I have read many articles on how to heat a garage workshop including FWW #117 but am still confused. I presently heat my garage “woodshop” with a kerosene heater. On a recent trip to buy kerosene and a new wick at the lumberyard the salesman informed me that kerosene heaters have been made illegal in NJ. I have been thinking about purchasing a reddyheater rlp55v propane fired unit. I am aware that this type of heater will put extra moisture into the area. My real concern with this type of heater though is co2 emmissions. I am thinking that if I raise one of the garage doors up 4″ for make-up air and get a plug-in monoxide detector I lessen any inherent risk associated with this type of heater. My 2 bay garage is approx 550 sq ft, (4600 cu ft, (high clg) attached to house, and has bedrms above it. I generally try to spend about 2 hours a day after work. Any comments and suggestions of others experience with this predictament would be appreciated.
Replies
CO2 and CO are two different things. The carbon monoxide detector won't pick up the CO2. I assume it is the CO you are worried about then? CO shouldn't be any more of a problem than with the kerosene heater. In fact, kero gives me a headache, whereas the propane heaters don't.
There are some electric fan heaters that would be perfect for 500SF. You will need 208/240 in the garage.
http://www.air-n-water.com/electric-utility-heater.htm
Beat it to fit / Paint it to match
thanks for the link, i will definitly consider this.
MrMikeNJ .
I would recommend staying away from open flame heaters in a wood shop. True there are people who use a wood burning stove, but wood particles and fire are not a good mix; neither is dust and fire nor chemicals and fire. A forced air system is among the safest you could have, but budget restrains are a factor I am not considering in my response. JL
jeanlou,
? all furnaces have open flames!
natural gas, propane, oil burning ,etc.. that's how they work.. even electric carries risks since it reaches temps that will ignite wood.
All you need to do is avoid putting wood dust/shavings, wood in direct contact with either the open flame or the heating element in the case of electric..
Wood burning stoves were used for centuries in shops long before the oil companies and furnace comapnies tried to scare people.
Careless people cause accidents not the method of heating.. you leave sawdust shavings wood against any furnace or heater and sooner or later you'll need to call the fire department..
So,
My concern is that airborn dust will build-up in the ceiling mount, open element heater.
MY guess is that this is either:
1) not really an issue
or
2) a big issue and you have to do __________ to prevent burning you shop down.
Which is it?
Thank,
Eric
Eric: I'd say if you blow it out once a month it should be fine. Set a schedule so you'll remember, like the first Friday of each month. Do it more often if it seems to pile up quicker. The element does not get red hot if I understand what type of heater we are talking about(aluminum fins on a tubular element?) and so it is not a instant fire if some dust gets in it. A smoke detector in the path of the air movement would alarm if the dust started smokeing, might be helpfull.
Duke"... Buy the best and only cry once.........
Eric,
Any heater you buy will require periodic maintenance. Blow any dust that may accumulate out, a monthly cleaning, refueling... The list goes on.
My experience with an electric heater has not been a good one. In my search for a new heater I found a few heaters that were meant for the purpose of heating shops and garages. The one I was using just wasn't meant for it, and I nearly paid a huge price for that.
I should say that I've talked to a few people that have had these things die, and mine was somewhat unique. For most people the heater just died, and the felt there was no risk of fire.
My suggestion is to talk to someone that's an expert in various heating methods. I'm sure a reasonably low cost and safe solution can be found.
A note on oil heaters. One solution I tried was to use to 1500W oil heaters in the shop. However I found they were not big enough to warm the shop. When the cement slab floor and all the cast iron get cold you just need more than the two heaters to get the shop warm. That said if you warmed the shop up, and used them to keep it warm you may be okay.
Buster
Hey Frenchy,
Read this post 34374.8 from a little earlier on. Equipment failure and events out of our control are among the causes of fires. Human ignorance is another. Yes, people have been heating shops with open flames for years and even centuries and some of these shops burned to the ground. It is interesting how people are prepared to take amazing chances, until bad luck bites hard, and then the criteria and the rules suddenly change. JL
All gas furnaces do have flame, but not all are open to the shop. A few of the heaters I looked at had separated combustion, so no shop air was alowed to the open flame. The risk is still open that dust may buildup on other parts and ignite.
Personally I think the risk of open is overstated. So many of us have invested in dust collection that it's unlikely that the dust would ever build up that extreme that it could ignite. I still wouldn't spray finish in the shop. A well maintained wood burning stove isn't a huge risk.
Buster
Mike,
Recently in my neck of the woods, people who own house trailers have been upgrading their trailer furnaces. A friend of mine who works for a local plumbing & heating company picked up one of the old ones for me, $125.
I placed the furnace in a "closet" on the first floor in my garage, placed a 55 gal. drum for fuel next to it and ran ducting up to floor registers on the second floor. A thermostat controls the amount of heat. The whole setup, including the furnace cost me about $250 and a little labor!
With this setup, I found that I can keep my well insulated 16' x 20' shop at 40° when not in use, then reset the thermostat to 55° and get to work.
Costs have been about $25/wk, but lately we've been experiencing a lot of below zero temps. at night so it has risen to about $35/wk. I find that to be quite reasonable.
And oh by the way, my garage maintains a 35-40° temp as well, and rusty tools are a thing of the past!
Regards,
Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
I have had two different shops and my first shop was a 1-1/2 car garage that I heated with a milk house heater. It is a 3000watt-220V electric heater with a thermostat. The garage was well insulated and I could keep it at 60 degrees when it was -10 degrees. They can be purchased from Graingers or similar catalog houses. At $.12/kilowatt it cost me about $2.00 per 10 hour day in the garage when it was near zero and less than a dollar or so when the temp got to 30 degrees. My new shop is a 18' x 46' and I heat it with a 30,000 BTU in wall heater that takes air from outside and does not use any indoor air for combustion. Very efficient and very cost efective. Unit cost $400.00 and & $100 to have it installed which included running gas line etc.
Edited 2/10/2007 12:37 pm ET by mrbird90
I recently went through a similar situation. I had been using an electric worksite heater, again we'd had a few cold days and the heater died... a fireball spitting death! There were scortch marks accross the top of the cabinet, and a plastic tools box has some pieces of molten metal emmbedded in the top...
For safety I installed a forced air system in the garage. It hangs from the ceiling. It cost me about $2000 (Canadian) to install. It vents out the side wall. Considering that it is attached to the house I'd make safety a top concern.
So I'd like to pile on here with a question about electric heaters. I'm currently insulating my shop for cold-weather use. It's about 20x16, so 320 sqft. I've done the math and it appears I need about 10KBtu, or about 3000 watts of heater.
I'm considering either a ceiling mounted electric 220V heater running or two portable oil filled 1500 watts radiator type units.
As far as I can tell from my research, all of the electric 220V heaters have exposed heating elements, and I'm concerned about dust buildup and the resulting fire hazard.
It seems like plenty of people have used the 220V, open element heaters without burning their shops down. Can someone with some experience tell me how much concern I should have about the 220V option relative to the oil filled option?
Thanks,
Eric
Eric,
Most heaters have some element of risk, propane, oil burners, whatever all have open flames. It's how they work! Thus the danger.. An electric element reaches high enough temps to ignite wood so it too has a risk..
However simply because you are aware of the risk means that you are unlikely to make a foolish mistake such as allowing a lot of sawdust/shavings to accumulate around it.
Actually wood burning isn't a bad idea.. you simply need to be aware that sawdust and shavings should be kept away from the stove unless you are putting it in the stove.. Another words don't store your firewood in the box next to the stove!
Keep in mind that while heat radiates, hot air rises.. if your heating unit is up high it will radiate down some heat but most will rise with the warm air..
If you are buying a job site propane heater to replace a kerosene heater that has been banned for safety reasons, you are wasting your time and money and will be creating a much more dangerous situation than you now have.
The propane heater you are considering is not legal to use in an occupied dwelling. It is also illegal to bring the propane tanks indoors for any reason and the rubber hose connecting the tank to the heater would also be illegal in an occupied dwelling.
There is a very good reason for this, if a leak develops, enough gas could escape in a just a minute or two to create an explosion that would level the garage and take a chunk of your house with it. By comparison, kerosene is much safer, it takes a real effort to get a kerosene spill to burn.
As an ex EMT and a safety consultant, I would urge extreme caution with heating the garage when there are bedrooms above it. Personally, I think bedrooms above a garage should be illegal, people die in them all the time from fumes seeping in from below, I lost a friend that way.
John White, Shop Manager, Fine Woodworking Magazine
Edited 2/12/2007 11:09 am ET by JohnWW
Oops, not really meant just for John, whose safety concerns I absolute endorse.
Although challenging, and a bit pricey, to do as a remodel, you could consider a radiant floor system. Driven by a water heater in another part of the home where it can be safely installed and vented it might eat a couple of inches of ceiling height. I'm getting ready to do the same thing in the house I'm planning to build, but I'll be able to accomplish it as a fairly simple add on to the heating system.
By the way, something that sometimes comes up is the idea of running forced hot air ducts into the garage. This is never allowed in building codes as it provides an easy channel for fumes and fire. It's a really bad idea.
Edited 2/12/2007 1:35 pm ET by SteveSchoene
Hi Steve,
I almost responded to your post via private email and then I thought it better to post it here instead so all might benefit.
Do you, or anyone for that matter, see any problem with my approach of a mobile home furnace as a heating device for my woodshop? I have a carbon monoxide detector installed. My reasoning for its implementation/use is based on the fact that they are used in millions of mobile homes throughout the country and should be safe.
Economics is also a factor as electricity is outrageously expensive in my neck of the woods.
Regards,Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
I really don't know anything about the mobile home heaters, though if a particular unit wasn't satisfactory for a mobile home dweller, I wonder what was wrong. This isn't high end housing after all. Newly installed and vented by the factory, they probably do meet safety requirements.
I would want to have such things installed and adjusted by a professional, especially if this is a second hand item. Everything I read about choosing a HVAC system is that who installs and services it is more important than brands.
Hi Steve,
I talked with the plumbing & heating firm and was told that there is some kind of government program available that allowed these people to upgrade to more efficient furnaces for reasonable money and so he had an ample supply of the old ones.
He salvaged the best parts from several and is selling the good ones for $100 ea.
For the past 3 weeks I've been keeping the woodshop set at 40°F when not occupied. When I plan on working in the shop, I raise the temp on the thermostat to 55°F a half hour before I start. So far the heating costs have been about $45/wk., not bad considering that the temps. at night have been around -20°F on average. We've been hit with some real cold weather.
Regards,Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
SOLD!!!Does your supplier ship? I'd buy one....Jeff
Jeff,
See my previous post #32 in this thread. Your local heating & plumbing contractor may have some available. In our neck of the woods there are several heating contractors/service providers that may also be a source.
Regards,
Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
Edited 2/14/2007 3:24 pm ET by KiddervilleAcres
John,
thanks for the info. After spending a 1 1/2 years doing the addition myself the last thing i want is an explosion.and fire is my biggest fear. Looks like i'll finish this season out with the kerosene and do more research on the other methods such as electric, or radiant. Thanks to all who have offered their opinion also. The reason i posted this was initially i asked 3 mechanical boiler engineers for their opinion and i didn't get one really good answere pro or con .
THanks again
MrMikeNJ
I can't imagine anything safer than hot water in the floor. I have an outside wood/coal fired boiler that pumps water through tubing imbeded the shop' concrete floor. Hot water isn't known to start many fires. It is slow to heat up but is very comfortable when it does warm up. It seems that 65° is comparable with 75° in the house. This may be partly due to the fact that I'm more active. It is more expensive. I have more than $5,000 in just the boiler. I haven't been billed for the pumps and installation yet.
tinkerer2
I have infloor radiant heat and I went with an Electric water heater.. really neat because the water heater operates at the temp required for radiant heating, you don't cool it down like you have to with a boiler.
I checked and the rate for electric heat and gas heat is the same in my location plus the new laws will soon have a flood of wind generators on line (they're already up and spinning, waiting power lines) while natural gas is rising and will continue to rise as demand increases and supplies are limited.
A gas water water heater requires a hole in the roof for the exhaust gas flue that is about 4 inches around..Kinda like leaving a window open an inch all year long! Even with the heater off, and no pilot lite on you can warm your hands from the warm air pulled out of the room 24/7/365 (warm air rises to be replaced by cold air that sneaks in thru poor seals etc.. (nature hates a vacum)
Safety wise an electric water heater has to be the safest way to heat a shop.. The heating elements are completely surrounded by water and there is no pilot lite to cause explosions like a gas water heater, gas furnace, oil burner, has.
"Safety wise, electric has to be the safest heat.
I don't know if I would call it the safest but, if your wiring is sound, It should surely be satisfactory. Do you have the tubing imbed in concrete like I have? Advantages and disadvantages. I have a full basement underneath and as yet do not have any insulation so it heats the both floors. It is surely a nice heat, isn't it? For the house we have geothermal. Now that is trouble free and inexpensive to operate. Installation is next to prohibitive. I guess every heat source has it's disadvantages. The sun would be ideal if you could regulate it.
tinkerer2
Oh how I wanted geothermal!
There simply isn't enough space on my lot for it in places the city will let me put it..
What space. I briefly considered it for the house I am about to build. Cost was the draw back, not space. Space would have been roughly four square ft. on the surface. The rest would have been straight down--essentially a well or two. But is would have taken a long, long time to pay back the initial costs.
Steveschoerne?
Wells? Nobody explained wells were an option! Everybody, every book I read showed fields laid out like drainage tile for a septic system..
One of my thoughts had been to tunnel under the lake to get enough space, sneaking the field in on a weekend and covering it back up before it could be investigated..
were can I find out more about the well option?
If you have a deep enough lake nearby, just put the tubing on the bottom of the lake.
Dan1120
I'm sorry Dan, lake are publicly ownedand you're not allowed to do that.. (or I sure would have<G> )
Frenchy -
I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that using wells for ground source heat pumps is not allowed here in Minnesota. I seem to recall a conversation I had with the head honcho at the Dept. of Health about it a while back.
There used to be a somewhat similar procedure used for air conditioning in municipal wellhouses around here: at the wellhead, they'd tap off some of the well water and run it through a chilling coil inside an air handler, then dump the wasted water back down the well. The state put a stop to that some years ago, I guess to prevent any potential contamination of the ground water.
As I see it, there isn't too much advantage in having the water the same temperature as the input to the floor. If using the higher temp as I do from the boiler, you install a mixing valve in the line which mixes the inflow from the boiler with the return from the heating tubes to produce the proper inflow to the heating tubes. Any way you look at it, the cooling of the water from the heating source is used to heat the floor. Yes, I do lose more heat from the boiler to the building, but I think it would be minimal. Using the higher temp, you do have to purchase a mixing valve and do a little extra plumbing. We try to keep the water under 140° whereas the water from the boiler runs from 150° to 170°. Very nice heat. I notice that, with the same instrument, the RH in the house with the geothermal is about 3% whereas out in the shop in the summer time it is hard to keep under 60%. Do you notice that much variation? As far as putting a loop in the lake for geothermal, could you put a well close enough to the shore to get the lake effect. I put my wells on the highway right of way and nobody said anything.
Edited 2/15/2007 12:28 pm ET by tinkerer2
Edited 2/15/2007 9:14 pm ET by tinkerer2
For a simple and reasonably priced heater for your shop I would suggest that you look at a direct vent gas heater such as the Empire heater that another poster has mentioned. They aren't perfect, dust and solvent fumes hitting the hot surfaces of the unit's heat exchanger will smell a bit, but they don't have exposed flames and don't use shop air so they are quite safe and trouble free. I use them to heat my house, shop, and studio buildings.
John W.
John,
Don't mean to bicker here, but I'm for KISS (Keep It Simple {I'll leave the last one up to whoever}.
My approach is: Place your heating source, whatever it may be, out of the woodshop, and duct the warm air into the shop area. Or use radiant floor heating. End of problem.
No open flame(s), no problem with dust accumulation on heating elements, no problem with igniting finishing fumes.
Respectfully submitted,Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
I wasn't suggesting that a direct vent heater was the best solution, radiant floor is the ultimate way to heat a shop, I was just offering a suggestion for a simple, safe, and yet inexpensive way to heat a shop.
John W.
John,
I think that keeping the heating flame, whatever that might be, away from woodshop issues seems to be the best solution. To that end any remote heating solution allows the user to select the best one that works with his particular economic needs, and still be safe.
With todays heating costs being somewhat territorial in nature....... In my case, it works out that a recycled trailer furnace meets those needs, primarily safety and secondarily economics.
If I could afford radiant heat I'd do it tomorrow; I simply can't afford it, today.
Regards,
Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
Edited 2/13/2007 9:20 pm ET by KiddervilleAcres
...and to add to Bob's reply, for those who are worried that fire may use the ducting as a passage way into another area outside the shop (a valid concern), a simple mechanical fire damper will do the trick. JL
If the shop is an attached garage, and the other area is a house, the IRC building code used in most states now, is pretty clear, in paragraph R309.1.1 that "ducts in the garage and ducts penetrating the walls or ceilings separating the dwelling from the garage....shall have no openings into the garage." There is no provision for a mechanical damper that I can see.
I have no argument about the code issue Steve. Code trumps everything and everyone...fire dampers, when accepted in the code, take care of the fire issue, but not the fumes. JL
Steve,
Your comments regarding ducting into the garage caused me some concern so I checked with a contractor. First off, my shop is over the garage and is attached to the house via a long breezeway so the livable part of the dwelling is separated quite well.
The furnace sits in the garage and I have ducts going up through the floor into the woodshop. The exhaust/chimney is vented outside through the wall. There is a fire rated door from the breezeway into the garage. All the walls and ceiling are covered with fire rated drywall as required by local code here.
I had the contractor inspect the installation and he said there should be no problems as the furnaces are rated for domestic heating. I appreciate you comments and am glad you raised a flag for me. I now feel safer.
Best Regards,
Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
Edited 2/14/2007 4:09 pm ET by KiddervilleAcres
"shop over the garage"
One thing I would suggest is to put a CO detector in both your garage and your Shop. My employee's mom drove home, pushed the button to close the garage door, rushed to the bathroom, and forgot to shut the car's engine off. Some time later, my employee had car trouble, walked to his mom's house and found the car running. If that coincidence had not occurred, the house might have filled with CO and resulted in a calamity. It could occur even in your shop.
The main room of my shop is about 24 x 40 and a 12 x 15 room for planers, jointers and a shaper.
I use a Reddi 70,000 btu torpedo heater for 5 or 6 minutes to take the chill off and then my wood burner with built in fans is usually enough to keep the shop warm. Sometimes, if its really cold, I'll crank up the torpedo for an additional 5-6 minutes.
pins
PS: I don't bother to head the smaller room.
Edited 2/13/2007 2:03 pm ET by pins
look at empire lp direct vent heaters thats what I have and it is the safest thing to use in a woodworking shop anything else is putting yourself and your family at risk.
Hi MrMike I have a Quartz radiant heater that I use in my shop, my shop is not huge and the heater does the trick I purchased it at Lee Vally Tools. Mark http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=1&p=44590&cat=1,43456,43465
MrMikeNJ
The ultimate heating method for a shop is in floor radiant heat.. It's sweet keeping your feet warm but not overheating the rest of you so you feel comfortable. (Your feet are the farthest away from your heart, if they feel warm your whole body feels warm!
relatively cheap to do, inbed some Pex tubing in the concrete when it's poured and hook it up to a simple pump and electric water heater..
(the electric part is because it's the safest and possibly the most efficent.. .94% rating on mine. basic cheap model from Home Depot.
Efficent because any thing that burns a flame requires an exhaust flue.. stand on the roof and feel the warm air coming from one in the winter even with the unit off and pilot out. Warm air rises sucking all that heat out like you have an open window in the middle of winter!
That warm air that is sucked out needs to be replaced with something since mother nature hates a vacumm. IN comes cold air to replace the warm air sucked out..
There have been two comments in a row about gas water heaters drawing their air from inside the room and thereby losing heat through the vent flue. Direct vent water heaters are available and have been for years, I've got one in my house that is 15 years old.
These heaters draw in outside air for combustion and have the added advantage of being direct vent, the intake and exhaust is through a side wall vent, so there is no need for a long through the roof flue pipe. In most areas of the U.S. gas is still much less expensive than electricity for heating.
John White, Shop Manager, Fine Woodworking Magazine
JohnWW
I looked at direct vent heaters and while they are better and most have electronic pilot lites when I checked locally they were several hundred dollars more expensive than the electric ones and their annual energy costs were either higher or the same cost as an electric water heater.. clearly your costs may differ, objects in the mirror are closer than they appear, and close cover before striking..
Here in Minnesota we have well run efficent power plants, a modest population base and southwestern Minnesota has been putting up the most windgenerators in the nation. Once all that capacity comes on line costs will either maintain or actually lower.. Since we are relatively a long distance from other population centers and with transmission losses electricity isn't going to have the same pricing pressures that Natural gas will have as supplies dwindle and demand increases.. WE even will be getting back from Ford Motor company a hydro electric dam that previously generated all the power requiements of the Ford assembly plant since 1922 when Ford closes this plant and moves production to Mexico..
Sir: I used Reddy Heaters myself for many years, suffering through massive headaches, coughing up lots of black stuff, chest pains, all the good stuff. There is also a lot of soot these heaters emit, likely not good for the lungs either. I hung one of those natural gas fired heaters from the corner ceiling and this year upgraded the thermostat. For humidity, I have an old washbasin which I fill whenever the thought occurs. Reddy Heaters were designed to use at job sites where there is NO other source of heat, like a building under construction that is only framed but no enclosed spaces except for large sheets of canvas hung only to provide some shelter from wind. That Reddy Heater thing will cause you some pretty nasty health problems; working around sawdust, we really don't need any more of those kinds of problems.
thanks for the personal insight. This is the kind of opinions I wanted to hear. I will look into electric unit probably for next winter, gives me time to save more money!
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