Electric Heat

As others have mentioned, make sure the place is well insulated. When I built my shop, I used 6 inch walls so I could get them to R-19. No windows on the West, North or East walls. The only windows are on the South wall, and the space between windows have hot air solar panels on them. The solar panels keep the shop at 50 degrees most of the time in the dead of winter, 60 degrees in the spring and fall. I have a back up wood stove in case I want things a little warmer, but don't use it much unless it is cloudy outside. Half my shop is for wood working, so the wood stove is where I get rid of my wood scraps. I live in Wyoming, so we have plenty of cold nights at this high elevation, but then we have plenty of sunshine for solar also.

Steve
 
I heat my shop with electric. It is small 8 feet by 24 ft. Last year it had no insulation. I use a 1500 watt portable electric heater. It ran non stop Last winter and barely got warm enough to work in. I had to wear a coat in the shop. This summer, I blew insulation in the walls and put 4 to 6 inches in the ceiling . Now it is toasty warm 70 degrees all the time and the heater runs 25 percent of the time instead of 100 percent of the time. So...... The key is INSULATION! Last winter it cost me $350 to run that heater. This winter it is less than 1/3 the amount.
 
I have a 220v mr garage electric heater in my one car garage that I use for shop. I only have 1" foam insulation on the roof,none on walls. It keeps the shop at 50F when set on low, and goes up to about 62 when set nearer toeards high. I only have the internal jumpers set to the middle wattage setting (forget what it is without reading the manual), and haven't had any trouble with temps near zero yet. Since rest of the house is gas, it is easy to compare the electric bills before and after heater. It costs me about $80 a month. I like the full time heat, and even though ng would be cheaper, I especially like no moisture or rust, and noopen flame for when the snowblower is in there.

Next year I am adding another car width garage addition, and haven't made up my mind about heat pump, keeping this heater and turning the watts to max, or maybe ng
 
I am in Ottawa so I am dealing with similar weather. I have a single car garage, insulated with an insulated door. I have a ceiling mounted quartz heater that I keep on low all winter. I think it is 750W on low. Outside of the coldest few days of winter, that keeps the temperature in the 10C/50F range. If I am going to work in the shop, I usually just put it on high when I get home and by the time I have supper it is comfortable enough to work. If I need it, I also have a small forced air heater I can supplement it with. On the really cold days, I find something else to do...

It is also nice to have the heater on low for the part of spring and fall where the temperature and humidity is all over the place. It keeps everything just warm enough to avoid flash rusting.

bob
 
How about a pic of your solar panel setup? Thanks, Mike

WyoGreen said:
As others have mentioned, make sure the place is well insulated. When I built my shop, I used 6 inch walls so I could get them to R-19. No windows on the West, North or East walls. The only windows are on the South wall, and the space between windows have hot air solar panels on them. The solar panels keep the shop at 50 degrees most of the time in the dead of winter, 60 degrees in the spring and fall. I have a back up wood stove in case I want things a little warmer, but don't use it much unless it is cloudy outside. Half my shop is for wood working, so the wood stove is where I get rid of my wood scraps. I live in Wyoming, so we have plenty of cold nights at this high elevation, but then we have plenty of sunshine for solar also.
Click to expand...
 
Electric heat is 100% efficient as others have stated, but that really doesn't mean anything in this context. It is a very expensive fuel.

A heat pump (basically an air conditioner run in reverse) is not 100% efficient as it does have some losses, but it will produce more heat per watt of electricity than electric heat will...because you are simply using electricity to compress a gas, and are basically extracting heat from the outdoors and bringing it indoors.

In other words, it really doesn't matter that resistance heat is 100% efficient. What we really care about is economic efficiency. How many BTUs we get per dollar of expense. With that efficiency measurement, resistance heat is nowhere near the top of the heat.

Also, as others have said, a 500W heater is going to be useless in a shop. That is only about 1700BTUs, which is like farting in the wind.
 
My shop is a former frame residence built in 1948 with little insulation and heated originally by propane. The shop area is the former living/dining room and kitchen at the south end of the building. Weather goes from -10`F to 100`F . Needless to say not much shop work gets done at -10`F. Heat is provided by a 5 KW wall heater formerly used in a construction office trailer. With electricity at $0.115 per KW hour it gets expensive to heat the machines for short work periods, consequently longer work periods are planned when the heat must be turned on. In order to better utilize the heat a 12" "room" fan mounted on the ceiling can be rotated and adjusted to move warm air from the ceiling down to the area in front of the machines. Have not experienced any rust problems to date. Handling cold tools is the worst part and when possible gloves are worn but not very often for safety reasons. Work routines are changed to accommodate them.
Have a good day!
Ray
 
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