i need to invest in a heater for my garage and some insulation,
i was looking at running a gas line out to make it more pemanent, what btu do i need to be looking for for a large 2 car garage, seems like 2 1/2 but a roomy 2, it gets pretty cold in winter and figure it should keep it a comefortable 60deg when it is 0-20 deg f. i was looking at those ventless wall units on ebay for under 200 and those r 30,000 btu, i want one of those ceiling or wall units, where should i shop or look? dont have too much to spend on it. do those wall units work and push heat? will they kill u....lol, thats about the only reason i havent got a reddy heater b/c i heard some horror stories of people having oxygen problems and the smell.

 

Check with a local HVAC contractor. He will check the insulation, exposure and take your location, expectations for how often it is used, and how fast it needs to heat into consideration.

 

i looked at a heater someone tore out of a small three room house today, price was right but it sat on the floor, i was thinking more of a mobile home/trailer house unit or a ceiling hug box, i was looking also for peoples experience with those wall hung ventless type, i am leaning more twards a blower type though,

 

I don't like the units without a fan, -seems they take too long to heat the area up. The ventless units turn me off with the smell and the oxygen problem.

You could always hang that salvage unit up in a corner unless it is plain too tall. Some units can be mounted horizontally or vertically.

I always worry about the BOOM factor using flame heat in a shop or garage.

 

its about 3 1/2ft wide 3ft tall and 1 1/2 ft wide, it has a blower that blows out the front but the controls are out the top so i think for 50 - 75$ i should make space for it on my floor. but i have to run a gas line underground, about 20-30 ft.

 

I'm going with a modine hot dawg 60,000 btu for my 3 car plus garage. It is insulated walls and ceiling with insulated doors. I live right in between chi-town and milwaukee. I don't do a lot of work in the garage, but work on sleds in the winter.. I will let you know how I like it, contractor is supposed to give me estimate tomorrow.

 

i buried my line this weekend and layed some wire in there with it, it is hooked up and running but i am going to put a different or bigger vent on it to maybe capture some of the heat, i bought a small space heater furnace that was used in a 3 room house for $50, it works pretty good, i figure for now and at least my lines are run, i would like one of those ceiling hung jobs but they r pretty expensive, my father in law paid $500, for $150 now i have heat, but next time i dig a 50ftX18in trench, i am renting a ditch witch. that pick axe made quick work of the roots but also my energy level,

 

Can you remote mount the controls?

Measure the fan motor current draw and make sure it's OK. A furnace without the restriction of ductwork will overload the fan.

 

no this one is a one piece unit, the controls are on the deal, and it is a small fan, nothing spectacular, you ever been in a small older house and all they had was a 2 ft by three ft long and 2 ft from the wall , it has a 4 in duct and thats what i ran out the wall, i was thinking of just filling the space in between the studs with a square duct and a inlet and using the same outlet, to capture the heat from the air and radiate it into the room, but the same restriction as the inlet and current outlet like a big vacuum can. just thinking when i touched that hot vent tube about how i can recapture some of that heat i am paying for. the small blower motor blows hot air out the top of the box. there is no other duct work other than venting it.

 

You can cool the flue down to much to the point that the furnace will not draw combustion products out properly... -Very bad news

 

A few thoughts for you: I sometimes install heaters for swimming pools and I have installed a few of the ceiling suspended area heaters as well . . .

First, on your vent duct hole through the wall - make sure that the hole in your wall is two or three inches larger in diameter than the 4" duct pipe itself - garage wall material is not normally fire retardent construction - duct flashing and a little silicone rubber sealant will seal the hole near beyond it's edges.

Second: on your gas line . . . when you ran it I "hope" you put gas ***** at both ends of the line - two reasons for this . . . . if someone or mother nature does something to damage the line between the house and the garage you don't want to be shutting down your 'main' to stop the leak - mid winter a house can get very cold very fast without heat. Then again, if you need to work on or clean the new furnace in the garage, you don't want to be running to the house every time you want to turn off the gas - not to mention losing all of the gas in the line itself. A gas **** at the unit makes working on it easier . . . one at the house, for a heater that remote, only makes good sense.

Someone mentioned remote locating your thremostat . . . A thermostat, any thermostat, is only a rheostat switch with a temperature sensor attached connected into the circuit with two wires - a fancy on/off switch based on temperature. As long as you have access to those two wires you can attach 'any' household thermostat to the unit and mount it anywhere in the garage. (This suggestion was originally proposed for you so you could try and platform mount the unit high in a corner if you wished) My only consideration here would be to insure you know the manufacturer's minimum clearance requirements - front, back, side to side and above. Look for the company on the net and drop them an email if you can locate them . . . Most companies require 12 inches, but it can vary a bit - I usually use 18 as a rule of thumb.

For greater heat distribution: The blower fan is likely 110v, for the unit you described. "If" you have a finished ceiling (rather than open rafters) and if you have sufficient clearance, a flush mount, reversible, ceiling fan in the center room will give you the most even heat distribution - with the fan blowing 'up' into the ceiling it will move the heated air along the ceiling and down the outer walls of the garage - creating a more even distribution. It can be wired on it's own, used with a timer, or even powered off the heater's own blower fan junction - just piggy-back the connections so the ceiling fan runs at the same times as the blower. . . .

If you don't have room for a ceiling fan (or one might be unsafe for whatever reason) you can put a 20" box fan or oscillating fan on a shelf above and behind the heater to do the same thing. Again, you can cut the plug from it and piggy-back it's power supply directly from the blower fan junction.

Final thought - for safety . . . if you use a lot of solvents in your garage, or paint in there . . . Make darned sure that the new furnace is off when the solvents are in use or you are painting . . . you can turn it back on when the fumes subside.

Hint for painting - overheat the garage before you start, during your prep work. Kill the heater, paint, wait an hour and turn the heater back on . . . usually works.

Ray

 

i did run two on off valves one at each end, i want to put up a ceiling fan but am waiting til i get the insulation installed, it has a cord running off the back from the switch mounted right on it that controls a small blower fan, and plugs into the outlet, the thermostat is a turn **** that runs into a switch or regulator that the gas runs into, also has the off/pilot/on control on it and two temp sens running on small copper wire, one is the pilot safety and one is room temp sens, it had instructions on the pilot door for mounting instructions and i have about a 1 in space in the fiber board around the vent i have running out the wall into a dryer wall type vent but i want to change it and the material didnt seem to get hot, just the vent tube,
i dont think i am going to blow myself up anyway, but for the money it will work for now, just want to run more vent to act as a radiator and make it that much more efficient, this one is made to sit under a foot away from the wall and 2 ft on each side,

 

I have a 50 gallon gas water heater in the garage. I got one of these air handler units with a hot water coil in it and connected it to the water heater. Yhe fan coil was 110v and i put an electric pigtail on it and plugged it in. I then installed a heat tstat on the wall and connected the low voltage wiring. The hot water coil has a water circulator pump in it to pull water from the water heater. The heat from the circulating water is picked off the coil and the the water is sent to the water heater to be reheated. This system works just like a heater core in a car.

 

i like the radiant heat but in a garage it would take a lot of plumbing and such, not to mention it would have to be on all the time to keep from freezing. i have it on pilot now and fire it up when i need it. i would think it would work for my app if i didnt have a 50ft run from the house to the garage and could get the pipes deep enough, but mine is said and done and i enjoy it. it is a good idea i never considered though. if a guy has a attached garage or something he could run it right off his homes water heater? i dont know, but my father in law has radiant heat and his drinking water is separate than his boiler system. the only problem i seem to be having is the switch that keeps it piloted on the back of the heater goes off if heat is set too high or if the furnace in the house kicks on, cant figure out which yet

 

Most console type space heaters use a hydraulic control (copper sensing bulb) which is nice because you do not need 110 to run the heater. You can switch the gas valve over to 24v and then run a remote t-stat if you want it would require a new valve. transformer, and thermostat, which would cost more than what you have in the heater. Do not monkey with the vent. Heaters of that style are real prone to spill and not vent properly. You need the proper size vent in the proper material ran correctly to code. Get rid of the dryer cap its not safe. Your not going to capture much heat anyway. If you have a problem and its not done properly then you give your insurance company an out.

Also the "Rule of Thumb" for sizing is 9 btu's per cubic foot of space to be heated. Example 24ft x 24ft x 9ft =5184 cuft x 9 =46,656 btu's of heat input