# Safe heat for shop



## Julio8985 (Dec 30, 2017)

Good evening! I have a 12 X 30 shop and I just can't decide on how to heat it. I have sufficient capacity in my breaker box to use electricity, and I also have access to NG.
I have been thinking about hot water heating systems. Maybe using an electric water heater to circulate thru a couple of ceiling mount devices. Anyone here have any information.

Thank you!


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## sunnybob (Sep 3, 2016)

Simplest is electric fan heaters, on the floor, directed at where you stand.
Dont use a gas burner, that produces lots of water vapour that your wood will absorb.

Dont put water filled radiators on the ceiling. Hot air rises, the ceiling will be tropical and your feet will be blocks of ice.


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## DavidR8 (Sep 29, 2019)

If you have access to 240v power the electric construction heaters work well. 


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## Pineknot_86 (Feb 19, 2016)

Northern Tool has some 240V heaters. Lowe's or HD might also have them.
Question- if gas burners put moisture in the air, then why is static electricity present during the winter and not in the summer? I have lived in several places that had NG and never had a problem with moisture; just the opposite. If I had about $6K, I would convert the house to it in a red-hot minute.


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## DavidR8 (Sep 29, 2019)

I think @sunnybob was referring to unvented gas heaters. 


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

Pineknot_86 said:


> Northern Tool has some 240V heaters. Lowe's or HD might also have them.
> Question- if gas burners put moisture in the air, then why is static electricity present during the winter and not in the summer? I have lived in several places that had NG and never had a problem with moisture; just the opposite. If I had about $6K, I would convert the house to it in a red-hot minute.



A whole house humidifier would be much cheaper


Anytime you burn a fossil fuel it produces a gallon of water for every gallon or with NG gallon equivalent of it, the vapor goes out the vent unless you have a high efficiency "condensing" furnace/boiler, then it goes down the drain


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## holtzdreher (Jul 20, 2016)

I still worry about fumes and dust getting onto electric heater elements with fire hazard. Even a possible dust xplosion should the dust collector suddenly stop working. Hot water radiant heat panels seem like the thing to me. A few weeks ago, a neighbor told me about a radiant heat mat that goes on the floor like an anti fatigue mat., but I can't find any such thing on line.


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## _Ogre (Feb 1, 2013)

is your shop insulated?
i prefer NG for heat, though your electricity down there is pretty cheap
pricey but a mini split would give you AC in the summer too


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## sunnybob (Sep 3, 2016)

DavidR8 said:


> I think @sunnybob was referring to unvented gas heaters.
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


Yes. from the original post I assumed he was talking about mobile gas heaters for his working area, not a gas fired boiler system using radiators for the whole building. Theres quite a difference. :wink:


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## Pineknot_86 (Feb 19, 2016)

Catpower, one house in Ohio had NG and a humidifier. We could set the t'stat at 68 degrees and it would feel like 72 degrees. We lived in that house from January to May.
We have an unvented heater downstairs in the den- have to open a window about an inch when it's on. We now have two decorative electric heaters. Only had the gas heater on once last winter.


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## Julio8985 (Dec 30, 2017)

Thanks to all of you for your reply's. The mini split with AC is tempting! LOL!


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## Julio8985 (Dec 30, 2017)

I forgot...my shop will be insulated if and when I ever finish it! I have 6" stud walls.


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## nblumert (Oct 15, 2008)

I have decided on a mini split unit for my insulated 2 car garage, tired of not being able to go out there in the winter. Had estimates done, everything was good to go, all I needed to do was make the call to schedule the appt. 2 days later, had to replace the whole house unit. Now the mini split unit is on hold until next year. Life has a way of really irritating you sometimes.


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## CharleyL (Jan 13, 2019)

You are in roughly the same climate zone as I am. For my shop I have a window style heat pump mounted high in the North wall of my shop. It never produces heat hot enough to cause a fire, but heats, cools, dehumidifies, and filters the dust out of the air in my shop year round. It runs whenever I'm in the shop working or whenever the outside temperatures will go below freezing. I set the temperature to about 50 during the Winter when I won't be working there, and raise it to 65-70 when I'll be there or when finishes are drying. In the Summer i leave it at 75 just about all the time. Since there is never a surface of it hot enough to ignite combustibles, I feel that it is the ideal heating, cooling, and dust filter system that can be had, and it's all in one single cabinet.

Some are installing mini-split systems in their wood shops. If you do this, be sure to add a shop made filter box in the intake and use some high quality furnace filters to keep the inside of the mini-split clean. It will double as a shop air cleaner too.

Charley


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## firehawkmph (Apr 26, 2008)

I have three of these units that I use to heat three separate areas. One is my attached 24' x 24' garage. One is my 28' x 28' woodshop. And the other is a 28' x 36' automotive shop with a 15' high cathedral ceiling. They are NG, direct vent with a sealed combustion chamber. No worries about blowing yourself up. They are quiet and quick to heat an area. I don't keep them on while I'm not using the shops or garage. The biggest shop takes about 20-30 minutes to warm up in the dead of winter, single digits outside. No real maintenance either. Oldest one is 27 years, no problems. Also takes the air in high and blows it out low. Meets code just about anywhere and easy installation. 

https://www.ecomfort.com/Williams-6...dPrkYP2Ae3ud0kdVyUzgZS_FV4u9eGj0aAjewEALw_wcB

Mike Hawkins


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

CharleyL said:


> You are in roughly the same climate zone as I am. For my shop I have a window style heat pump mounted high in the North wall of my shop. It never produces heat hot enough to cause a fire, but heats, cools, dehumidifies, and filters the dust out of the air in my shop year round. It runs whenever I'm in the shop working or whenever the outside temperatures will go below freezing. I set the temperature to about 50 during the Winter when I won't be working there, and raise it to 65-70 when I'll be there or when finishes are drying. In the Summer i leave it at 75 just about all the time. Since there is never a surface of it hot enough to ignite combustibles, I feel that it is the ideal heating, cooling, and dust filter system that can be had, and it's all in one single cabinet.
> 
> Some are installing mini-split systems in their wood shops. If you do this, be sure to add a shop made filter box in the intake and use some high quality furnace filters to keep the inside of the mini-split clean. It will double as a shop air cleaner too.
> 
> Charley



This is very good advice, but make the filter box to hold 2 inch thick filters and use pleated filters, but also check them quite often as they will plug up pretty fast when you are producing dust


And stay away from 3M Filtrete filters, although they are good filters the material they use in them is designed to be in 4-6 inch thick filters that way there is enough surface area to make up for the increased static pressure loss. A one inch Filtrete filter has more static pressure drop across it when it is new than a regular filter that looks like carpet, and that ruins many compressors each year


You can use compressed air to blow out the 2 in pleats, I have a dozen that I have been using for about 15 years, you would be amazed at how much dust blows out of them. Just wait for the wind to be blowing at that neighbor you don't like LOL


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## _Ogre (Feb 1, 2013)

Julio8985 said:


> Thanks to all of you for your reply's. The mini split with AC is tempting! LOL!





Julio8985 said:


> I forgot...my shop will be insulated if and when I ever finish it! I have 6" stud walls.


look at some of the window units at hd, 12k btu heat/cool would probably work in a new tight shop
$7k for mini split, $700 for the window units
my kid live in mt juliet, he insulated an old 20x40 pole barn and can heat it well with wood
we wired in a 30A AC outlet, every summer he looks but hasn't pulled the trigger


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

_Ogre said:


> look at some of the window units at hd, 12k btu heat/cool would probably work in a new tight shop
> $7k for mini split, $700 for the window units
> my kid live in mt juliet, he insulated an old 20x40 pole barn and can heat it well with wood
> we wired in a 30A AC outlet, every summer he looks but hasn't pulled the trigger



$7000 for a minisplit? Maybe I need to move my bidness to Detroit LOL


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## _Ogre (Feb 1, 2013)

my bad... :innocent:
a friend looking for one told me that, may have been 2


GET THE MINI SPLIT :wink:


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## _Ogre (Feb 1, 2013)

CATPOWER is there a big difference in the mini split vs wall unit in a sleeve?


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

_Ogre said:


> CATPOWER is there a big difference in the mini split vs wall unit in a sleeve?



Sorry misread your post, a mini split is just a small unit that has a "cassette" for the evap inside and a small condensor sitting out side, they were made for cheaper installation with no duct, they were first and still called ductless but mini split has becime the proper name now


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## Pineknot_86 (Feb 19, 2016)

Our gun club has a Mitsubishi ductless unit hanging on the wall in the clubhouse. Very quiet and does a good job of heating and cooling the large room.


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## _Ogre (Feb 1, 2013)

i noticed those mini split systems have poor seer/hspf ratings
near bottom ratings


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## Catpower (Jan 11, 2016)

_Ogre said:


> i noticed those mini split systems have poor seer/hspf ratings
> near bottom ratings



Those are kind of a DIY model, Daikin (Made in Houston) have ratings up to 23 SEER + as do other companies



But a SEER is a pretty pencil whipped rating kind of like EPA MPG on cars SEER is Seasonally Adjusted energy efficiency ratings, an EER is Energy Efficiency Ratings .they are much more accurate but the giverment likes the SEER




But super high SEERs also have problems, to get the super high numbers the indoor coil is quite warm, and warm coils don't dehumidify in the cooling cycle very well so people tend to drop the stat setting so the savings goes down, we had that problem back swapping out 6 EER units for 9+ eer, people would call us back saying it isn't cooling because it feels clammy in the house, just a warmer evap coil


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## P89DC (Sep 25, 2017)

Around here NG heat is about 1/3 the cost of electric resistive heat or propane. A mini-split heat pump heats at about 1/3 the cost of resistive heat (that's where the 300% efficiency comes from). So the actual running cost to heat with NG or heat pump is about the same. But a mini split also cools. I dont know how much it costs to install a vented NG heater but a mini split for 350 square feet is a DIY project. And they have wifi control. You're at work, get off in 3 hours and want to use the shop...just use the app on your smart phone to tweak the temp.

I hope to install a mini split this summer. I need cooling as well as heat and don't have easy access to NG (gotta run a line and install a vent, not DIY for my skill set). Mini split needs a 3" pass-through hole and plugs into a 120ac outlet, I got those skills.


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