Anyone know of a good brand of electric heater for a garage? Not one of the little ones, but a hanging one similar to LP or natural gas. Our whole house is electric heat so I don't want to run a gas line just to heat the garage. Need a good sized one or maybe 2 smaller ones since the new garage is 30x40.

Nobody?

look at costco, I saw a 1200 watt radiant heater last time I was there.. runs off a 15 amp braker. What kind of power are you thinking of using on this?

To be honest I know very little about these things. I am putting a 900 sq ft addition plus the garage, including new separate breaker panel, so I would think I could have whatever was needed to power it.

Why not put in another electric furnace;30x40=1200 sq.ft. + 900 = 2100sq.ft. total. You might as well run air to the new addition and garage also.

If the garage is new then the insulation values should be high. Two ways to base the heat required, do you want to heat it like your house or just stop things from freezing ?

For example if the insulation is good and you wanted to heat it like a house then you would need between 5 and 6 watts per square foot. At 5w/sqft you would need 6000w of heat.

IMHO electric heat is electric heat whether you get 6000w from a fan forced heater, a built in electric furnace, plug in heaters or wall mounted baseboard heaters they all pump out the same wattage. I would install several smaller baseboard heaters around the perimeter especially under cold areas such as windows. Baseboard heaters are probably the best bang for the buck as they are relatively inexpensive and have no moving parts.

Try this site and go to tools it will give you a heat load calculator http://www.stelpro.com/en/

Why not put in another electric furnace;30x40=1200 sq.ft. + 900 = 2100sq.ft. total. You might as well run air to the new addition and garage also.

I'm already adding a separate furnace/heat pump for the new addition but I wanted someting stand alone for the garage so I could control the temp in there.

I'm already adding a separate furnace/heat pump for the new addition but I wanted someting stand alone for the garage so I could control the temp in there.

They have dual zone adapters.
If it was me I would get a furnace/heatpump big enough for the garage also, This would raise the value of your home alot more than a baseboard heater that will rust in no time in the garage.

You could use an electric water heater and run 2 fan forsed air radators with the hot water produced. My dad did this to heat a small greenhouse with 1 small fan unit.

look at costco, I saw a 1200 watt radiant heater last time I was there.. runs off a 15 amp braker. What kind of power are you thinking of using on this?


I had two of these, took them back, it was like being under the lamps with the roast beef at Arby's. They have a really strong red hue. Nauseating...

When working in unheated areas, we use Master kerosene heaters and the dual propane 20lb tank top infrared heaters. I know many who swear by the quality of heat and efficiency of propane fired radiant tubes. My main shop has fin tube base board (hot h2o). The new shop will have radiant in the slab.

MSC sells these Qmark units:

http://metalworking.mscdirect.com/CGI/NNSRIT?PMCTLG=00&PMAKA=VP02519031&returnurl=mtl&partnerURL=http://catalogs.shoplocal.com/mscdirect/index.aspxopagename=shopmainPcircularid=14169Ppage number=2Pmode=

They also have a smaller 110V unit. I have almost ordered this numerous times. If you get one let us know what you think.

Others sell these same units under different names MSC seems to have the best price..

Northern tool has forced air electic heaters made for shops.

Electric baseboard heat is not efficent at all, you need something forced air.
Radiant heaters are usually designed for high ceilings.

I would also suggest using your new heat pump to heat the garage. Run a couple of flexible ducts down there and put some diffusers so you can control the airflow.

A heated floor is also nice.

Radiant heat is more efficent than forced air no matter what you are using for your fuel.

Thanks for the replies. I don't really want to use baseboard heaters, I would rather find a forced air one or possibly radiant if I could find some reasonbly priced. I'll check Northern tool today. I found some forced air heaters at a local electrical supply place but because of the size I would need 2 of them at $450 a piece. I thought that was a bit steep.

I use a Chromalox (don't think it is still available) 220v, 7500w space heater for my two car garage/shop. The garage is well insulated and the heater is effective — but expensive, even given our low electricity rates here in the Northwest. IMHO, the heatpump dual zone idea is your best bet (though code will require that you have some sort of device to prevent backflow from the garage). Way back when I did my installation, I spent a small fortune running the wire for the heater — much more now.

Just leave your door ajar from the house to the garage. J/K :) Unless you're in frigid temps for long durations, a well insulated garage with insulated garage doors should stay relatively warm, I'd say around 50* My folks lived in the mountains of CO at 9300' elevation and in the winter it stayed around 50* in the garage when closed up.

http://www.tpicorp.com/NavSys/BuiltIn-Markel.html I have a 4800 watt heater made by TPI corp. Bought it locally at a place called capitol building supply for $200. It would warm up our 400 sq ft garage great but since we have doubled its size to 800sqft we have to use the propane heaters to help out.

It would interesting to try an electric water heater with say 2 heat exchangers with forced air. Would probably work better with a gas hot water heater, but then might as well run a gas heater witch you don,t want to do. A friend of mine used an electric hot water heater to heat the concrete slab in his 2 car garage had to switch to gas, electric seem to cycle all the time and took a lot of juice.