Suggestions for staying warm in da Shop?

Heat is key up here in Canada, routinely -30 . My shop has insulated walls and ceiling and has a natural gas heater mounted to the ceiling You can be as hot as u want

Worst part is the walk between the house and shop


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I second what the poster above me says :) worst thing is definitely the walk between the house and the shop in - 30C.

I'm in a similar situation with my shop as the original poster, but I have my walls and ceiling filled in with 6 in Rock wool insulation. With - 10C outside it usually takes a whole night for the temperature to drop to +7C after I've heated it to 16C day before.

Best way to heat an infrequently used space is definitely radiant heat ir heaters. I have few of them (even the glowing types) and they are great. The surrounding air can be cold, but you're warm almost instantly after switching them on. I used a standard electric garage heater before, but I found 2kW unit takes an hour to warm my 21x15ft space. A radiant heat portable 2kW heater placed 6ft from me makes me warm in 2min set on 50%.

My plan was to install more of those ir heaters on the ceiling in few places, but I found out that it is equally easy to just move the portable one.

I wish I bought them sooner as I would save electricity and I wouldn't have to wait each time for the whole space to warm up.

Having said that I have to also say that before I bought my heaters I read online that they give some people headaches. I never experienced it so I think it might be related to trying to make the whole shop warm with them and consequently drying the air too much. For people that have sinus issues that may be an instant headache situation so before you buy 10 of them to install in every corner of your shop I suggest to get one portable unit and test. Ones I bought were made in Sweden, for some reason I couldn't buy them locally and I had to order them online.

I also consideree wood burning stoves (pellet and otherwise) as I basically have free wood on my property, but putting a proper flue in an otherwise unprepared for it timber building is definitely not a trivial task if one wants to use as little space as possible. I would have to put the stove 5ft from each wall taking huge amount of valuable space.
 
I agree with tozguy. You will be much better off in the long run to insulate. Warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer. It actually amazes me someone would build a building and sheet the inside but not insulate the walls.
I have been in aviation my whole life and in every newer hangar i have seen they use IR heaters. Most efficient and comfortable, especially when you have to raise the door (most of a wall) to get an aircraft in or out.
 
Heck, I'll throw my hat into the ring on this topic. I insulated my garage with blown-in insulation. I ended up buying more than needed for the walls so that I could rent the machine for free. So, the ceiling has the R-38 rolled insulation and a few inches of the blown insulation to boot! I installed a ductless mini-split on the wall. Natural gas is not available where I live and propane was just not on my radar at the time, so it's electric. I wanted AC for the summer and have limited wall space and no floor space, so this setup fit the bill. It's one of those import brands off of Amazon, but it has served very well. I purposefully keep it around 58-62 in the winter just to take the chill off. I also keep it cool around 72-75 for the summer. I could go warmer or colder at the touch of a button, but I also like a low electric bill.:grin:
 
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I so wish I had checked the walls before moving all my junque into the garage/shop. That would have been the ideal time to fill them.
Now it is so packed there's no maneuvering room.
Would enjoy having a wood-burner or a pellet stove. Saw a pellet stove in operation a few years back - they're super.
The 'keep clear' would take up a good chunk of the shop.

Kerosene for some odd reason plays h*ll with my sinuses - irritation to the max. Would be much cheaper to run though.
Miss my radiant propane unit that I had up north. That's one item that I have no idea where it disappeared to.
Bought a Radiant wall mount heater at an estate sale a few years back but it turned out to be for NG and I never figured out how to
re-work it. Now if I did it something would have to go. I have the walls filled/crammed with cabinets and pegboard.

It would be nice to back a large trailer or box up to the garage and pull out all the 'easy' items, do the walls, re-organize the space efficiently, and re-load. In my mind I go over & over how I'd re-do everything right now.
Was suppose to be over 40° today but that's now been revised down to 37°.
(as the members further north tar & feather me and run me out of town... :grin: )
 
Middle.road, I thought it would be a pain when I blew insulation too. In reality, it was super easy. You only need about 6-8" clearance from the ceiling. My cabinets are open back so, that was a plus. Drill a hole to the size of the nozzle of the machine hose, stick it in, flip the switch on, and let that insulation fill up each cavity. My dad manned the machine while I climbed on, over, and all around the garage with insulation hose in tow. It seriously took longer to buy, load, and drive the machine home than it did to finish the job. A big time saver for me was drilling all the holes at one time the day before.
 
My shop is in a 32 x 40 area of a 40 x 96 pole barn. Have 6" of insulation in the walls and 12" in the ceiling. My supplemental heat is from a ventless propane 30,000 BTU heater rated to warm 1200 sq. ft. As mentioned above, by-product of the heat is also moisture in the air, but in the winter the humidity in my shop is about 10%. I have 3 ceiling fans that run 365/24/7 and keep the air moving. I Johnson paste wax the cast ion on my woodworking tools and use LPS1 greaseless lubricant on the metal working stuff. I only turn the heater on when I'm in the shop, so lots of thermo-cycling. No issues with rust on anything.

That being said, it was -9 F in our town last week. The propane heater takes about 45 minutes to warm the shop 30 degrees, so stayed inside. It'd have taken around 2 hrs. just to get to around 40 F. I end up managing my projects around the weather.

Bruce
 
middle.road said:
OK, I'd like to start a thread on staying warm, and also getting the shop warm enough to function in.
Short of battery powered socks and such, I would appreciate any input.
I'm living in East TN now - which granted is not 1/10th as difficult as a few clicks further north. I swear your blood thins out over time...
I'm having trouble keeping my feet and fingers from getting so chilled they hurt. I wear gloves when I can but when I get near moving machinery they come off.
Add to that my choice of foot wear is limited due to a messed up left foot. What I wouldn't give for my old snowmobiling boots & gloves :)
I've been using a propane heater to get the temp up and then the 240V ceiling mounted heater to try to keep it bearable. ~55°-60°
I setup a small 6" server box fan to move the air around and that's helped a bit along with tarps inside of the overhead doors.
The previous owner insulated the devil out of the ceiling but did not put anything in the walls at all.
Wish I had the little mini coal stove my dad had in our house in Illinois. Toss a lump a coal in there overnight and all was fine.

Thanks!
Click to expand...
When we built here in New Brunswick (north of Maine) we were told that 40K btu was good for the 1500 sf space. I settled on two 75k overhead natural gas forced air units. I think they have saved us money because the garage stays at about 10C and when you want to go out it only takes minutes to bring it up to room temp
 
In the garage I started with draught proofing, sealing any gaps in the structure with building foam, adding draught strips to all sides of all doors and insulating the most "lossy" surfaces including the steel doors.
Then I installed infra red heaters at my benches and bought some portables too so I could heat me rather than heating everything until the environment was warm enough to heat me.
My workshop has enough insulation to walls and roof that a desktop PC running on a sub-zero night will keep the temperature above 10C
 
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