I thought i saw a thread on this topic in the past, but a search turned up nothing. In fact it was amusing to see how "heater" was returned as "cheater" and "theater". But anyway, My shop was being heated by an obsolete kerosene stove which has now all but quit (too bad, b/c I just had my oil tank refilled), so I'm looking for ideas on how others are heating their shops. Anyone have something they like? (economical, sufficient heat).
Thanks,
Rich
There is no water to barn we built in '07 (well insulated). So it's heated with an oil-fired furnace on the ground floor, the hot air delivered through a trunk and branch duct system and controlled with a programmable thermostat. I can allow the temp. to drop to 40-45 overnight in the coldest months and it will automatically come on at a preset time, raising the temperature to a more comfortable level when I wish to begin working. But the best addition was a nice wood stove. It's efficient, clean burning and while the oil keeps the building from becoming a refrigerator one morning fire will bring the space up to comfy level and maintain it for hours. It is easily possible to heat the space with the stove alone, too. This year I plan to really monitor the amount of oil required to heat the space and how much wood is required to raise the temperature to "cozy" (I predict about 1-1 1/2 cord).
Yo Rich, think I'd go with one of them ceramic honey comb heaters that sit atop an LP tank. Look kinda like a big sunflower? Lemme tell ya those things can crank out some BTUs.
I have a heater like this. It's a spot heater and I'm moving it around a lot depending on where I'm sitting or standing. My shop is never warm and toasty but it is OK.
http://www.dinodirect.com/electric-heater-far-infrared-800w.html
In the summer I hang it from the ceiling and tell folks I have satelite. (just kidding)
I have been thinking of getting an oiled filled electric heater and putting it on a timer so it kicks on before I get to my studio. I may do that this winter.
gene
Quartz and/or oil filled heaters are okay I spose. Have both. BUT they do put a hurtin' on yer electric meter. Gas gives ya a lot more bang for the buck.
In the early days we used a big cast iron skillet over an LP stove ...? Radiated heat like a sob.
N an emerge on e in new Hampshire when my burner vuit for good I heated my house with a keroseen heater about 2' tall round 11/2' diameter keep the house warn about 505 at night when it was like 20s outside
Rich your in DC right? Best to listen to our Yankee brothers and sisters. I have an electric quarts heater mounted to the ceiling. Takes about 30 mins to heat the cutting and sewing room up. But I only need to use it about a dozen times a year.
Soooooo glad I don't have to worry about this stuff. However, when it's 95 F and 95% humidity, your sweat glands better be in working order. ;)
June
I heat my whole house with a toyo stove #1 fuel. and up here in alaska it gets down to -60 they have a smaller one to. they are automatic. and if you are like me to lazy to cut wood the are the cheaps way up here most pl;ace can not get gas. don
I found a one year old gas furnace on the freecycle website. Some guy had it installed in his house then added on a large addition, so he put in another unit to carry the whole house. It's a Trane high efficiency unit. I did have to build a filter box for it to set on and install ductwork and a vent. Oh, I did have to convert it from natural gas to L.P. too. It works great even on the coldest days and not too bad on gas either. No matter what you choose be careful if you have open flames or pilot lights. If you get to spraying any adhesives, solvent based materials, or even real dusty situations, they can get dangerous real quick.
Kyle
Thanks for the responses, Gene, I have one of those parabolic dish thingy's and it's great when you're staying in one place working. I'd like to investigate the others mentioned here, but the ceiling mounted electric quartz heater won't work for me since I have low ceilings. I looked online for that Toyostove and it seems like it may be similar to a portable kerosene heater I used to use that sat on the floor (mounted on it's own tank) That really did put out some nice heat, but since it was portable, it was not hooked up to a flue and would cause fumes, especially after being shut down (that also meant I couldn't keep it on a low setting at night). Someone mentioned a wood stove. Does anyone have any experience with a pellet stove?
Thanks,
Rich
I have a pellet stove and it works great as long as you have power, loose power and you loose your heat. Mine has to be cleaned about every three weeks and it can burn pellets, or corn. The corn will attract mice, but moisture can ruin your wood pellets, corn makes a much finer ash than wood and is a little more difficult to clean. I also have an oil fired hot air furnace in the shop, I like it because I can turn the thermostat down real low at night and just turn it up to where I want it in the morning and in a couple of hours the whole shop is warm, but fuel oil is expensive and I do not have water in the shop, so no frozen pipes to worry about.
I was never really warm until I installed a wood stove, wood heat is real nice and it just warms you and the environment like no other heat, the trick is to have good dry wood, cut, or buy a year ahead and keep it covered. I have a soft spot for antique wood stoves, I am not a big fan of the new air tight wood stoves because they make a lot of creosote, excess creosote is created by a slow burning, low heat fire. Creosote is the main cause of chimney fires, so your chimney should be cleaned at least once a year and your stove pipe cleaned regularly, how ofter will depend on your stove and draft. I have heard the new EPA approved wood stoves suck, they hardly burn at all, but I have no first hand experience with them. The nice think about wood is if you loose power you can stay warm and still cook a meal, If the world falls apart and no one is available to deliver fuel, you can gather wood and survive, it's a good feeling to be independent.
Thanks Mike for the detailed reply, I do appreciate it!
The wood stove alternative might not be practical for me as I'd like something that doesn't require much attention. I have enough to do w/o adding another cleaning chore.
As for survival, I can see that philosophy working at home, but if things got that bad, it's unlikely there would be enough customers wanting reupholstery for me to even be in my shop :o
Rich
I would like to correct a few misconceptions about the new, EPA, clean-burning stoves. I know from whence I speak because I own 2 of them!
1.) There is no such thing as an "air tight" stove; without oxygen there can be no combustion.
2.) Creosote is formed when improperly seasoned ("green") wood is burned. Green wood has trouble achieving optimal burn temperatures because most of the wood's energy is wasted burning the water out of it! The resultant low temperature, smouldering releases gases and moisture which combine to coat the inside of flues with sticky, greasy creosote. Burning seasoned firewood with a low moisture content still produces some residue but it is usually dry and is easily cleaned from the flue walls.
3.) Firewood should be seasoned at least one year after it's split. If you burn red oak or red maple (trees that will happily grow in wet sites) you had best plan on a 2 yr. cure rotation (we are on a year and half rotation here).
4.) New wood stoves receive a bad rep. because people fail to read and follow the directions. They continue to think that burning green wood is OK, usually because they don't have their acts together enough to get on the seasoned wood program. Buy your green wood, split and stack it a year before you buy your new, EPA stove and keep ahead of the wood!
5.) I own 2 catalytic stoves (they have a really crummy rep. in the the realm of uninformed people). One is now 20 yrs. old and we were so impressed by its performance we opted to buy another when it was time buy a stove for my shop. Key to success and satisfaction? burn seasoned wood! We clean out flues every 3 yrs., the flashlight and mirror show minimal residue on the flues. Burning seasoned wood allows good, hot fires with complete combustion and that reduces creostote formation to virtually nil.
6.) I, too, love the antique stoves. But they're not efficient in any sense of the word. We have learned a lot about complete combustion and particulate emissions in 100 yrs. and new stoves blow them out of the water when it comes to performance and efficiency. You burn a lot less wood, get more heat, and add less particulate pollution to the atmosphere.
Check out www.hearth.com. Fabulous site, full of information, another excellent site is www.woodstove.com.
I briefly looked at those external woodburners. They sort of look like a metal garden shed. What I was able to tell was that they produce a lot of smoke because the fire is usually dampened down to a smolder. Traveling around through northern Michigan, I can see where that was the case as there were a bunch of them. I certainly would not want one in my neighbors' back yard.
Thank you for all the info. I'll take a look at those links.
bobbin, you wrote: "...they don't have their acts together enough to get on the seasoned wood program."
Did you mean 'acts' or 'ax'? LOL (Can you tell I had a good time at my studio today? I enjoyed the work, got to listen to a few things I like to listen to on my mp3 player, and not too many phone calls.)
gene
Did you really mean, "axe", Gene? ;)
Well I cant help on existing except to tell you to look for used furnace. I have pex tubing buried in floor with foam board under that, hydronic heat, nice and warm on my feet.
Eric
Yep what Eric said. Contact your local HVAC guy and see if he has any used furnace. I renovated a small house into a shop in Charleston. No AC. Propane heat. My HVAC guy gave me a used heat pump just to get the install job, air exchange, ducts, ect.
Bobbin your wood stove edict is spot on. My Vermont Castings fire place is sealed in the since that it draws no air from inside the house. The flue has three walls. The first is an insulating wall for smaller tolerances when installing. The second draws fresh air into the box. And the third of course, draws out the exhaust.. It has no damper doesn't need it seeing the box is sealed, so to speak.
Running a wood stove is more of an art than a science, one stove will have vastly different burn techniques than another one. Much depends on your installation, the flue, the chimney, where your home is positioned in relation to mountains, or steep banks. My experience with the air tight stoves is they generate more creosote than antiques stoves regardless of how dry the wood is. Are they more efficient, I guess it all depends on how you look at it, sure they can keep a fire all night, because they choke the air supply down and let it smolder, this also generates less heat, if your goal is to ring the most btu's and burn time out of your wood as possible I guess they are great. I once had a Vermont castings air tight stove that generated so much creosote it would cling to the inside of the stove pipe like huge sheets of sea weed, I had to clean it weekly. In a different location with a different install it might work better, maybe some day Ill give it a try, I replaced it with an antique one, same location, install and wood without any problems. My father has an air tight and he is very anal about keeping it clean and having good dry wood, but he has had several chimney fires, he just goes up on the roof and shoves snow down the chimney to put it out.
My antique cook stove heats the whole down stairs and keeps the second floor warn enough for sleeping. It to will hold a fire all night as long as there are enough coals and ash to bank the fire. By banking the fire I mean being able to block the draft and giving the fire less air. I have to clean the chimney once a year, but the stove pipe has to be cleaned about every three weeks, along with the oven. My mother on the other hand, who also has an antique cook stove never has to clean her stove pipe, or the oven. By oven, I don't mean inside the cooking part, but rather the part where the draft is circulated around it to warm the oven. I go through about 4 cords a year and I save several thousand dollars a year on heating oil, so I cant complain about efficiency. Could I cut my wood consumption in half by using an air tight? Maybe, but that's only about a 200.00 to 300.00 dollar savings, I would rather stick with my antique, I like sitting by it, or cooking on it and thinking back to a simpler time in America, how many woman have cooked meals for their family's on it? Guess I'm just an old softy for nostalgia.
While there is indeed an art to operating a wood stove for maximum efficiency I beg to differ that science plays a minimal part. It is entirely about science! A properly installed and operated wood stove should not generate chimney fires, esp. when seasoned wood is used. Period. I can tell you have limited experience with new stoves and the technology and air intake designs that allows many of them (larger capacity fireboxes) to burn 8-12 with hours with ease. Our stoves will still have a viable coal bed 10 hrs. after the initial fire was lit and they aren't very large. Certainly nowhere near the mass of a cookstove. I understand the cache that accompanies antique stoves; several member of the Hearth.com site are very involved in restoration work, but they really are out performed by new models. The science doesn't lie. You should check out the sites I linked, esp. Hearth because they have a classic stove forum you might enjoy.
bobbin, I play Scrabble. AX is just as good as AXE. (I can't insert smiley faces for some reason so just imagine that I inserted the one that is wearing sunglasses.
gene
Try this Gene. 8 with ) should give the sun glass simile.
When we bought our house in Charleston I wondered why the mantle atop the fireplace had soot on it. That is until that winter when I started a fire. Smoke poured out the front of it and filled the whole house. I called an "expert" who looked at it and told me the fire place was too big for the flue.
Soon after I was admiring a wood burning insert at a customers house. She said, its for sale. I said, will you trade? She said yes. We delivered the sofa and picked up the insert. Didn't really know if this would salve the problem. But we slid it into the opening and screwed the flange to the brick. Fired it up and it worked great.
The neat thing was two screw type vents on the front. At night I could load it up with wood, screw the vents to just a crack and it would burn all night.
Three years later I had the flue cleaned. The fellow doing it couldn't believe only 1/2 gal of soot.
The fireplace I have now has no damper and no adjustable vents. I can load it up at night and by 3:00 its about out.
Trivia: The book, E=MC2 states that its not the wood that burns but the gasses coming from it. Look at a fire closely and you'll see the flame doesn't touch the wood. The flame does however heat the wood forcing the gasses out.
QuoteWhile there is indeed an art to operating a wood stove for maximum efficiency I beg to differ that science plays a minimal part. It is entirely about science! A properly installed and operated wood stove should not generate chimney fires, esp. when seasoned wood is used. Period. I can tell you have limited experience with new stoves and the technology and air intake designs that allows many of them (larger capacity fireboxes) to burn 8-12 with hours with ease. Our stoves will still have a viable coal bed 10 hrs. after the initial fire was lit and they aren't very large. Certainly nowhere near the mass of a cookstove. I understand the cache that accompanies antique stoves; several member of the Hearth.com site are very involved in restoration work, but they really are out performed by new models. The science doesn't lie. You should check out the sites I linked, esp. Hearth because they have a classic stove forum you might enjoy.
First of all I said running a wood stove was more of an art than a science, running as in operating. The only science involved is that of burning wood, if it was really scientific every stove would operate the same, as in repeatable outcomes for each and every stove and that just aint happenin. My oil furnace operates on science, I turn the knob to the heat I want, each and every furnace runs the same way with repeatable outcomes. Each and every wood stove installation is different with different variations and the same stove will act differently in a different setting and install, doesn't sound very scientific to me. Maximum efficiency in a wood stove, you have got to be kidding," there is no efficient wood, or coal burning stove. All stoves lose at least half the convective heat up the chimney. Wood stove merchants do not dwell on this fact. They keep telling you that a fireplace loses 85% to 90% of its heat. They hope you won't ask about the 50% a stove is likely to lose no matter how great its "efficient" design is proclaimed to be."1
"Very often you will read that burning green wood causes creosote buildup. That statement is not really true. Green or wet wood may smolder at such a low temperature that it indirectly causes creosote to build up overly fast in the chimney, but you can build up creosote just as quickly
with very dry seasoned wood, if you burn it at a very low draft. The less air, or draft you allow in your stove, the more creosote will form, because without oxygen, the fire cannot burn hot enough to burn up the gases that carry off the creosote. Just as night follows day excessive creosote problems have followed in the wake of the so called airtight stove. Always remember that wood won't burn in a stove that is so tight air can't get in. This should be obvious, but when you are being beaten over the head by sales talk that stresses the superior "efficiency" of airtight stoves you come home with a terrible case of misplaced emphasis. You believe that the reason for airtightness is to see how long you can keep a piece of wood burning. So you turn the drat as low as possible without totally quenching the fire and brag you your fellow wood burners that an armload of wood last all night in your stove."1
QuoteThe science doesn't lie.
No, but salespeople do and a wood stove does not heat, the fire does, it is just a container so the house doesn't burn down. I have had many stoves over my lifetime air tight and antique, the best one was made out of a 55 gallon drum with a stove kit costing about 35 bucks. It would heat the whole garage, not pretty, but would would keep you warm. And I'm talking about here in Vermont when it gets down to -20
1 Gene Logsdon's Practical Skills Rodale Press, Emmaus Pennsylvania
Kody, I'm impressed! you understand the science behind a burn cycle. 8)
Gene, haven't played Scrabble in years, but seem to recall that it depends on which dictionary you use? As my Welsh MIL used to say, "Is that what they teach you in American schools?" (she was really funny).
Bobbin I think he was axing the proper spelling :)
It gets kind of cold here, sometimes, but it doesn't get really cold here. I've been in Minneapolis, Minnesota in February. I know cold!
We have a gas heater in the shop, one of those ones attached to the ceiling. It uses a lot of gas, and electric, whereas our kerosine heater puts out a lot of heat in a short period of time. Its one of those big, but portable, kerosine heaters.
They're supposed to burn at 99.3% efficiency, or something like that. I've used it in my house and had no fumes or gases that I could tell although we had to open the doors and windows it got so hot in there in a very short time.
We still use the kerosine heater on days when its cool and damp, but not cold. Its got a cage built around it too so you won't get burned but I like it because it keeps my coffee warm in the morning! ;D
Jim
Lol, Mike.
I don't mean to beat a dead horse with an ax, but:
Didn't someone famous say, "Axe and you shall receive?" Or was it "Ax not what your country can do for you..."
I like the bumper sticker that says "Random ax of kindness."
Isn't there a book in the bible called Axe?
If the plural of 'ox' is 'oxen', then the plural of 'ax' would be 'axen'?
And don't forget Lizzie Bordan. Whack! Whack! Whack!
gene 8 )
NO, but it is: axEs. chuckle.
hiya
We keep warm by sitting around candles, and when it gets really cold we light them hehhehee
I have an Infra red heater which isn't affected by drafts and gives instant heat, and to take the edge off the workshop first thing in the
morning I put a gas space heater on for a while.
http://www.qvsdirect.com/HLX-1.5kW-Electric-Infrared-Heater-C-w-Quartz-Lamps-Brackets-pr-16682.html#utm_source=google-product&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=weekly-feed
http://www.powertoolworld.co.uk/draper-space-heaters/draper-40900-btu-230v-propane-mix-space-heater-19751.html?gclid=CNC8zqOfjK0CFYuIfAod8UKRng