Radiant Heat in Shop

[DirtyD]

So, My shop has radiant heat, (2) heaters actually they are staggered apart to compensate for room, as you can see in the pics.. Now I have only been using (1) heater, the heater by the work area obviously. My heat bill was pretty big for keeping the thermostat at 60 degrees $325.00 thats high IMO..

In your experiences or knowledge would running them both be more cost effective or would it be the same or more.. I'm not sure I want to test the theory right now.

Or if you guys could think of an alternative way to heat of the work area that would be more affordable. I am 4 Months into the starting the company so money is tight and work is not high volume enough to compensate that much of a heating bill.. Thanks, I did think of using electric room heaters but wasn't sure that would actually help..

thanks in advance

 

[DirtyD]

the heaters are located above left of pickup truck and almost above work table

 

[BIG EASY DOES IT]

We use a Propane forced air heater. It shoots heat like a cannon out of the end. Stick it at the roll ups to the room and it heats up real quick. It's like this one.

http://www.globalindustrial.com/p/h...mpaignId=T9F&gclid=COfyiNKn7sICFU9sfgod_CgAjQ

 

[bulldozer]

you should insulate the garage door. that should help a ton.

 

[DirtyD]

your in Cali though... It's a warm 24 degrees here in Northern Indiana... I think I would be using a lot of propane that way

 

[J Hill Designs]

those torpedo heaters work VERY well - had them in my shop in Truckee (CA, but colder 'n a witches bum at times)

 

[DirtyD]

I might stop by Menards and take a look they have some there.. Thanks guys

 

[Gino]

Heaters are generally put in with the best possible scenario when running them in tandem..... together like that. Using only one, makes the other one work much harder to get the necessary BTU's up to where you want it. Most of your heat is probably lingering at the top of your ceiling. In our shop, we have almost 18' ceilings in the front section. We've put R30 up there, netted it and installed ceiling fans for forcing the hot air back down. When we're up in our loft areas, I'll bet there's a 25º difference. After a few minutes up there, you're sweating your petunia off.

Get your gas/oil company in there to do a test. They have all kinds of neat tools to show you the efficiency of your present units. They'll try to talk you into something new, but our system in our shop is more than 60 years old and still works great. We keep our shop basically at 67º or 68º. We have zoned heating. The front office part gets around 70ish. We use a steam furnace. We heat with gas and it remains warm because long after the heat stops coming out, the pipes are still very hot giving off residual heat. Our shop is about 8,800 sq ft and last year was our coldest year ever in this shop..... and while we used it each and every day, our heating bill was still basically under $450 a month. This year is much less. Candace was in the back, usually in a tank top and not minding the cold at all. Once you go out in our garage area, then the temperature drops drastically. We have a torpedo heater for that area. 160,000 BTU kerosene cannon. You're hot within 10 minutes out there. That bay is 20' x 110'.

 

[DirtyD]

The whole shop area is 2,000 sqft, the office and showroom is 1,000 sqft, the office area is heated by regular commercial furnace haven't been using it yet but will have to start, so just heating the shop and heat set at 60 I'm @ $325 a month and you can do 8,000 sqft for $450...Wow.. my butt feels raped

 

[Gino]

The whole shop area is 2,000 sqft, the office and showroom is 1,000 sqft, the office area is heated by regular commercial furnace haven't been using it yet but will have to start, so just heating the shop and heat set at 60 I'm @ $325 a month and you can do 8,000 sqft for $450...Wow.. my butt feels raped

Like I said, your heat is coming out and going straight up. You do know..... heat rises ?? No matter how it's carried in, it goes straight up and sits up there and makes it warm for the bugs and sh!t. Are those cement blocks solid filled or basically hollow ?? Do you know how much cold comes in that way..... forcing your warm air up even faster ?? Other than our back outside wall, we have 18" thick solid brick walls around the entire building. Quite an 'R' factor right there. Our ceiling is about 14" thick. We have R30 in our entire shop except the garage bays. Putting up the R30 on the whole ceiling by a professional company was far-far cheaper than our doing it ourselves. I had a few friends who said we could knock it out in a weekend. Did the math, crunched the numbers and a professional company was about a 1/3 of what we could do it and that was not paying the four guys helping me. We put quite a bit into this place to prevent heat loss and it's paying off quite pleasantly as it's not hard to keep the place warm. We keep the heat at 55º at night. The timer comes on around 6:30 in the morning and runs pretty much all day as needed.

Again, our entire season last year was around $2,600, so some months were considerably less while I think the highest one was around $550 or almost $600., but then some were only $125. Average was $450. We start our heaters around the middle of November and turn them off around the end of April.

 

[rjssigns]

Ceiling fans like Gino said. He's also right about having your utility coming in to see what can be done.

If you are using propane you may want to look into a pellet heater. They are much cheaper to run than propane. You can buy them that look almost like a regular furnace. No window, no fancy trim etc.

Propane is a rip-off. Just ask the folks up here what happened last year. Dealers said: "Ya want it we got it, but it's 5 bucks plus a gallon". Consumers locked in contract price didn't mean squat. Folks got stung over 3 bucks a gallon.

Handy calculator: http://www.woodpellets.com/support/fuel-savings-calculator.aspx

 

[BIG EASY DOES IT]

The heat rises factor is the reason we use a cannon on the ground. shoots the heat across the room and then in rises up.

 

[ChicagoGraphics]

So, My shop has radiant heat, (2) heaters actually they are staggered apart to compensate for room, as you can see in the pics.. Now I have only been using (1) heater, the heater by the work area obviously. My heat bill was pretty big for keeping the thermostat at 60 degrees $325.00 thats high IMO..

In your experiences or knowledge would running them both be more cost effective or would it be the same or more.. I'm not sure I want to test the theory right now.

Or if you guys could think of an alternative way to heat of the work area that would be more affordable. I am 4 Months into the starting the company so money is tight and work is not high volume enough to compensate that much of a heating bill.. Thanks, I did think of using electric room heaters but wasn't sure that would actually help..

thanks in advance

$325.00 a month for all that, that's cheap, I was paying 4 times that for less space then I changed to kerosene, high cost solved!

 

[earplug]

One thing to understand is that Infrared Radiant Heaters do not heat the air. They heat objects, like floors and people. Check out this link http://www.ari.org/App_Content/ahri/files/Product Section/INFRARED BROsinglePGS.pdf

 

[gabagoo]

I put a tube heater in 2 years ago and have seen significant savings as to the older gas fan type heater. $325.00 is pretty good...In winter I remember just the gas bill was around $500 in the cold months, and that doesn't include the hydro running the fan. Run them both and get a good even heat throughout the shop.

 

[NateF]

If you're using propane, you might want to look into owning your own tank. Our church purchased our own 1,000 gallon tank. I think our last delivery was $1.55/gallon. In the last 5 years, I think we've only paid over $2/gallon once. I have friends who are using tanks owned by the propane company, and they're always paying a lot more - sometimes as much as double that. If you get a big enough tank or tanks, you could even buy a year's worth of propane in the summer when the prices are lower.

 

[phototec]

As mentioned several time already, the basic fact is HEAT raises and you have HIGH ceilings over your work area. The radiant heater is located up close to the ceiling, so the heat stay up there (as Gino said, nice and cozy for the bugs up there).


Have you heard the phrase "pay me now or pay me later", well you can either invest the money one time up-front to lower the ceiling and close off the work area keeping the heat in the work area, and not letting it drift out the install bay area, or just keep paying theses high heating bills that are only going to get bigger as winter is just starting, and is going to get much worse.


I believe in being PROACTIVE not REACTIVE, so if I were in your shoes, I would spend the money to install a suspended ceiling with insulation above it lowering the ceiling height to a lower height, and you should see a significant reduction in heating the work area, side note it will also be easier to cool in the summer.


You may have to lower the heater, but that kind of stuff is easy, just like installing the suspended celling, very easy DIY project and all the pieces are available at Home Depot or Lowe's. only special tool required is a laser level set up on a ladder in the center of the work area, about $50-$75.

[video=youtube;VHSS_G5Ueto]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHSS_G5Ueto[/video]

 

[player]

Do all you can to save heat and lower that cost, but what about going out on a Saturday and selling an extra $500 sign or vehicle or whatever a month to increase your income? $325 is one sign a month more than you are doing now...

Just one sign a month more...sell...sell...sell...

 

[phototec]

Here is a good video showing a project lowering a very high ceiling down to a normal height that will not allow all your heat to linger way up there. Notice the laser line projected on the walls to guide the installation of the wall angle. The T-bars are suspended from wire coming down from the frame work of the high ceiling, after installing ceiling tiles place insulation bats above the tiles.


[video=youtube;ITKn25kLvGU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITKn25kLvGU[/video]

 

[phototec]

Do all you can to save heat and lower that cost, but what about going out on a Saturday and selling an extra $500 sign or vehicle or whatever a month to increase your income? $325 is one sign a month more than you are doing now...

Just one sign a month more...sell...sell...sell...

Yes, sell all you can, but you can't control what you sell or how much, that decision is up to the customer and they are having HIGH heating bill this time of year also, which makes them cut back on purchases.


It's better to take control of things you have FULL CONTROL over, like INSULATING all you can to REDUCE your heat (loss) consumption, and every $ you spend NOW to reduce your heat LOSS, will pay you back many, many times over in the future.


As they say, you heat loss going up to the high ceiling is like burning you money up in smoke, to the tune of $325 a month and that is going up each month that it gets colder.