This is my 5000 lb door opener and closer until I get new springs. I have 150 lbs of added weight to the smaller 10'x10' door. Too much for my aging back to lift, I've tried.

 

That will certainly save your back Bob..I'd be doing the same..

 

I got the LP tank installed today. After they installed the tank they did a static leak test. I was holding my breath hoping I didn't have any leaks in my piping system that I installed myself. It passed without a problem.



Next job is making a heat shield for my lift. These are the only places I could install the furnace and lift. I need at least 6 feet of clearance under the tube furnace, there is only about 3 feet.

 

That is a seriously expensive garage door opener, but a really really nice one!

 

Yeah, I think I paid $5K for it 10+ years ago. It is my unpaid shop help. It lifts things, it holds projects while I work on them and many times has been a second pair of hands when I'm working alone. Worth every penny I paid for it.

 

The only problem I see is that it's looks like a tight fit pulling a car in, let alone a truck... LOL. Did you get your new springs on yet?

 

[QUOTE=Moe Craig;18902614]The only problem I see is that it's looks like a tight fit pulling a car in, let alone a truck... LOL. Did you get your new springs on yet?[/QUOTE

No springs yet. I was going to order a set and put them in myself but chickened out. I just don’t want to mess with them. Also a pro will know for sure the proper springs I need.

 

Got a quote for new springs for both doors, $1300. I talked to two different places. The first had a sticker on my garage next to the man door. This company put in the doors on that building, I'm assuming, when the previous owner redid the garage. I called the place and the guy had an attitude. When I told the type of doors I had he started telling me they were cheap junk and that he could sell me factory insulated doors for a few thousand apiece. That's what I was trying to avoid using the existing doors and insulating them myself. It just happened my wife was on FB and saw a post by someone looking to have a door spring replaced and there were numerous recommendations for a guy called "The Garage Door Guy". I called the guy and he came out the next day and said he had no problem respringing my doors. He did suggest that I install horizontal struts across the doors because he felt after a while the doors would start sagging in the middle. I think Moe mentioned this in a previous post, good call Moe. The door guy came out and weighed both doors, went back to his shop and calculated the size of the springs and the cost for the struts and shop me back a detailed quote with the spring sizes. I have a friend who said he'd install new spring for me but I would rather not do it because I just wouldn't feel good about him messing with them but for the heck of it I went to Menards and priced out the parts. $1000+ for all the parts. I'd say it's well worth have the door guy do it all for $300. I'm just waiting for a payment from a job I did and I'll have new springs and reinforced doors.

BTW, day before yesterday I got the furnace fired up. It smoked the shop up quite a bit burning off the paint on the tube but the shop got nice and toasty. Today my son was working on a truck and he had it cozy in there. I have the thermostat set at 45° when I'm not in there. I just goose it up to where I want it and leave it. I have the thermostat set to drop back down to 45° at certain times to insure it doesn't stay warm all night long or when I'm not using it.

 

Great idea. Are you using one of those Nest programmable thermostats?

 

No, just a simple digital programmable unit. It has four time settings so I have each set at 45°. When I go in in the morning I manually turn it up to 68°, at 5:00 pm it drops back to 45°. If I work later in the shop I turn it back up to 68° at 10:00 pm it goes back to 45°. When I first moved into my old shop it had a mechanical thermostat that I would manually turn down every night when I left. One Monday morning I came into the shop and it was a nice toasty 68°, I left the furnace on high all weekend long with no one in the shop. That day I went and got a digital thermostat.

 

So then basically your on and off settings are 45° and you bump it up as needed, and it always defaults back to 45° regardless. That's why you make the big bucks!

 

Yeah, right. If I made the big bucks I’d have one of those fancy Blue Tooth thermostats so I could turn on the heater 15 minutes before I go to the shop. One drawback with the tube heaters is it them a little longer to heat the shop up.

 

It is hard to beat natural gas. You don't have to use filters, storage tanks, etc. and it is very clean. You can run it off a thermostat that you can set anywhere you want from just above freezing to short sleeve shirt temp. I keep mine about 65℉. The new burners are pretty efficient and will heat most any size shop.

 

I've been using the one in my shop for the last week or so, it's really nice. I don't know how much fuel it's using but we've been having temps in the 30s and the building is staying at a steady 63°, if I set the thermostat any higher it gets too warm so I think the thermostat might be off a bit. It's on an outside wall so that might be playing into it also.

 

Here is what I have in my garage to help with heat.


It's an overhead heater. I bought one last year at a discount store we have called Ollie's. They sell over runs real cheap. I put it above my workbench near the front end/engine bay area of my truck when the truck is backed in. However, I usually sit at the workbench on a stool towards the back of the garage. So I went back to Ollie's and they had two among a pile of other heaters. I put this one above my work bench where I normally sit on a stool.

These overhead heaters are not enough to heat the whole garage but they help and they keep my Bald head warm!