We are in the process of finishing the inside of our new shop. I am wondering what kind of heating options are the best from experience. We have installed 6" of metal building insulation in the ceiling and side walls, installed metal siding on the side walls, and foamed everything that would let air in. The side walls are 16' and the floor is 80'x80'. I dont really want to heat this all winter long and its not critical that its maintained at "X" temperature. We will be putting our sheetmetal shop in here and we also do a fair amount of painting and re-finishing various things. So i would like to be able to keep the room at 50-60 when needed and maintain that for, say 1 month if necessary. We currently run propane sallimanders at our current shop and they are a pain in the butt and not efficient. Also, i dont feel safe leaving the building over night unattended. Any suggestions would be great, i am wanting the most efficient and worry free thing i can get for the money. PS: We have access to natural gas and or propane. Thanks
I have what I consider the best of both worlds. Have LP fired radiant heat in the ceiling and oil fired radiant hot water in the floor slab. Below the floor slab is 3.0 inches of styrofoam insulation and the tubing is attached to that with 6.0 inch concrete slab over that. As for insulation there is 12.0 inches in the side walls and also in the roof. The entire inside of the building is also skinned with sheet steel. Overhead doors all ahve 2.0 inches of foam on them. If I were in your boots I would go for the natural gas since it is probably less expensive then the propane. Only disadvantage to radiant in floor is it will take awhile if you want to heat it back up after cooling it down. Good luck with it.
Thanks Greg. I guess i should mention that the floor is already poured. Do you have any examples of the ceiling heat?
Waste oil furnace. enough said,look it up.
You can put in natural gas overhead heaters, either infrared tube heaters or forced air heaters. The infrared are said to be more efficient. Put in some ceiling fans to get the heat down to the floor where you need it and keep it from rising up to the ceiling. Too bad you missed the opportunity to put some tubing in the slab, then you would just need a gas hot water heater to heat the shop. Wish I had that in mine, and it's what I intend to do if I build another shop.
A friend of mine from Wisconsin put in a Geothermal heat pump system. The initial cost is a little higher and you need some extra room to bury the piping, but very efficient to operate and you get cooling in the summer too. A pretty good description here. http://energy.gov/energysaver/articles/geothermal-heat-pumps
Tube radiate heater, heats up you and object ur working on not the huge amount of air in a shop with 16' sidewall. U can use either propane or natural gas. In long term natural is cheaper but service line to shop maybe big money. It can be controlled easily by a 110volt baseboard thermostat. Unit cost between $1500 and $2000 plus install.
Sounds like you just want to get out of the cold, not really keep a heated shop. I agree with cutting edge, if you've got access to plenty of waste oil, a waste oil burner works awesome. We have a high ceiling shop because of an overhead bridge crane, I turn the waste burner down to 45 F at night. When I come in next morn, it's cool inside, but not freezing. Turn the burner up to around 55, it warms the shop up quickly because it's moving air, and it maintains the temp well.
I was thinking pretty seriously about one of these. I have a few friends who run them in their businesses and they say there great. How much oil could i expect one to burn over the winter? My one friend said he uses about 50 barrels a winter. I dont produce a ton of used oil is the problem. Is there an outlet for such a product were you could cheaply buy it? I would think so, i just give all my used oil to my neighbor currently which isnt a whole lot about 3-5 drums per year.
Is this what you are talking about? http://www.schwankusa.com/tube-heaters/intro/
That's the drawback to waste oil heaters barklee, even maintaining a low "comfortable" temp, you'll burn at least 800 to 1000 gal of oil. Unless you could find a source for used oil, not really practical. I generate a good bit of waste oil in a years time so it's not a big deal to me.
Yep, seems like all the guys who create a lot of used oil have one of these systems. I would hate to rely on someone to provide this for me and then turn around and change their mind in the middle of the winter! How many square feet are you heating on that quantity? I guess cubic feet might be a better question?
We had 2 oil burners and got rid of them the other year and replaced them with overhead radiant heat. It made a huge difference and the equipment warms up nicely so when the doors open the shop maintains its heat. What about an outdoor wood burner? If you have access to free wood that may be an option.
Natural gas fired radiant tubes are hard to beat since the slab is already poured. They produce a lot of heat and warm you and the equipment you have under them.
Consider solar Consider solar. Here in Western Colorado sun is a good option for heating. I use a flat panel system that supplements 80% of my domestic hot water and heating needs. In cloudy situations or very cold areas the vacuum tube system has advantages. You will still need backup as not every day the sun shines. Ask around and don't get sucked into complicated systems. Tax credits may be available, especially for businesses.
I am going to start shopping for one of these. They seem to be the most practical solution. I will post what i come up with.
i heated a 64000 cubic foot shop with 4 different waste oil burners for about 10 years, i kept buying them because i wasn't running the numbers (i was being told to use them). one day after being cold i sat down and put all of the numbers down on paper for the owner and it was ugly.. i calculated machine repair/tune/maintenance which they require plenty of (almost an hour every operating day at full shop rate), oil handling (always get water or antifreeze in it), storage, handling of oil messy stuff again. it was replaced with a propane direct vent furnace in five years it has had a blower fan and blower fan relay replaced that is it, no other maintenance ZERO!!!!! you just write a check every month for the propane, thousands cheaper per year than waste oil with (FREE, lol) oil.......and in 2007 when i changed to propane i was actually selling my waste oil to a recycler for $0.27/gallon that went away with that vender and now i still have no problems giving it away.....you have a choice here become a good waste oil furnace tech or actually get your important stuff fixed.............theironoracle
Radiant tube heaters work great. We use some to heat a 65'w x 150'l x ~40ft high shop. Gas here is expensive and we are paying something like 4-5K a month!!!!! but the shop is warm. LB
Wow!!! I dont envy you at all!! I got a couple of suppliers quoting the radiant tube heaters now. Hopefully i will have some pricing back Monday. Are you heating with propane or natural gas?
Although it's a relatively pricey option, I installed a geothermal heat pump in my 30x60x14 shop two years ago, mainly for the air conditioning benefit but the heat works great also. I got a 30% income tax credit, which depending upon your ever increasing tax bracket percentage could be worth quite a bit. The shop is minimally insulated and with an electric cost of .11/kwh, I cool the shop to about 85 in summer (without AC it will easily hit 110 during the day) for about 60/month and heat it to 60 in the winter for about 40/month. If you have the land and can do the excavation for the loops, the cost for installation will be much less also.
The radiant heat works great, the only problem we've seen with them in the past, is they heat from the top down, so if your in the open, your fine, if your under something, its really cold down there, the top of the machine is hot, but under it its cold, the exact opposite of in floor heat. I'm in the process of remodeling a barn into a shop, we have installed in floor heat and are still waiting to hook it up, we are currently wiring the shop and finally got a dozer out of it yesterday so I can start building my door for it, we've been so busy doing customers work I haven't had time to do it any sooner, so for me its going to be a cold winter again working in my shop, till its done anyhow. If it were me, I'd pass on the waste oil thing completley, and do radiant heat along with some form of forced air heat to assist it when needed, I woudn't recommend the salamander heaters in a closed shop, if its air tight at all, there have been several people in my area that used them to assist with a quick warm up and got sick from them, to the point of in the hospital. Same goes for the lb white ventless heaters, I'd never do those either in a sealed up shop, maybe a tin shed with no insulation, but thats all, nothing more air tight. As for the wood suggestion, I do burn wood, its not free like some think, any heat source costs money, just depends on what form you want to spend it on is all, my wood heat costs me time, help expense to process it, and equipment costs to cut it, get it home and cut it up, but for me, thats cheaper than the cost to write a check to the lp supplier or who ever you buy from, when I get older, maybe not. The geothermal thing is great, and the costs of operation are low, the cost to heat to 50 degrees is cheap, thats the ground temp anyhow, what costs bucks is to heat from there to whatever temp you want above that, for a shop, its about the right temp, for a house, thats a whole different story and where the horror stories come from about goethermal. Those systems get you upfront on costs, right from the get go, where as other systems are cheap and cost big dollars over time. In any shop I've ever been in, if it was forced air heat, it was 20-40 degrees hotter at the ceiling than on the floor, unless you had fans to force it back down, in any convection heated shop, either from the ceiling or the floor, the temps between the floor and ceiling were simular, but took time to heat it up, but once hot, was easy to maintain. This also gives the downsides of each system as well, if you go convection heat from the ceiling, you need to keep them clean or they won't throw heat out, so if you use a lot of equipment that puts out smoke, like engines, welders, torches, things like that, you'll need to physically clean the surfaces that convect the heat down, otherwise they'll burn gas and the energy goes out the exhaust on the end, now down on the shop below them, so if you have equipment like shop equipment below the heaters, you need to figure out how to get to the celing to clean them regularly, a big draw back for some. As they say there is no siver bullet for heating, one system fits all and does it at the lowest operation cost out there with the least up front cost, if there was, we'd all have it installed already and been using it. Until then, best of luck on your search for the perfect heating system that doesn't breakt the bank to buy/and or use.
Dig Texas, Would you mind saying what the initial cost was for your system and how much trenching you had to do for the piping? My shop is the same size as yours. Thanks
My trench length is probably much more than you would need due to our dry weather and high deep earth temperature. That said, for a 2 ton unit, I used 1000 ft. of 1" for the ground loop and 75' of 1.25" for the gathering pipe. Since I am a dealer, my cost for the equipment, piping, heat strips and pumps came to about $6K. My trenches were 7' deep. Installation is key on these systems to make sure they work as advertised.
Would it be practical to build a 'do-it-yourself' system? One that consisted of the buried ground loop that had a pump on it that would circulate water through a radiator, and a fan to circulate air through the radiator. By practical, I mean could I expect any significant heat gain in the winter, if say the ambient temp was 40F and the ground temp is 55F. And for cooling in the summer, if ambient was 90F.
i think u miss understand the ground source heat pump workings. it uses the ground to disappate the heat like the condenser on your ac unit,or to pick up heat out of the ground to make heat with. the unit itself has a small compresser to do this. its not just the glycol loop that you need, also it needs to be sized correct. there was a company here that gave the geo-thermal heat pump a VERY BAD REP. the company didnt size the units correct, or do the installs according to the manufactures specs & went outa bussiness before they had to make any of it right. people around here still cringe when i suggest it to them as a option. my little sister has it in her new house thats 2780 sqft on first floor & full basement. uses it to heat her potable hot water also. her electric bill has not been over a $100 a month for the last 2 years of use if you do install a unit get a good company to size the unit to your needs
Would the system I described make any appreciable change (say 5-10 degrees) in the ambient temperature if enough pipe was buried? I have no plans to try this, just something I've always wondered about. A friend of mine installed a system on his new house a few years ago of equal size and results as you describe for your sister. He absolutely loves it.
My brother has a system he built in his house. He just dropped a pickup pipe in the bottom of a deep pond beside his house and uses a little circulating pump to pull water through a truck radiator with a fan blowing through it. It helps a lot in the summer, and some in the winter. The water stays in the 50's year round.
Something I have wondered, if you were to install a large field on one of these systems than was required, would it have a negative effect? Is a larger field a good thing? Or is too large of a field a bad thing? We have been talking about building a new house, and I'd like to go geothermal. What is like to do, is put in a larger field to make sure it has the capacity we need for heating. The cooling is less of an issue, but it gets kind of chilly here in the winter, and I'd like to get as much heat as I can out of the ground.
Not sure why that posted twice, but it did....lol.
alco, I'm in a bit of a hurry to leave for work but the simple answer is that it would not have a negative effect. However, more electricity to run the pumps, material, and labor would be the negatives. With these systems the ground is a big heatsink with it heating up around the pipes in the summer and cooling off in the winter. The more ground contact that you have, the cooler or warmer (closer to unmodified ground temperature) the returning water would be which equates into more efficiency.
Thanks OldandWorn, that's pretty much what I was thinking, but was looking for some confirmation.
Mitch504, that's exactly the type of thing I was wondering about. In your brothers case, if I understand correctly, he is sucking in raw pond water, circulating it through the truck radiator, and returning it to the pond. I can see where there would be more benefit for cooling during the summer because there is a larger temperature differential between pond temp and ambient temp. Curious if the heating benefit in the winter would offset the cost of running the pump and fan?
The "Mack & Hack Trucking Company" moved Uranium ore from some very rugged terrain in western Colorado to various mills. They maintained a garage in the Gateway Colorado area that was built into a sandstone cliff. This was at least a 2,000 sq. ft. facility with ceiling heights close to 20 ft. The stone walls and ceiling were painted white and a truck and pup trailer would fit quite nicely. Ambient rock temperatures were between 50 & 70 degrees with outside temperatures between 20 below and 110 above F. This garage functioned for over thirty years. They ceased operation when the mills shut down. It hasn't been reopened because the property itself is on federal land, (BLM). I bring this up here because they were able to extract all their heating and cooling energy from the rock through passive systems, (close the door). I expect that a ventilation fan was required, but that would just amount to a moving stale air out and fresh air in. I'm sure that this type of facility is fairly common in mining industry where creating space in rock is what it's all about.
Fsservice, the questions I have are all the units you install, electric only, meaning there is no other source of anything involved to add additional heat with exept electricity, no gas, wood, fuel oil, nothing besides electric, and the total bill for the winter is 100 bucks a month, same price in the summer roughly, or the total heating and cooling costs for the house for the year is 1200 bucks a year, no additional costs? Also whats the average temps during the winter and summer in the area your in, does it get to below zero for months on end, how protected is your sisters house from winds and also how new is her house, how hot is it usually during the summer there, and does she keep her thermostat the same temp around the clock or have it set at different temps while she's gone to work or away from the house?
Chroniekon, He does get heat from it, but I don't know how it would work with another climate. The pond water stays in the 50's year round. When the air is in the 20's or 30's, or the 90's and 100's, it just supplements his heating and cooling. When he leaves for days or weeks in the winter, he leaves it running, and comes home to a house at 45 or 50 degrees, not 35 or 40.
I have friend with big truch body shop. He is changing from diesel fuel blower units to propane blower units. Said it is lots cheaper
Wow, I disagree. I have 4 friends with old and new waste oil heaters. The old style is simple, but terribly inefficient. Huge nozzles and pump away. They own service stations and even after a long Summer of oil changes, they run out of waste oil. The other guys that have the new waste oil systems where they force compressed air to atomize the fuel, are very unhappy. Too finicky. With all the filters they put in-line and the attention they spend on getting 'good' used oil. They are constintaly working in a shop with no heat.