Thread: How do you heat your shop

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Howdy,
I just finished building a Waste Oil Heater for our shop from plans we downloaded from Mother Earth News.
so far I'm pretty impressed.
nothing but recycled parts: old hot water tank for the housing
a stainless steel pan and cast iron skillet and some stainless steel
4" piping
lots of heat
I found out that in order to not get the oily smell the burner has to be very hot before turning on the oil drip.
Any of you built anything like it
keeping warm in the frozen north
hank

before i got a gas line to the garage
I used to warm the enginde drive it 3/4 into the garage,
close the garage door almost to the trunk, pop the hood and leave the engine running.
the fan and radiator do a helluva job of warming up the garage.
pull it in and close the door. most of the heat is still in the ceiling. the warm engine lasts for a while.

ever see those clear plexi garage doors (carwash)
my garage door is south facing and I could use a new door anyway. solar would ROCK with the winter sun angle

I have a LB White LP furnace and two electric baseboard heaters. Problem with using a furnace is that it heats the air. The air leaves the garage when you open the door. Nice thing about radiant heat is that it heats objects and not air (like the sun). Opening the door doesn't remove the heat. I'm lucky to be on a peak program so I get my electricity at 3.2 cents per KWH. Sweeeet. By, the way, DO NOT use a wood stove. If you keep a car, lawnmower etc... the gas vapors can ignite and kill you and burn your house down.

We built a coal-fired water furnace for my shop and pipe the hot water to a radiator in the house furnace duct. Went from 3900 bucks worth of NG to 500 bucks worth of coal and 700 of gas. Too lazy to load the coal in the middle of the night, so the pulse kicks in for a while. Working on an autostoker setup.

Old shop has two large all consuming gas fired heaters....


New shop (if I can ever get the planning board to finish approvals) will be 7,200 sq/ft of radiant floor heating (tubing imbedded in the concrete floors).....The office (roughly 800 sq/ft of it) will be gas fired forced hot air and ac...The rest will be the radiant heat, as this seems to be the most efficient way to heat such a large space as the shop area is going to be.

Bill S.

I have a small shop, just 18 x 30. I just bought a portable 40,000 btu forced air propane heater on Ebay, $69 plus shipping. I have used a similar kerosene fired heater in the past and it warmed it up nicely. I like the propane better because it is cleaner and does not have that smell. Our weather does not get all that cold, but 38 degrees is still pretty cold to work in! I expect the new heater this week or next, I'll put in a report once I have tried it out.

Pat

Usually we have pretty mild winters here in the midwest, So my shop at home is heated with a big kerosene salamander,thing sounds like a fighter jet when its running and I hate the smell,but you can fire that thing up,point it at what your working on and in about 15 to 20 minutes ya can work in a t shirt on the coldest days,when it starts gettin chilly again fire her back up for a short time and your good ta go for another couple hours,
A buddy offered me a nice gas furnace just last week but I turned him down,don't want to take up any extra space in there and dont want to hafta run a gas line from the house.....

For the last gew years i worked in my 1600 sq ft shop by heating it with them loud oil heaters an got sick over the smell ,but last year i found a 180,000 btu hot air oil furnice an walla no more sick smells in my shop only nice hot clean heat .

IT'S 15 DEGREES (C) UP CANADA WAY, I HAVE ONE OF THOSE FANCY RADIENT HEATERS,SUPPOSED TO BE 98% EFFICIENT!?
WE'LL SEEI TRY TO KEEP THE TEMP ABOUT 10 DEGREES ABOVE ZERO WHEN I'M NOT WORKING ON THE CARS, LOTS HOTTER WHEN I AM.
WOOD HEAT WAS O.K. EXCEPT FOR A FEW THINGS LIKE PAINT,GAS SOLVENTS ETC..
THE WOOD THEAT COSTS ABOUT $ 600.00,FOR WOOD & ANOTHER $400.00 FOR INSURANCE!!
CAN'T STRESS ENOUGH, KEEP INSURANCE UP TO DATE, EVEN IF ITS "JUST" THE GARAGE THAT IS LOST...THINK OF ALL THE TOYS & TOOLS!!

I don't ,and damn its cold



I was looking into those heaters that hang from the ceiling.The ones they sell at Home Depot.I have one of those Kerasene heaters,but can't handle the smell,unless it gets REAL cold

fellas, aint but one sure-fire way to heat a shop

Originally posted by Stu Cool
I have a small shop, just 18 x 30. I just bought a portable 40,000 btu forced air propane heater on Ebay, $69 plus shipping. I have used a similar kerosene fired heater in the past and it warmed it up nicely. I like the propane better because it is cleaner and does not have that smell. Our weather does not get all that cold, but 38 degrees is still pretty cold to work in! I expect the new heater this week or next, I'll put in a report once I have tried it out.

Pat

My heater came yesterday and today was a good one to try it out. Was 35 degrees this morning. Got it hooked up to the propane bottle and fired it up according to the instructions. It is a little louder than I had hoped, had to turn the boom box up so I could hear the blues. It did heat the shop right up. I placed it near the big door and left the door up about 6 inches for ventilation. I believe it will work out just fine.

Pat

Originally posted by Bryan TTM
fellas, aint but one sure-fire way to heat a shop

Bryan, that's not a bad idea, but if she was dressed like that in my shop this morning before I fired up the heater, she'd have a couple pointers for sure!

Pat

1 of my shops is heated by nothing but a 1,500 watt radiant heater, my big shop ( a 12X20 portable garage ) is heated by nothing other than solar energy it probably goes up 10*- 20* from the outside temp and on fairly cold days ain't bad.

When we bought our house it had a 10x12 storage room attached to a carport on the property. I mooched several 7x7 slabs of 3" foam from old hot tub covers from a guy who makes replacement covers. He was glad to get rid of the stuff. I tightly insulated the shop with the foam (yeah, I know it can burn, and when it does it makes fumes that will kill you, so please don't lecture me). I put the foam over the ceiling with 6" of fiberglas over that.

It rarely gets below zero in north Texas but we get plenty of below freezing days. Most of the time a 100 watt light bulb will keep it comfortable, but when it really gets down there a little electric baseboard heater on the lowest setting works fine.

At leasts this is the story I tell my wife to justify the $1500 I spent fixing up the shop.

Jim