Workshop warming

Calum,

It rather depends on your location as to what climatic conditions you might have to contend with. Also the type and location of your work area will be quite important.

It cost about a hundred quid more than a cheapish fan heater (OK, fan heaters are often available as surplus to requirements). My installation included a CO monitor for safety. My location is in my ‘settings’, so easily available to all. My fuel, for the foreseeable future, will actually cost me nothing, as it is ‘in stock’. It needs using up before I pop my clogs.🙂

The convenience of use (once installed), cost of fuel and ‘warmth with dry air’ were my considerations before purchase. I can see that leccy may well soon be 50p/unit (hopefully not), so my investment will likely soon pay for itself - it makes working out in the workshop a comfortable all year hobby.

On top of that lot, with minimal electrical requirement for the air heater, I a) won’t be overloading my workshop supply and b) I have the opportunity to run my workshop from a battery/inverter supply if needed.

Edited By not done it yet on 29/04/2022 09:58:07

Like you, Mick, I'm just on the right side of 80, and yes, I do shut down for the winter months which is when I delve into genealogy.

In respect of heating, my workshop is a garage, and has been left as such firstly because when I'm gone, it will still be a garage, and secondly, I don't think the expense of insulating it is justified at our age. I have therefore, an ancient 1kW convector heater, and a 3kW, with two settings, fan heater, so if necessary I can call upon 4kW of heat. Ok, it's expensive, but so what, I can't take it with me, and in reality, it's only a small amount compared to the really big power users in the house - six storage heaters if we use them all! Plus, of course, the electric hob and the electric double oven.

I should also point out that both the lathe and the milling machine are fitted with some small cabinet heaters to keep them slightly above air temperature thus avoiding condensation and the resultant rusting.

As I'm writing this, I have actually been in earlier this morning and switched on the 1kW convector heater in an attempt to remove some of the cold.

Well, those are my thoughts.

Cheers,

Peter G. Shaw

I find the best heaters are the halogen type, warm you up. Alternative is to use the halogen work lights to illuminate.

But insulation is the answer, do some calculations on wall and ceiling area, U values etc and get an idea of what the heat loss is at a 20 degree inside/outside difference. The Kingspan/Celotex foam insulation is the best stuff obtainable, 0.02 W m^2 m C.

As has been said, no pockets in shrouds, spend it until gone then go for a handout from the council, just like everyone else.

All the ideas about heated coats and thermals etc are fine, but at the end of the day, if your hands are cold, the tools and machinery are cold then its very difficult to work properly, and even slightly dangerous. Insulate the workshop as much as you can, and I'm afraid to say it but just heat it as you feel best. I realised many years ago that you can't take it with you, and these days nobody appreciates people being frugal. I fully echo what Baz said a few postings earlier.

Obviously we don't know your personal circumstances, but if this hobby is good for you, think upon it, and try to continue to get the most out of it. Several good space-heating suggestions in this thread, some which I will be investigating further on my own behalf!

All the best.Mike

I agree with Mike. I spent several thousand dollars insulating my tin shed and getting a large split system air conditioner installed so I can work out there comfortably in the tropical summer heat. Best thing I ever did. Before that i locked the shed up in early November and didnt set foot in it again until Easter or later. Now i get to play with my toys year round. Priceless.

Can I state the flaming obvius here? The smaller your workshop, the cheaper it is to heat.

Therefore, choose your equipment carefully, place it efficiently in a small footprint. Then worry about insulation & heating. I also have an unheated area for welding, grinding etc. Woodwork gets done mostly in twhe unheated garage (car booted out).

For reference I live in the Scottish Highlands near Cairngorm 800 feet above sea level, we know a bit about winter up here.

Martin

1 insulate the socks off everything. I used 4” celotex everywhere……..the factory is quite close and I had a contact who got me seconds v cheap.

2 I have 2 greenhouse heaters attached to the lathe and the mill. Total of 380W and the machines act as low temp radiators to avoid dew and do some heating. I have a thermostat on an oil filled radiator. I have never actually seen it come on when set at 15 degrees but it is occasionally warm in the mornings

3 double glazed door and windows, latest 28 mm gap. Very effective

4 soft insulating ‘anti fatigue tiles’ on the floor from Machine mart. Stops all the cold coming from the concrete floor.

Seems to work quite well!

Andries

Mick You asked what about infra red. Well that's what I use in a 5.5m x 2.5m workshop and I think it's great. As you say it heats you up and not all the air. It's a 2kw 3 bar and it goes on 3 bars when I first go in and in no time at all I am turning it down to one bar. I did use fan heaters from screwfix but found these to be pretty useless. They did warm the workshop up but very slowly and I was normally only getting warm when it was time to go in. I used to have it slotted onto screws on the wall so I could take it down to either end depending on what I was doing but have since just left it up one end. It was about 40 quid and is shaped like a rugby ball from heatlab off amazon. My workshop is also insulated with celotex.

I have just insulated a small storage shed that I built about three years ago, should have insulated it when I built it but that’s another story, the shed has no windows and is about 8 feet by 6 feet one wall is concrete block work and will be without insulation, the rest of the shed is wood framed covered in shiplap with insulation between the uprights. The reason for insulating it is that I store my beekeeping equipment in there, amongst other things, and contains sheets of beeswax which doesn’t tolerate being warmed when the sun shines. With only shiplap covering it gets very hot in there when the sun shines so I am using 50 mm Kingspan, bought 2 8x4 sheets this week and was surprised how much it has gone up recently, it cost £48.50 a sheet and a builder friend of mine advised me to buy it sooner rather than later because there is a further 20% price increase apparently in the pipeline. I probably need another sheet to finish the project and insulate the roof as well, which is probably next weeks job to do. My workshop, which is considerably bigger but the same construction was insulated when built with Celotex, 100 mm in the walls and roof, minimal heating with a small oil filled radiator and a humidifier used at nights on off peak electricity keeps the workshop comfortable and relatively low humidity. I would advise anyone contemplating building a workshop or upgrading a current one to go for as much insulation as possible, Celotex/Kingspan is my product of choice, and buy it sooner rather than later as prices are moving ever upwards. I have to a certain extent mitigated the increasing electricity charges because I have 4Kw of solar generation with 12 KWh of battery storage, doesn’t cover all my electricity needs but as they say every little helps, and of course the sun doesn’t shine very often in the winter so the solar generated in summer offsets power used in winter in the workshop. Dave W

As retrofitting my workshop with insulation and more ambitious heating systems is a no-go I took the advice of some of the posters and bought myself a heated vest. As far as i am concerned, never has money been better spent. We have not hit the worst of winter yet but on the lowest of heat settings it keeps me absolutely "toasty". On the highest of heat settings it is uncomfortably warm. The battery lasts about 3 hours + on the lowest setting and takes about 3 hours to charge at 1.3 amps which is peanuts compared to running a 2-3kWh electric heater. I did invest in a second battery which gives me all day heating capability. I did have reservations about my legs and arms getting cold but this has not been a problem and I assume that this is because the "core" heat is dissipated by the circulatory system to all parts of the body. Thoroughly recommended.

Mick

It's the heat I struggle with now, trying to keep going when you're panting like an old sheepdog

Once you learn to work in the cold it's actually the preferred option IMO

Must have been my mother, she used to switch the bar fire glow blubs on and claim she felt warmer.

Yep, fan heaters are both useless and expensive to run.

I got vest, insulation, fan heater, IR, and form of exercise if I need extra 'warm up'. I recommend them all. Toasty. And all less than the price of a new milling machine every year. I still have to get to the workshop but once there, I'd rather stay than go outside again - and that is an excellent result. Banging numb fingers, getting the cuts all greasy, and wiping my drippy nose with my greasy/bloody hands... still happens but less often. And huge bonus - no rust problems.

Edited By jaCK Hobson on 07/12/2022 12:25:16

I don't know about heating. This time of year -- summer here -- I am using a split-system air-conditioner to keep my fully insulated shed a cool comfortable 24C.

Can you guys not use a reverse-cycle air-conditioner or heat pump to warm an insulated workshop? Much cheaper than creating heat directly out of electricity or gas. You are just moving heat from outside to inside via the "pump".

We still have a long way to go with such things, especially with integrating household heating/cooling/refrigeration needs. As a one-time building services/HVAC engineer, I hate seeing the waste heat from my air-conditioner being dumped overboard. It really should be used to heat the domestic hot water supply instead of wasted to atmosphere.

As one old mentor, a former marine engineer told me, the warmest part of the overboard discharge should be the sewage (in those pre-environmental days it shot straight out a hole in the side of the hull!). All other heat should be reclaimed onboard and used. Ships were doing it in the 1920s. Isn't it about time our millions of houses started to do the same?

Heat pumps are the holy grail of politicians in the UK. Ships have huge ocean to use as a heat source, my quite large garden is not rated big enough for ground source. For air source I'd have to replace all my radiators as the current ones are not big enough. Even then if the electricity to run them is made by burning gas the overall efficiency isn't as good as they claim. I won't live long enough to pay back the cost of installation. I'm just wearing lots of layers, but I can't do fine work in gloves, and with cold hands I keep dropping things. I must investigate the heated vest idea.

Wear a hat.

regards Martin

Even with the garage fully insulated I still get cold. Tried an oil heater last year, but the electric bill was just too much to bar. This year I have gone for a infrared heater. These heat me and not the air and the spread of heat is better then I hoped for and I put it at the rear of my single garage and even on a very cold day I can nice and warm using just one bar. So far it’s working out at 25p per hour.

I lso use infra-red heaters. I have two single bar 2kw heaters but I only use one unless I'm painting. My workshop is all metal so I have one on magnetic bases and just plonk it on the ceiling and point it wherever I want it.

The beauty of infra-red is that it warms everything it shines on so the heat is not lost as quickly as a convector heater.

The understandable desire to warm and insulate the workshop [or domestic areas] brings the added risk of high humidity … so I was interested to receive this in eMail this morning, from TLC

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Note: All the links are tracker-based, so I am not hyperlinking anything here:

https://tlc-direct.us8.list-manage.com/track/click? <etc.>

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I find it “interesting” that we are now being offered powered solutions to problems of our own making

MichaelG.