How do you heat your shop?

[Dave Cav]

Ceiling mounted propane furnace (we're rural, no natural gas). It heats my drafty, poorly insulated pole barn shop just fine. Flip a switch to turn it on or off and in 20 minutes it's plenty warm. If I need to use solvent or spray something, I just turn it off. Consumes no floor space.

My new shop has R50 in the attic and 6" of spray foam in the walls (probably R30-something) and triple pane windows (builder got a good deal). It will probably get a split system heat pump.

[Bruce Page]

Having been in a shop with a gas fired Modine style ceiling mount forced hot air system, I can say with confidence that it is probably about the last choice I would pick if I had choices.
The best in my opinion, is wall hung gas boiler hooked to radiant tube In concrete WITH insulation under it.
It is silent.
It moves no air.
It is virtually maintenance free.
It is extremely even heat, and has great recovery speed.
It is extremely efficient- water usually circulates at only 85-90 degrees.

No air blowing around with cold and warm areas, no dust blowing around.
No danger of fire at beginning of heat season due to dust settling on the heat exchanger tubes in the unit in the off season!

I would love to have radiant heat if I were building a new shop from the ground up. Unfortunately it is not practical to retrofit the existing 2 car garage shop that many of us have.

[Jim Tobias]

Radiant floor heat here. Hot water tubes run under floor(in between floor joists with insulation under tubes keeping heat in). Gas hot water heater keeps it comfortably warm. No moving air is a big plus.
I use a 24,000BTU window unit AC for hottest times in Summer.

Jim

[Ken Fitzgerald]

I did my best to put in the floor radiant heat in my shop but with no water in there, the city was going to require some serious safety devices that local hvac indicated would cost $20,000. That's $4,000 more than my empty shell 30x24 shop cost. I really, really wanted radiant heat!

[Ray Newman]

My previous residence had radiant heat. Great system if part of initial/original construction. Expensive retrofit. Wonder what the life expectancy of the PEX/plastic tubing is? The older systems had copper tubing/pipes which deteriorated and leaked. Luckily we 'nevva' had that problem.

[Matt Mattingley]

My basement shop, has just outside the shop door a airtight stove. It heats my whole house. My basement shop is only 350 ft.². I'm not too worried about my neighbours complaining about smoke as I live on a pretty high Ridge.

I have a metal shop in my 2 car garage. I have a 30,000 BTU overhead radiant NG tube heater (and a 5000 W electric which is seldom used). I am pretty well insulated in the garage shop and I keep it at a minimum of 64°F when I go out there to work I turn the thermostat up to 68°F.

My airtight burns all my scraps, sawdust and I have set up for my neighbours (who wish to be involved) wood disposal. My typical outside temperature in the winter would be 32°F to -4°F (hitting a maximum of -22°F) . I don't mind pumping up my chimney a little bit of OSB or MDF. At these temperatures my neighbours will never have their windows open, so I'm not worried about complaints.

[Sam Layton]

Modine gas fired Hot Dawg ceiling mount furnace, 125,000 BTU's. My shop is 1750 sq ft, well insulated with double pane windows. The center of the ceiling is 16'. I keep the shop at 45 when I am not working, and 60 - 65 when I am in the shop.

Sam

[roger wiegand]

I've also got the Hot Dawg, a direct vent model so that I'm not sucking sawdust into the combustion chamber. I don't like the wind it generates while running, but it's cheap and efficient.

If I had wood I'd have to be out there stoking the fire to keep things from freezing overnight, don't know what I'd do when I'm away. The gas heater keeps things at 40 degrees without attention.

[John Lankers]

Wow, I never expected to get that many replies (I've only received 2 email notifications). It is interesting to read how many of you guys get away with a heatpump in the winter.
Some of you asked about climate, building size and insulation. We are on the eastern slope of the Canadian Rockies, a high precipitation, forested area between farm country and mountains with cool, wet summers and cold, snowy winters. We only had very few days with above freezing temperatures since the first week of November and more than our fair share of -35* - -40*C (-30* - -40*F) weather in December.
The shop measures 960 sqft. plus 720 sqft. garage area (1680 in total), and is constructed as a post frame building with insulated concrete slab floor on grade, R20 insulated walls and R40 insulated ceiling, dual pane windows and no overhead door in the shop. Natural Gas and electric heat are no option, the one is not available and the other is not affordable, the shop has a 60,000 btu forced air propane furnace and the garage has it's own 40,000 btu heater, the main heat in the shop however is coming from the wood stove and gives up the most comfortable heat IMO. Firewood is basically free if you're willing to do the work. And yes, the stove eats all the sawdust (and screwups ) too.
I have to heat the shop even when I'm not working since the water pipe from the well, the pressure tank and distribution system is in the shop. Relying on the propane furnace alone would probably cost $300 monthly, I guess.

P.s.: Wrap a cored apple in aluminum foil and bake it on the stovetop (not on the hottest part) for a few hours then serve it covered with vanilla sauce, you can add raisins, rum, cinnamon or whatever the heart desires .

[Mike Kees]

John I use two overhead radiant tube heaters, I think they are both 125000 btu. When I built my shop I started with a four foot frost wall using Superform (ICF) and framed my walls with 2x8 and insulated my walls with R-28 fiberglass batts. The ceiling has fiberglass loose fill insulation to R60. Also insulated under my concrete slab with door cutouts basically 1.5 inch urethane foam. Shop is 40'x70' with 16' walls and stays very warm in winter and cool in summer. I have a wood stove sitting in the shop that I would love to use but insurance killed that idea. However I am looking at a outdoor wood fired boiler. I did roughed in for in floor heat during construction,so far though the radiants work so good I may never change.

[Jim Andrew]

I built a 6x6 steel building, 4' from my shop, and installed a Daka wood burning furnace in it, and ran ducts for return and supply from the furnace into the wood shop. Did not want to chance a wood fire in my wood shop. The first year, I could hardly get enough heat for the shop, so I wrapped the ducts with fiberglass insulation and another duct over the top. Really helped. Also helped when I added a wood floor and 1" dow board insulation over the slab. The shop is an old pole building, it is retrofitted with r13 wall insulation and r30 ceiling insulation.

[Bruce Wrenn]

I have a 24 X 28 shop with 9' ceilings. Two insulated roll up doors and personel door. Ceiling has R-30, and walls have 1" styrafoam sheathing. One day (most likely not,) I will add either R-13 or R-19 to walls. My heat is a 30,000 BTU infared propane gas wall heater, with thermostatic control. Keep the shop at 57 degrees. Dog sleeps in shop at night on blanket on carpet by door. Use a little over twenty pound cylinder per week on average. These are true 20## cylinders, not the 3/4 full ones from racks at BORGS.

[John Lankers]

John I use two overhead radiant tube heaters, I think they are both 125000 btu. When I built my shop I started with a four foot frost wall using Superform (ICF) and framed my walls with 2x8 and insulated my walls with R-28 fiberglass batts. The ceiling has fiberglass loose fill insulation to R60. Also insulated under my concrete slab with door cutouts basically 1.5 inch urethane foam. Shop is 40'x70' with 16' walls and stays very warm in winter and cool in summer. I have a wood stove sitting in the shop that I would love to use but insurance killed that idea. However I am looking at a outdoor wood fired boiler. I did roughed in for in floor heat during construction,so far though the radiants work so good I may never change.

That is some serious insulation you put in, but then any day with wind under 50mph is considered a calm day where you are and I remember very well when the Cypress Hills highway was closed in 2010 because of 15' high snowdrifts that were cleared using trackhoes and wheel loaders. Also, I don't know how much, but the ICF helps a lot keeping the cold from creeping in through the floor.
We had the same tube heaters in the shop on the farm but I can't have them here because of the low 10' ceiling in the woodshop and the dust collection ducting hugging the ceiling, I also didn't like the fact that there were always warm and cold zones in the shop - warm in the middle where I had a truck and a tractor parked in the winter and cold along the walls where I had my work area but always the heat right on my head - but that's just my personal experience.
I think, an outdoor wood fired boiler could become a viable alternative, especially with the huge price increase on nat. gas (they should have put that carbon tax on tobacco instead of everything else) and the infloor heat roughed in, I don't think it would take to much wood to keep the boiler going once the floor has warmed up.

[John Lankers]

I built a 6x6 steel building, 4' from my shop, and installed a Daka wood burning furnace in it, and ran ducts for return and supply from the furnace into the wood shop. Did not want to chance a wood fire in my wood shop. The first year, I could hardly get enough heat for the shop, so I wrapped the ducts with fiberglass insulation and another duct over the top. Really helped. Also helped when I added a wood floor and 1" dow board insulation over the slab. The shop is an old pole building, it is retrofitted with r13 wall insulation and r30 ceiling insulation.

If I ever decide to do something similar I hope somebody forces me to insulate the tubes or whatever it's going to be at least twice as much as required.

[NICK BARBOZA]

In the fall of 2016 I installed a 60k BTU Modine Hot Dawg that has sealed combustion chamber. so far I've been VERY happy with it. my shop is about 1000sf w/ 8.5' ceilings in an existing barn that i just built out and insulated over the past year. 3.5" Roxul in walls and 6" Roxul in the ceilings 3" rigid over the original wood floor with 2 layers of 3/4"OSB over that.
I've been keeping the programmable Tstat at 50 and so far it has been very comfortable to work in even with the this Maine winter we're in the midst of. It seems to run somewhat frequently, but not for very long. Its so nice to have a space that is always comfortable to walk into. No worrying about cans of finish freezing, or applied finishes curing, its better for my cast iron etc...

Cheers,
NWB