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How Are You Heating Your Garage?


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I have a 50,000 BTU/hr Hot Dawg propane heater for my 24 x 36 insulated garage with loft.  It works great, heats fast, uses outside combustion air, and vents to the outside.  Downside:  propane now costs $4.99/gallon here in eastern Massachusetts when you don't have a huge tank.  It's like feeding $100 bills into the heater.  A couple of years ago, I finally added a 36,000 BTU/hr heat pump system to cool and heat the garage.  At the present ratio of propane/electricity costs, it's cheaper to use the heat pump in winter.  I normally set the thermostat at 40 °F, kick it up to 55 when I want to work.  Sometimes, I'll turn on the propane unit to bring the temperature up quicker, then turn it off.  Natural gas is not available in this area.  And, the air conditioning doesn't hurt in the summer.

 

Heat pumps have a multiplier of 3 or 4 to 1 in terms of heat delivered for electricity used.  Of course, we're paying about $0.25/kW-hr for electricity in New England.  Your mileage may vary!      

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Back in the early 1970’s an Italian bricklayer taught a young boy an important lesson. If you ever design and build your own house, run the chimney through the garage. It acts as a giant radiator and heats the garage for free. 25 years ago when I built our new house……I took the lesson and did what he recommended. Added 2x6 walls and high end windows and doors to improve the R rating of the garage. Even with a very efficient heat system, the garage stays comfortably warm even when it’s below zero outside. It works great as the snow and ice melt off the car every night when I come home. I put a fairly steep pitch on the garage floor to drain itself. It also lets me was the car inside when I want without issues. Since I rarely work on cars at the house, an electric 220 heater will bring the temperature up to 60 degrees in a short time if needed. Basically it’s a heated garage(oversized three cars) for free during your lifetime. So, here’s to Mario and his five brothers…………they were as hard as nails well into their 80’s from mixing mud and laying bricks for six decades. 

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I'm on my 3rd shop that last 2 are kind of boring, a used oil furnace and now in a better climate I have a basement drive in shop heated from lost heat from heat ducts and an an occasional infrared heater over my bench. Stays in the 60-75 degree range year around.

 

My first shop I started with 10KW 220v wall heater didn't do much when it was really cold in the North and you could almost hear the meter spinning. I added a used LP space heater with two 100 pound tanks outside, like I remember my grandparents used in the dinning room that they used to heat most of their house. That worked well but again cost of operation was high for back when we were pinching pennies. I then added a steel box wood stove. The fire box was just the right size that a paper shopping bag stuffed with burnable trash to fit. I put a stainless insulate chimney from the ceiling through the roof but the part exposed in the shop I built my own double wall stove pipe with a holes punched in the side pointing towards my work bench and a small fan mount in the side up hight pushing air down the pipe and across my bench. We separated out trash into burnable and garbage. Most weeks we generated 2 bags of burnables which would nicely heat that corner of my shop for a couple of hours on Saturday. I would throw in scrap wood and fire wood to extend the work time. Really worked well especially after I hung paint drop clothes from the ceiling closing off the area around my project car, bench and 3 heat sources. It really didn't keep the heat in much but it would stay notably warmer and got warmer faster. I still used the LP and electric heaters when I didn't want to fire up the wood stove or if I just wanted to maintain some heat in over night for things to dry.

 

I admit my current shop is my favorite but getting rid of burnable trash was nice. I would stock up over the Summer in a barrel till it was full to burn in the Winter.

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 In my toy box, I use an oil burner that was meant for a mobile home. I have it mounted 8' high so that it doesn't ignite any gas fumes. 

 It has the cold air intake on the bottom, so I have a duct going down to the floor to pick up the coldest air and it discharges at the top.

 The "fire box is 10' from the floor.  I never use it when handling gas or even it I smell gas.

 

 As far as gas goes, I never remove a gas tank inside of a building!    (The fireman like it when it is burning out in a field!)

 

                                                                                       See related image detail

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I use a Monitor Kerosene Heater.  It's set on a Thermostat and keeps the garage 50 degrees all the time.  I burn less than 250 gallons a year.  It's 28 by 50 with a 10 foot ceiling.  Super well insulated but it has alot of windows. I use probably between 200 and 220 gallons a winter.  That's in Upstate NY in the mountains.

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I have a drywall and insulated garage (just 2 bay residential so 20 x 20) and I'm putting in an extra 20 amp so I can put a small electric heater in it. My wife isn't crazy about gas so we're going electric. Hope it will be enough but I don't do much garage stuff in the winter and I have no mechanical skill so really no point.

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On 1/28/2023 at 11:00 AM, auburnseeker said:

I use a Monitor Kerosene Heater.  It's set on a Thermostat and keeps the garage 50 degrees all the time.  I burn less than 250 gallons a year.  It's 28 by 50 with a 10 foot ceiling.  Super well insulated but it has alot of windows. I use probably between 200 and 220 gallons a winter.  That's in Upstate NY in the mountains.

 

 Kerosene is EXPENSIVE!

 

  Ben

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Only recently.  Wonder why? 

 

Still more independent than say propane.  I can easily fill a can in an emergency and keep going.  Where propane you have to wait for a special delivery.  That fluctuates drastically as well.  I fill up once a year so I don't have to mess around with worrying about running out. 

 

I think with any type of electric heat,  once they get everybody hooked,  they will jack the rates.  Plus we have weather that can put the power out for extended periods of time.  Last thing I want is my shop freezing up.  I can run the monitor on my generator easily as it only draws power for the fan. 

Geothermal would require a 600 foot well through granite.  That's what they had to do for the house well. 

 

I also wonder if everyone starts to tap geothermal what that will do to existing water wells in the area?  

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26 minutes ago, auburnseeker said:

I also wonder if everyone starts to tap geothermal what that will do to existing water wells in the area?  

With an open-loop geothermal system, water taken from one well runs through the heating/cooling system in the house and is put back in the ground via a second well, usually close to the first one.  It shouldn't change the water level of the aquifer.  Closed-loop geothermal systems circulate antifreeze solutions through plastic pipes buried 4-6 ft or more in the ground, don't use any ground water.  If you have a nice, deep lake nearby, the loop of plastic pipe can be put on the bottom of the lake as long as it's 8 ft or more deep.  It's too bad I live in an area where the melting glaciers dropped lots of boulders 10,000-15,000 years ago as it makes digging any holes difficult.  

 

As someone said a few years ago, all energy is free.  The real cost is in collecting and distributing it.

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I worry someone will drop a well in and hit Sulphur water and contaminate other wells in the area.  Seems that happened to my old Boss's mother's house when the farm next door dropped a new deep well in,  her water went bad right afterwards.  Would suck as we have really good water right now.  I don't even have a filter anywhere on the system.  No corrosion on anything and it tastes wonderful. . 

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25 minutes ago, auburnseeker said:

  Would suck as we have really good water right now.  I don't even have a filter anywhere on the system.  No corrosion on anything and it tastes wonderful. . 

Might want to test the PH of your water. We also are blessed with soft water that people have actually commented on how good it tastes. After 50 years I got 2 pin holes in my copper pipes. Water is soft but acidic. I installed a neutralizer hopefully to head off more corrosion leaks.........Bob

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On 1/25/2023 at 4:24 AM, edinmass said:

Back in the early 1970’s an Italian bricklayer taught a young boy an important lesson. If you ever design and build your own house, run the chimney through the garage. It acts as a giant radiator

Very good advice. The main part of my house has 17' ceilings and a free standing 10' X 3' masonry fireplace/chimney in the middle. I have a wood burning insert in the fire place opening. After about 2 weeks the 30 tons of masonry gets pleasantly warm to the touch and acts as big heat sink keeping a fairly constant temp in the house.

That said, I do have to cut and split about 5 cords a year.

In my shop I use an out side vented propane heater. I like it. Flip a switch and it's warm enough to work in 30 minutes.I own a 500 gallon tank so don't have to worry about re-fills in the winter......Bob

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Ideally I would have loved to put a wood burning outdoor boiler centralized between the house and 2 garages ,  Build a nice little building for it with room for the wood storage and heat everything with it,  since the house is already boiler heat.  

 

New regulations will put a stop to that so all the wood I could burn that gets cut here will rot and release the same CO2 with no benefit.  I cut plenty to just keep things cleaned up from blow down and trail maintenance plus what the power company drops on the power line easement I would have more than enough. 

 

As it is I already cut a bunch of it anyways and just give it away. 

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My house with a 2 car garage was built the gas forced air heating and cooling duct ran through the garage. I put an adjustable vent in that duct so I have a heated/cooled garage depending on the season. My two car garage is wide enough that I can move two of my old VWs sideways and park my daily driver in the garage as well. So every fall and spring the old cars are moved into and out of their winter parking spots.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have radiant heat from PEX tubing in the concrete floor.  My son and I did the two section layout before the floor was poured.  2" of solid foam insulation for two feet around the perimeter and against the forms to insulate the edges of the slab.  Center of the slab is not insulated as the ground acts as a heat sink.  Tubing, used water heater, and a TACO recirculating pump totaled just over $300.

Shop PEX Tubing.jpg

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