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Best heater for single car garage?

I read in a book about building houses on the cheap from salvaged lumber and other recycled materials that cardboard is a decent insulator,they suggested spraying it with borax to make it less combustible and it will also repel insects..not sure how your county codes or landlord would feel about using it for insulation though..

The foam sheets of insulation work pretty good and wont take much space up--they do sell some that is made to fit between roof rafters that might work between the studs but it is not that thick...the foil faced stuff is pretty pricey,but worth ot in my opinion,because if typical fiberglass pink stuff gets wet at all it does next to nothing as far as insulating,and in a garage that sweats like mine will sometimes in certain weather conditions,fiberglass would be worthless...

That reflective foil bubble wrap stuff works pretty well too,and is easy to apply,but it cant be used near a heat source,and using it over bare studs might encourage mold to grow in the cavity ,acting as a vapor barrier..
A friend of mine had a wood framed garage and he got some free rolls of 4 mil poly plastic from the school he worked at,and he stapled it to the studs,with no insulation...

Instantly you could feel the difference,the dead air space in the walls are a good insulator,and the drafts being stopped helped a great deal..but we noticed water drops formed on the inside of the plastic,and soon there was mildew and rot eating away at the wall sheathing and it stunk bad,so he ended up taking it back off..

I guess the bottom line is its not easy to keep a place warm for free or cheap,and each way has advantages and disadvantages..
I'd rather be in a climate where A.C is a must instead of heat,but I'll probably never get to live anywhere like that...I'll be inhaling wood smoke till my last breaths probably..
 
how about a forced hot air furnace from a mobile home. probebly find a used one for around $100, oil or propane. i used one and stuck the pick up in a 5 gallon can. the guy i got mine from called it a cottage furnace.
 
Could try cardboard or the Styrofoam sheets. I replaced the engine in my wife's 4runner in a carport with plastic drop cloth and 1" foam sheets on most of the openings and one regular kerosene heater. Was decently warm.

Anything covering the studs will help, cause when you do that air space becomes an insulator itself.
 
Really the best for a single car garage would be something hanging from ceiling to save room. Plus way safer.

What ever you choose as a portable you'll have to be careful with fire! Gas fumes, cleaners etc... plus ventilation, they are not made for enclosed space like a ceiling hung electric would be.

On a side note do you have a couple good fire extinguishers in the garage... first... :whistle:
 
Yeah theres an extinguisher in the shop and one in the truck. Ive got an electric rad heater that would help to sustain the temp once its warm. Its just slow as **** heating up a place dead cold.

Its so not ideal I know. I really need another bay... Then my low headroom could be converted to dead space and I could insulate and sheet rock everything...
 
diesel4me said:
I guess the bottom line is its not easy to keep a place warm for free or cheap,and each way has advantages and disadvantages..
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An underground shop would be decent to heat. If you could put your workshop about 4000' underground it would be 70 degrees all year. I would suggest some forced air ventilation. No heating bill, but construction sure would be costly.
 
Blue85 said:
An underground shop would be decent to heat. If you could put your workshop about 4000' underground it would be 70 degrees all year. I would suggest some forced air ventilation. No heating bill, but construction sure would be costly.
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Yeah,but flood insurance would be hard to get and very expensive!..the access tunnel would not be cheap to build either..

I know a guy in NH that built a underground home into the side of a hill,and it rarely goes lower than 55 degrees inside it..it has a 6 foot thick "roof" of gravel and loam with grass growing on it,he has to mow his roof!..it has south facing front windows and the sun exposure alone gets it up to 70+ degrees even in the dead of winter,he uses only a wood stove for a heat source..the house is over 800 square feet too,it has only a front entrance and one rear "emergency" exit...its all poured concrete and he made it shaped like an egg instead of square or rectangular...has two levels,upper for sleeping rooms,and the lower is the living room/kitchen area..

He wanted to build a garage next to it the same way,but he ran into problems with the amount of frontage required,si far he has not tried to get a variance,he is getting old and probably wont go thru with the garage..
 
If you're utility room shares a wall w/ the garage you can use your clothes dryer. I put one of these dryer exhaust diverters behind the dryer.

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Deflect-...verter-EX12/100167911?keyword=dryer+diverter#

with one of these on the garage side of the wall.
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Speedi-Products-4-in-White-Micro-Louver-Eave-Vent-EX-EVML-04/202907379#

It took a little extra sheet metal, pop rivets and some cutting and trimming w/ snips to get the round vent to fit the square shape of the diverter. But if I can do it, anyone can.


Day to day, it's left so the hot damp air exits out the side of the house when I'm drying clothes. If I need to warm up the garage, I turn on an empty dryer and flip the diverter in the box. Now I get hot dry air blowing into the garage. A 30 minute cycle is enough to warm it up enough to wear short sleeves. Total cost was about $20.
 
Venting a clothes dryer into a house can cause mold,mildew and rust your tools if you let the exhaust from it "heat" the garage..unless you run it with no wet clothes in it of course...:rolleyes:...what you'll spend on electricity in a month would probably pay for a used hot air furnace ..
I had a friend who got a free dryer off craigslist and left it running in his 2 car garage for 4-6 hours a day and within a month his electric bill went up 100+ bucks..it also never got the garage much over 50 degrees either..
 
Dude, quit trying to come up with quick and inventive ways to hurt yourself.......

I have used most of those heating methods at one time or another. Kept my citrus trees alive with some plastic sheeting and a propane torpedo heater.
Took a 20 lb tank per night, but I'm in Fl, so not too many nights of freezing weather.

Riflerk20 has the right idea. Find a junkyard that has full size campers and grab a built in propane heater or two.
I just got through rebuilding the burner on Baitfish1's Jayco camper. Cost about $20 for the whole assembly.
His is a 35K BTU unit, but they make bigger.

The important part is that there is no combustion gas into the living space. It has a two blade squirrel cage fan.
One blade takes outside air and blows it and burning propane through a cast iron assembly which gets it hot.
Then the exhaust gas vents outside.
The other blade takes inside air and forces it through the other chambers of the cast iron and back out into the room.

It has multiple holes in the housing for cheap flexible vent pipe like dryer vent stuff.
So you can pipe the heat where you want it.

The important part is the combustion gas and the heated air never see each other. So you do not get fumes, or use up oxygen.

As you can see from these prices, you do not want to buy new.

http://www.americanrvcompany.com/Atwood-Furnaces_c_184.html

But I would expect you to be able to grab one for $100 or less used, especially if you take it out yourself.
And they are basically self contained units. You could almost literally just cut a hole in a wall and slide it in.
They are never going to be as efficient as just burning the gas in the room, because the heat exchanger is not efficient enough.

The exhaust would burn you if you held your hand over it for very long, and that is wasted heat.
But, its also carbon dioxide, unburned propane, and other bad things that you do not have to breath.
 
diesel4me said:
Venting a clothes dryer into a house can cause mold,mildew and rust your tools if you let the exhaust from it "heat" the garage..unless you run it with no wet clothes in it of course...:rolleyes:...what you'll spend on electricity in a month would probably pay for a used hot air furnace ..
I had a friend who got a free dryer off craigslist and left it running in his 2 car garage for 4-6 hours a day and within a month his electric bill went up 100+ bucks..it also never got the garage much over 50 degrees either..
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I think runamoks saying he doesnt let the dryer vent into the garage with the clothes in it. Just runs it empty to create heat.
 
Ya,I understand that--but its still a costly way to warm up a garage ,regardless..there are much better ways...

I know a guy who uses a water heater (propane fired) that is hooked to baseboards in his garage and it works pretty darn good..at first he had used a semi truck's diesel engine heater that was propane powered as the heat source,after that finally expired after several winters he decided to buy a new propane water heater --he used a circulation pump off a house boiler to pump the water thru the sustem,and an expansion tank for a junked boiler also..
 
No one has mentioned the idea of burning filtered veggie oil from the restaurants yet?? I know a guy that has added a veggie oil tank to a few different diesel vehicles so he filters the oil himself. He converted an old furnace to burn the same oil that he uses for the trucks I'm pretty sure...
 
If you can find free used oil,thats possible...

However,here a lot of resturaunts wont even think about giving their used fryolator oil away any more--they now must keep a log of how many gallons they buy,used,and who took it away,and it has to be a licensed hauler with proper permits!...most of it is now getting bought up by biofuel companies or places that recycle it,or use it to run fleets of diesel trucks,like large contractors...if they get caught handing a few pails out the back door to Joe Shmoe,they can be fined heavily,and the recipient could be subject to arrest or penalty also,though its probably unlikely it would get taken to that extreme..

Your lucky to see 5 gallons offered for free on craigslist after thanksgiving or christmas turkeys got fried here now,when a few years back the public and resturaunts were begging for someone to haul it away...now that its a sellable product,you'll be hard pressed to get enough free to make it worth while..

Waste engine oil heaters are another farce in a way--very expensive,they need clean oil free of any water or coolant,and they carbon up and need constant attention...and synthetic oils dont burn well either,and since most waste oil is all dumped in the same barrel at most places,its getting harder to find any thats useable on a consistent basis...
 
I read most of the thread so I maybe reittirating somebody elses post.

When I bought my shop there wasn't a stitch of insulation in the building and alot of single pane windows.

As far as insulation goes, anything you can insulate will help. Insulate 50% of the ceiling and it will help. That's a guarantee. More important than insulation is straight up air leaks. The smallest crack or gap around an overhead door will suck the heat out so fast, it'll chill your bones.

We have an incinerator that we draw heat off of. Can burn wood, cardboard and whatever in it. IMHO, its about the second most expensive heat i've used to date, that is, if you value your time at all. There is also maintenance of the exhaust pipes to conisder. You're gona need to clean or replace them and to be honest, most times, replacing them in this type of situation is cheaper and easier. They can smoke you out from time to time as well. Sometimes the draft is just plain wrong. I also think this is the most dangerous form of heat. You don't want to start the burn and then leave.

Used oil, has been the most expensive type of heat we have used. We have a commercial oil burner. It does a good job of heating but takes constant maintenance. Pumping oil all the time! We had to go get the oil from different places and it had to be pumped. Then it has to be pumped into the supply tank. There is always some mess associated with the pumping. Don't care how careful you are.

Then there is the ash in the fire box. Has to be cleaned out from time to time. If you don't your efficiency goes down and fast. Now, assuming you always get good clean oil, you won't have much trouble. If you don't know your oil sources, you can count on getting some trash and water and or antifreeze. I'd rather have water then antifreeze. Water is easy to seperate from the oil, antifreeze, not so much. The trash, clogs the filters and now we get more mess.

For me, I couldn't afford for it to be down for long so every summer we'd have the manufacturer give it a once over before the next winter heat season. Anywhere from $200-600 bones for that. Now days, folks around here want good money for their waste oil. Last time I bought it, $1 a gallon. Still cheap for the BTU's but if you got to go get it and figure in your time and hassle, not worth it at all.

Electric heat is the most efficient however, I have not tried this energy souce for heat.

We just switched over to gas and so far, i'm happy with it. Somebody recently said to me, Natural gas is currently cheaper than propane. Another somebody said they expected it to be chaper than propane for some time to come. We put in furnaces like that hotdog earlier in the post. The best part in my situation is basically maintenance free. (relatively speaking.)

Alot of this depends on how much time you want to spend on it versus cash.
 
this is the best way to go in a single car garage.
http://www.amazon.com/PROCOM-Blue-Flame-Vent-Heater/dp/B002NVGJO0/ref=pd_sim_sbs_hg_2

I have 2 in my house. I don't have a furnace at all. I use 1 in the basement and 1 in the first floor great room. they are the only heat I have in the house. im heating 3 floors with a total of 2250 sq ft. right now its 76* in my house and 20* outside with a good wind. Ive had them both set on about 1/4 of the dial since it got cold and my highest gas bill this year has been $110 (with 3 teenagers and all their friends running in and out all day/night:rolleyes:). they are WAY more efficient than most any other forms of heat, 99.9% (electric is NOT the most efficient heat, usually about 80-85%). When my garage gets insulated the rest of the way one of these will definitely be in there:waytogo:

51VSOhJXg0L.jpg
 
Hey now, i like that Shady. A little late for this winter for me, but by next winter i will have one of those in my garage. Thanks for the link!
 
Fordum said:
Dude, quit trying to come up with quick and inventive ways to hurt yourself.......

I have used most of those heating methods at one time or another. Kept my citrus trees alive with some plastic sheeting and a propane torpedo heater.
Click to expand...

^^^ This.....Remember It's only temporary. I'll sell you some 6 mil poly at cost ( 20' x 100' ) I won't drive all the way to brick, but I will meet you half way.....By the way, I saw AC was -4 this morning....Might want to wait till spring.:D
 
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