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cold weather and garage

If your garage is uninsulated you might consider an IR type heater, an IR heater heats surfaces not the air. Working near an IR heater is kind of like standing next to a camp fire, if your backside is facing the heater your front will get cold.
 
That would help take the edge off, but it will not be too cheap to run. I would invest in warm work clothing, like fleece-lined carharts and insulated work gloves. That way you only need to run the heater enough to take the edge off and not get the garage much above 50-55F.
 
insulation is not that expensive, and its something you can easily do yourself. Hang some up and buy a space heater for the times you do work.

I will soon have a nice insulated double garage with a furnace all for itself... will be cozy!
 
If you plan on spending a lot of time in the garage come winter, insulating it should be your first priority. It makes a huge difference.
 
Insulation and good doors & seals can go a very long way. My garage is unheated and even with temps in the -15F for a week or longer it still was a tolerable 42 degrees in there. It never went below freezing even in the coldest of the winter. I've got 2" heavily insulated doors though, so that might help a lot too.
 
Those Dayton g73's work really well. I could keep my garage around 75 when it was 0 outside. It was a 2 car garage with 16' ceilings and no insulation. Energy bill was a little high though, but well worth it when I was rebuilding my truck during the winter months.
 
exdeath said:
http://www.arizonaguide.com/

;P
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Funny you should mention, just yesterday when I was under a van putting in the tranny back in at around 7pm when it was in the upper 30's, I pondered the luxury of being a mechanic in Arizona where not only do you not have to deal with the weather, but the lack of rusty bolts (and rusty everything else that seems to always target your eyes.)

It's OK, we'll be back up to the 50's in 6 or 7 months. :\
 
Hmm.. then again, being under a hot engine when it's 110 out in the summer and you can see IR distortion in your garage and you have to soak a towel with your face between every bolt so you can see. :awe:

You only just got here in time for perfect weather JLee... wait until May/June when random windshields are blowing up at 120 F and your intercooler is heatsoaked just idling 🙂

The day I laid video cable in my attic space and had to hole saw through top plates and fire blocks in my wall for a projector cable run, I found out it happened to be a record day... I just remember coming out FF0000 red and my clothes looked like I just fell into a pool, and I was only up there for like 30 minutes.
 
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exdeath said:
Hmm.. then again, being under a hot engine when it's 110 out in the summer and you can see IR distortion in your garage and you have to soak a towel with your face between every bolt so you can see. :awe:

You only just got here in time for perfect weather JLee... wait until May/June when random windshields are blowing up at 120 F and your intercooler is heatsoaked just idling 🙂
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My first time here was in July. 😛
 
ill take working under a hood in 120 over working under it while frozen anyday. i rebuilt the lower end of my impalas 350 in december, in the driveway. not even covered. the only heat source we had was the halogen light we had under the car.

and i love being able to sit on the porch xmas day in shorts watching the kids play with their toys.
 
When I first moved up to Alaska, I tripped out when I noticed most houses here have a heated garage. It has it's own thermostat and heating element, be it a radiator or vent, and most people try to keep it above freezing. Outside temperatures kinda make it a given, but it's something I've never seen living most of my life in SoCal.
 
kornphlake said:
If your garage is uninsulated you might consider an IR type heater, an IR heater heats surfaces not the air. Working near an IR heater is kind of like standing next to a camp fire, if your backside is facing the heater your front will get cold.
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Costco sells these. I have one. It's awesome 😀
If you're really hardcore about heating, propane and kerosene work pretty good. Make sure the thing says it can be used indoors though otherwise you'll die from carbon monoxide poisoning.

How much are you trying to heat the garage? If you're just trying to change it from -20C to -5C, you can accomplish that by turning a hair dryer on high and laying it on the floor. Hair dryers generate more heater than most 120V heaters. The baseboard heater in my bedroom is rated 1500W, but my gf's hair dryer is rated over 1700W. That also means you can't run anything else in the garage. Power drill + hair dryer = trip breaker.


mmntech said:
If you plan on spending a lot of time in the garage come winter, insulating it should be your first priority. It makes a huge difference.
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Very true. My basement was cold as hell until I put blankets over the windows. Now it's nice and toasty down there. Windows lose a huge amount of heat. Not just conduction/convection but radiation because they are transparent. This is why people put tint or aluminum foil on their windows. It blocks IR coming in, and it blocks IR going out.
 
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Be careful. I bet your girlfriend's hair dry was not designed for continuous duty heating but rather to run for 5-10 minutes at a time.
 
JCH13 said:
Be careful. I bet your girlfriend's hair dry was not designed for continuous duty heating but rather to run for 5-10 minutes at a time.
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Indeed. The thing automatically shuts off when it gets too hot. If that fails, it would probably start on fire or melt.

I once had a job where I used a heat gun (looks like a hair dryer) to dry a metal container after washing it. The thing screwed up somehow and it melted when I put it down on the work bench.
Anyway, yeah, you should get something that is designed for heating rooms and UNPLUG IT WHEN YOU ARE DONE.
 
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