Garage heater / Installation opinions

[sudsmaster]

You're lucky you're in the Midwest.

 

Out here in Cali we won't be able to buy gas fueled heating systems starting 2035. I'm actually thinking of getting a back up home furnace before then just in case. I already have a spare water heater - grabbed it from a neighbor who was moving out a few years ago. The  one I have gurgles and bumps. But it's been doing that for the past 25 years.

 

[combo52]

powerful resistance electric heater for The Garage

If you were going to do this it would be better to put the breaker in the right hand panel so you’re not pulling that heavy load through a second breaker into the second panel it’s just more points of failure possible.

I would not install a powerful electric heater in the garage like that, keeping that garage warm in the winter could easily cost you an extra hundred dollars a month.

It would be far better to insulate the ceiling of the garage more thoroughly either by adding an inch and a half of foam board over the existing ceiling and then putting fire rated drywall over that for safety.

Don’t know what the floor is like in the room above it but you might consider a thick wall-to-wall carpet with good foam pad underneath that.

It’s also not a good idea to keep your car in a warm garage in a cold climate if it is often driven on salty roads it will make the car rust out much faster it’s better to leave the car cold until the salt can be washed off the undercarriage.

If you want to drive away in a warm car put an electric block heater on the engine with a timer to warm the engine up an hour or two before you Drive away this way you immediately have heat it’s much better for the engine actually saves gasoline to do this without damaging the rest of the vehicle.

John L

 

[sudsmaster]

Good points, JohnL ...

 

[paulg]

Excellent points all

Thanks for broadening my concepts of remedies for the situation.
Also:
The floor in the den above finished cherry-wood flooring. The idea of an area rug is being kicked around. Don’t want to hide the nice floor entirely.
There is a huge pipe from the bottom of breaker box 1 to breaker box 2. Although at first glance it appears that box 2 feeds from box 1, this could still be a 300A service.. I remember requesting as heavy a current feed as possible but that was years ago and my memory has faded. But a very good point that I will investigate.
And I don’t recall the insulation situation above the garage. The den floor isn’t frigid but a bit cool. I’ve wanted to put a hatch into the garage ceiling to revisit that. There are three areas in the house where accessibility would be valuable and are not so I need multiple “hatches” installed. Life just gets away from me…. And I need a good carpenter.
I suspect that I am going to shelve the garage heater for now, get the area rug and push back big changes to the house for now. I have options to consider, which is more than I had before.

 

[kb0nes]

I came here to mention John's point that heating the garage above freezing will hasten rust and corrosion. Living in MN I could see the utility of having heat in a garage if you need to work out there, but I would never heat the garage constantly. Even as a occasional use heat source I'd seek out anything but electric resistance, but it is easy and has low initial cost. The Mini Split idea is great, but in Chicago it will have limited usefulness for much of the winter.

Another issue my friends that have heated underground parking report is that you only learn of the end of a battery's life when away from home, where it is harder to deal with.

I whole heartedly recommend the use of an engine block heater. I have long used one powered by a timer. Turn it on for a few hours in the morning, the 25 cents of electricity used are recovered in fuel saved.

 

[sudsmaster]

Well, here in the East Bay Area, winter temps rarely get below 32F, at night, and usually that's just for a brief period. The other day temps got below 65 indoors so I finally turned on the heating system, with the thermostat set at 68. It went on and off for a few hours, but today hasn't gone on at all. So we must have had a little temporary cold front. It was good to exercise the system in advance though.