Garage Heaters

[Charlie Chops 1940]

Mine is a Janitrol brand. 100,000  BTU input/80,000 output.

Charlie

[jaybee]

Mine is an off brand hanging furnace purchased at Home Depot. It's 45,000 BTU and does a nice job on my 30'x32' garage with insulated walls. I keep it in the mid 30s when I'm not out there, basically just warm enough to keep things from freezing. It's a little hard to say how that affected my heating cost as I put extra insulation in the house at the same time. Whatever I saved on heating the house was almost exactly a wash with what I spent on heating the garage when I was out there every weekend and several nights a week.

[39deluxe]

My shop is roughly a 24x40. It goes off at an angle off the garage. I got a good deal on a house furnace similar to Beck's . I have 5 heat ducts in the ceiling and with the 6" walls and over 12" overhead and insulated door it stays pretty warm in there when I'm working. With the furnace turned all the way down in only drops to about 42-45 on the coldest days. The furnace rarely runs at that setting. I filled up my propane tank in the fall of 2011 and didn't work out there much last winter. This fall it was still on 95-100% so I didn't have to fill it at all in 2012. I only use the propane tank for the shop as I switched the house to geo thermal in the fall of 2011.

If I was doing a new build again I'd have radiant heat in the floor.

Tom

[rumrumm]

This is not a retro-fit, but a buddy of mine built a shop a little smaller in size than taxpyer's building and ran hot water piping in the concrete floor. The heating unit takes up only a small amount of space and is very efficient cost-wise.

[sirstude]

I got rid of my wood a bunch of years ago.  The garage is 28x40 with 10' walls.  The end stall has a cathedral ceiling that goes up to about 15'. I put in a 135000btu overhead unit.  I keep it at about 40degrees all the time and the turn it up to 68 or so when I work out there (most weekends and some nights).  It costs me about $30 a month year around and well worth it.  I keep my daily drivers in there during the winter, and sure is nice to drive a dry car when everyone else is covered with snow.  The furnace is probably a bit big, but I got it for free.

Doug

[GPster]

This is not a retro-fit, but a buddy of mine built a shop a little smaller in size than taxpyer's building and ran hot water piping in the concrete floor. The heating unit takes up only a small amount of space and is very efficient cost-wise.

Those units ar available so you can also use them for hot water to wash your hands or maybe for a "Green" parts washer. You can also tie them to solar heated water panels to save energy that way. You could also "Zone" the heated floor spaces so youd heat your working space more that other areas. GPster

[Mikej]

I have in floor heat. I use a 40 gallon electric Water Heater. 3 loops of 250'.  I rewired the WH so both element run at the same time. 60 Amp circuit. Each element wired with its own upper style thermostat so it has a Thermal shut off. I keep the thermo stat on the wall at 64 so the floor is actually warmer. Sure is nice to work on. Once you move around the air temp rises and is almost to warm.