Very well insulated. I use a portable kerosene heater when needed and its very comfortable working all winter.


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I'm located on the line between Arkansas and Missouri. We can get really hot in the summer and cold in the winter. So I have a 3.5 ton heat pump cooling and heating my 30x40x10. I have invested in foam insulation as well. A tad expensive up front but I can use my shop year round and be productive when I am out there.

 

I heat my shop, 24x32, scissors truss with 14'6" at peak, with a FREE electric furnace from a friend
that put a new system in his 2000 sq ft house. I use 2 of 3 heating elements and it works great. Shop
has 2x6 walls with R-34 insulation throughout. Did I mention the furnace was FREE.

 

YOu have to figure what your free time is worth. Do you want to spend hours messing with solid fuels, or do you want to spend that time enjoying your heated shop and working on your cars? I agree on the propane radiant tube. That's what I use to heat my well insulated 50x80x14' shop in central Minnesota. I used to burn wood, but that was too much time, then corn, but the price went up so much that propane is cheaper. Propane is zero time invested on my part. Do a pre-buy of the propane in mid summer for the best price.

 

I heat the working area of my garage with a homemade waste-oil burner. electric hot water tank. not shown finished in this pic. I have a metal panel wall behind it now, with a 5 gal. jerry can plumbed to be a drip system. I also added a small blower to introduce air in the combustion chamber, but it was making the tank glow cherry red, so I don't use it much. works great, as a "for instance", one morning thermometer read 38 deg., 2 hrs later 72.

just added more recent pics.