Need advice on heating my garage

[bimmer_E30]

i have an electrical heater in my basement...do you guys think i could use it when i work on my car this winter? it gets below -20 in the garage sometimes...it's not sealed...the orginal plans were to get the whole garage sealed up and heated..but my parents are selling the house.

so would that work? does that mean i have to run it for at leas an hour or somthing to aleast get the heat going in there?

thanks

[e34john]

Yea, why not? How many watts is that heater? It will probably take a while to heat up but it will eventually warm it especially if it works in your basement, maybe add a small fan to circulate the air. Whats your electric rates? I have a 1500 watt one in my room and I think I should get it on a timer cause I have a feeling the bill is going to jump.

[bimmer_E30]

it works perfect for the basement! it only takes like 30mins or so to heat it up, and my garage isn't even as big as the basement, prolly half the space/size. but i will try this on the weekend and see if it works! i don't know how many watts, but i willl check and let you know!

[mrsleeve]

Gas line is cheap, and you can dig it in your self, plumb it in up high in one of the corners of the shop and you will be fine. NG is the best route, Waste oil heaters are great but unless you have tons of used oils and spend lots of time in the the shop they really are not worth the extra investment over a good NG furnace.

Me when I build my shop (some day its a ways off) it will be heated slab with a few circuits run to the drive way so I wont have to plow the thing twice a day for 3 months. Will run on either a out door boiler like I have stated above or a big NG water heater maybe both with the flip of a valve, to make it easy on the little woman when I am not home. Hot water heat is the shit.

/\ Agreed. If I get a large enough gas unit to heat my 500+ sq ft garage it's around $500. Unless I find a used furnace, but then don't I need some sort of fan to circulate the warm air? The other down side to a used furnace is it takes up space on the floor, where I could mount something like Farbin's talking about up on the wall and out of the way. Then I've got to have a gas line run to my garage--no idea how much this will cost. Anyone have a rough idea? It's probably 50 feet or so.

Damn, might have to just get by with the bazooka heater til next year.

[3bvert]

interesting side note on price adn labor. A friend of mine sells and installs wood and pellet stoves. he sells pellets. he is the largst dealer in our county
his heating choice, for his home .......electricity.....why.....its cleaner and less effort
I did not know this until he was in yesterday when he was in buying filters at our business

[der affe]

i lived in a house with a 3 1/2 car garage and i used a pot belly cast iron stove to heat it. they can be found at harbor freight for cheap and are pretty easy to plumb. wood was plentiful from a couple of trees that i had cut down and i could always look in the alleys for more. IIRC the total cost for it was around $100 for everything. i could get the garage heated up to the low 70's in about 45 min when it was in the 30's outside.

[z31maniac]

I was hoping to see some info on 220V heaters.

That's the route I think I'm going for my garage this winter. Just unplug the dryer and plug it in when working on the car, unplug and store when not using, seems to be the cleanest/simplest for my particular needs.

[TrentW]

Since I decided to wait on running a gas line to my garage, I found this propane convection unit on craigslist yesterday and negotiated him down to $80. It's been used like three times and puts out 200k btu's. Very little noise, no nasty kerosene fumes and no added electricity cost. I just sold my old kerosene bazooka heater for $50, so I've got $30 invested--just need to go get a full propane tank. Gonna see how this works and just may forget the whole project of a gas line installation...

[Farbin Kaiber]

Get a 10-20 gal tank... None of that pansy 5 gal stuff.

[Simon S]

nice!

I just went through my "shop closing for the winter" ceremony.
This basically means that I did a thorough cleaning and ran 5 boxes of cleaners/solvents/lubricants/paints/adhesives/fluids from the (detached/old/un-insulated) garage to the basement. Can't get over how extensive my inventory of liquid chemicals had become. Moved it all to the basement to prevent freezing.

[M-technik-3]

I have a resnor 50K natural gas heater heats garage rapidly and is on a thermostat so it runs more efficiently.

Local gas company plumbed the line and had it inspected by town zoning laws. Legal with no issues. :) Made me a happy customer.

Convection take too long to warm up a garage. Fine if the door will remain shut for extended time and heat is on. But as soon as the door opens by heat and wait the next 3 hours to bring the temps up again.

[TrentW]

Going to pick up a 30 lb tank right now...

[Farbin Kaiber]

That's aprox a 5 gal tank...

[flyguy91318]

Get a 10-20 gal tank... None of that pansy 5 gal stuff.

I used to be a RV service Tech and I actually have a furnace out of a park model camper in my garage with 2 20lbs gas bottles all for free. I have little over a 2 car garage with no insulation and in the dead of winter it will keep it about a good 60.

[mrsleeve]

if you are gonna go this route, get the over head radiant heat tubes. They heat the stuff in your shop not the just the air.

I was hoping to see some info on 220V heaters.

That's the route I think I'm going for my garage this winter. Just unplug the dryer and plug it in when working on the car, unplug and store when not using, seems to be the cleanest/simplest for my particular needs.