Shop heat.

[jmac]

A couple of years ago before I bought my shop I asked you guys about shop heat. The consensus back then was a waste oil heater. I went with a large wood furnace and it has worked ok but takes a very long time to heat the shop up, so now I am looking at a way to heat up the shop faster and still use the wood furnace as supplement heat. The used oil heat sounds great but here is the problem I have, I only produce about 40 gallons a year of waste oil and every one that I have spoke to around here that is producing any big amounts of waste oil uses it for heat already. The waste oil furnace that I would buy uses 2 to 3 gallons per hour. MY shop is 30 x 50 and has 20' ceiling height. I have insulated the entire shop; don't need to heat it every day just a few days a week for maintenance. I would do more maintenance if the shop was easier to heat though. My main door is a 14 x 14 overhead to get anything big inside and a 9 x 9 overhead to get a pickup in. When you open that big overhead all the heat escapes. I don't have NG so fuel oil or propane is the logical choices, no coal, corn, pellets etc. We have not had a day above 32 degrees in long time, lately is has been around 0 most every day. Any ideas, what are most of you guys using? Oil or propane? What size would you recommend? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Steve Frazier]

My buddy has a coal boiler to heat his 40 x 40 x 16 shop. The boiler itself isn't real big and there's a 2' x 2' heat exchanger with a fan mounted from the ceiling. It does a good job, but can take a while to warm a cold shop. He heats his place to 50 degrees all winter.

He also has a propane powered infrared tube mounted on the ceiling to supplement the coal. Infrared heats objects, not air. If you bring in a cold truck it only takes about ten minutes to get the shop back up to temperature with the propane on, then you can turn it off.

 

[jmac]

Thanks Steve, not alot of coal here but I will look into the tube heaters. What do think cost less? Oil or propane? I am leaning towards a propane system because I could put a insta hot, tankless water heater in and I think I can run that off of propane. It would be nice to have hot water too!
I have fans hanging from my ceiling that help alot and a fan on the wood burner.

 

[Steve Frazier]

At the moment I think oil is cheaper, but you know how that works. The thing about the propane though is you feel the heat almost immediately and you can shut it down once you warm. I was working on my truck that was parked outside last week there in the single digit weather, I only ran the propane ten minutes before I had to turn it off. The coal boiler took over from there. I don't have any idea what the tubes cost.

 

[139er]

I agree that the radiant LP heaters are hard to beat. We are talking about the kind you'd find in a lot of hockey rinks, right? There's a metal fab shop near me that uses a few of these(a HUGE building), and I've never been cold when I go there early in the morning when they first fire the heat up. If they are on and running, you feel the warmth.

 

[rino1494]

Our shop is 40' by 80' with 18' ceilings. The door is 14' high and 20' wide. We heat with oil and keep it heated all the time. If you are only heating a few days, you are using just as much energy because it has to work overtime to bring the shop up to temperature. We keep our shop at 55 degrees all the time and we use about 300-400 gallons of oil per year. If we need a quick boost with heat, we use a torpedo heater. 10 min with that and it is like a sauna.

 

[pushcat]

We have a wast oil burner and radiant propane heaters. We jumped on the oil burner bandwagon and bought one 6 years ago for $11,000.
I still don't think it has paid for itself.:Banghead It doesn't require heavy maintanence, but still, you have to clean it regularly, change filters often, and keep the oil supply fairly clean to get the most efficient use out of it. It' a noisy, dirty heat, and the area around is always a nasty pit. It's getting harder to find used oil anymore too. The radiant heaters are so much better.

 

[special tool]

Yeah,just get a kerosene Reddy heater and a $14 thermostat (also made by Deka).
You don't waste any fuel, it heats fast, and its PORTABLE, should ever the need arise.

 

[EZ TRBO]

We installed the radiant heat in our shop a few years ago, after years of 2 large forced air furnaces. Our biggest issue was that when we backed a dozer in the shop the cab was right at the level of the air blower and all the heat was blocked by the cab. Once we installed the radiant tube and our heat has been wonderful ever since. Does get somewhat hot at the back of the shop(first 10 feet or so is the fire and does burn good and hot). But now we can work up front, near the door, and be very commfy(leave it at 52 at night and 56-58 when working in it.
Trbo

You can see the heat tube at the upper left in the pic. You can see 2 circles above the box on the start of the radiant heat, this is where the 2 forced aire furnces hung, about 3 foot from the celing, backing a machine in there really blocked alot of the air.

 

[dayexco]

we have an old "drip type" waste oil heater, and city natural gas.. we set our city gas thermostat at 40 degrees, and fire up the waste oil heater when we get here to work. once filled/fired up, it'll run approx 12-13 hrs before it runs out of oil. works okay

 

[basspro]

I use a cannon style propane heater to suppliment, with a 7 gallon tank attached to it. I have a 1500sqft shop, 3 large doors,1 12x12, & 2 10x12. & sucks out all the heat when any of them are opened. I have the biggest problem when I am working on the concrete. I know Sonora isn't as cold as other places, but I do spend a lot of my time kneeling, & low to the concrete. (I do a lot os Stereo, & Remote Start alarms). usually I just crank up the cannon for an hour in the moring, & then let the overheat heaters perculate fo the rest of the day...or till I open one of the doors, then I crank up the cannon again.....just gotta be carefull cause it shoots flame 2-3 feet in front of it. That Instant heat is nice though..untill my pant legs catch of fire, & me shoes melt :beatsme

 

[Orchard Ex]

Do you need all the ceiling height or can you block some of it down with tyvek to hold the heat down?

 

[jmac]

Orchard, thought about that, but it would be a PITA to do that. The tube heaters do not look like they cost that much, about $1500 would do it. This looks like the answer. I would have to hang them from the ceiling because the mounting height is about 12', How high do you guys have yours?

 

[jmac]

After talking to a heating company I have some questions. How many BTU would I need and how many feet of a tube heater do I need? How big of a tank should I get and how many gallons of propane do you guys use in a average winter?

 

[Steve Frazier]

Geez!! Your heating company ought to be able to answer those questions, if they can't maybe you should check with some other companies that know more about their product. They have equations at my supply house where they plug in your shop dimensions, door and window openings and insulation value to come up with just the info you're looking for. Check with your propane company on the size tank you need, their delivery schedules will determine that.

My buddies tubes are mounted right at ceiling height, as they were at the warehouses I used to do backhauls from. Don't worry, you'll feel the heat at the floor. I think in this case higher would be better as the heat rays will disperse more to give you more even heating. Too close to the floor and you'll have real hot spots. Check with the manufacturer for their specs.

 

[jmac]

Thanks Steve, sorry for all the questions, but I wanted to have as much info as possible before I had to deal with heating salesman. I called around and they all want to come and sell a whole system so at least I have the ball rolling.

 

[Steve Frazier]

No problem on the questions, I assumed your heating specialist couldn't answer them for you and that surprised me. I really get ticked off when someone doesn't know the business they are in. If you want to build it yourself, I'd google the heaters and find manufacturers, then speak with a factory tech rather than a local salesman.

 

[EZ TRBO]

One nice thing is the floor is an "object" so as our heating guy told us it acts as a storage cell. Get the floor good and warm and it will hold its heat for a long time. This is the way to go for older buildings and for those that might sink bolts or things down into your concrete and risk knocking a hole in floor heat.

Trbo

 

[Randy88]

Not to change the subject but someone told me that with floor heat the heat stays close to the floor and doesn't get 100 degrees at the ceiling like forced air heat, any truth to the rumor, he also said with floor heat when you park the shop full of equipment you freeze in the building because the floor is covered, my question is floor heat worth it and does anyone have any experience with it?

 

[nedly05]

We are setting up a new shop right now, we isolated the center bay (which is the largest) and installed a wood furnace, it gets plenty warm in there and we just use wood that is less than good enough for the house.The bay is 22x38x14.