The challenge is how to warm up an uninsulated garage workshop in an outbuilding in northern New England. Winter time gets colder'n a brass doorknob and then some. I'd like to be able to use the place to keep vehicles warm, not just protected, as well as maintain a workshop for the endless fix-it chores due to country living.

Wood would be a first choice, as that fits right into how the house is heated, however one issue is gas fumes (in vehicle and boat tanks), that I worry might be easily ignited by a flame source. I do have a spare - older - wood burning stove that could be installed, but want to look at other options as well. Safety is key.

I guess there are other choices, like electric and propane, but I have never used anything of the sort except a small portable electric unit to dethaw a car in sub-zero temps, enough to get it started.

Thoughts? Advice? Thanks!

I have infrared in mine, but it's insulated.

The nice thing is it warms you up instantly.

Wood, with proper intake and drafting. Even just stapling heavy poly to the inside walls and ceiling provides an air barrier helping to insulate.
Deal with it here as well.

Osky

I have oil furnace that came out of a trailer you can usually find them for around a 100 bucks, a converted 50 gallon barrel sits outside. I fill it with fuel oil and add a jug of diesel 911 to stop it from jelling. Saves a few bucks compared to kerosene. If I was doing it over maybe a ceiling mounted propane heater to save floor space

The first thing I’d do is insulate the building.

Then I’d install a gas powered furnace that mounts to the ceiling. Set the thermostat and enjoy a winterized garage.

If you really want to use wood and are concerned about the open flame in the garage you may want to consider one of the wood stoves designed to sit outside that has a water heat exchanger in it. You pump glycol water to inside your building and run it through a hydronic unit heater hung from the ceiling.

I'd insulate as best I can first. Otherwise you're just going to have humidity problems and energy loss.

To the OP, care must be taken for fumes of course but my building in northern MN has a tractor, multiple ATV’s, multiple snowmobiles, boat motors and tanks, restored Land Cruiser, chainsaws, generator, lawn tractor….and many other small fuel burning engines. I also keep at least 4, 6 gallon fuel cans full and ready (I’m a long ways off grid).
The most I do is put a piece of plastic bag over spouts before lightly screwing caps back on things. Helps on evaporation as well.
I keep it vented, nothing more. Maybe there’s a big boom in my future but wood stove has been working just fine for decades.

Osky

Those work really well Hunts… particularly with the horizontal baffle in the upper part of each.

Osky

Do you wear sunscreen out there?

Insulate it.

OP I have a two car garage 24 x 24 and do all my own repairs on cars, trucks, tractors, you name it. When I working in one bay the other has a kerosene salamander heater running. Many times I have had to disconnect fuel lines and spilled small ants. of gasoline. Been doing it this way for over thirty years and never had a problem. Your wood stove should work just fine.

i put a shop in last year and a woodburner this year. call me paranoid, but i won't have any gasoline source in that building when the fire is going. its mainly a wood/metal shop anyway but does get used for small mechanical stuff. if i wanted a heated garage and had a good source of wood, i'd put a boiler outside. i know about propane or gas heaters being used in garages but that would not be my choice. again thats my paranoia. something starts to leak when you're not there and the vapor drifts across the floor, you open the door and give it a big push of oxygen and boom.

another alternative is to build a small insulated bump-out and buy a propane or oil furnace and put it in there and run a duct.

i would definitely look into insulation. doesn't take much to make a big difference. last winter mine only had tyvek on the outside and the attic insulation blown in and i used two kerosene heaters and it took the chill off. wasn't what i would call warm but better than outside.

Gotta wonder if a guy that needs informed of that is competent enough to operate a wood stove.

You guys are mean.

Funny, but mean. 🤣

As already pointed out insulate it, it will not only allow for a more even heat, much less fuel it will keep the moisture down. Heating-n-Cooling an uninsulated out building is a sure way to rust up everything in there.

Get a Propane Hot Dawg and be done.
After you insulate.

https://www.modinehvac.com/products...ot-dawg-series/hot-dawg-power-vented-hd/

If you insist on wood, check with your homeowners insurance first.

When I bought this house it had a UL Listed wood stove in the garage.

I was with State Farm at the time and my agent said it had to go, or he could not write the policy.

I put in a Hot Dawg with a 120 gal propane tank ,

Solar panel and wind turbine? It's quite the 'thing' here in California, doesn't work of course, but it's the ultimate in virtue signalling, and you would be the darling of Northeast cocktail parties.

NG radiant tube heat

50x30 steel framed

Lots of insulation

68* all winter

If you can hold out for a couple of more years, it won't be a problem. Global warming will solve everything for you. Might need to insulate and get an A/C unit. Oh, and a pumping system to get rid of the seawater that will be rushing in.

Used to have a GM dealership here in the small town I live that used this same wood burner setup to heat their large service area. The building was solid concrete block construction. They also picked up some free BTUs with used engine oil from oil changes by burning it via a slow drip setup.

My Uncle has the same setup in his shop and He has a 24" household box fan hanging on a wire above it. That thing will swivel on its own left to right distributing heat. It's weird how it does that but it does.


Me, I'd like to burn wood but my garage is attached to the house. Wood is a big no no for insurance companies when attached.

Insulate/vapor barrier first.

The exterior wood burner idea could work well - a friend does his sauna that way. It feeds and draws from the outside, with much of the special purpose stove inside, but that is only a 10x12 , 8" square cedar log structure. You would likely have to run some sort of glycol heat distribution inside, with a wood heated boiler. My BIL in Wisconsin built one such for their basement, which was always cold.

Another option you might consider is pouring a slab with glycol-filled heat tubes in it, like my garage has, tho I use a natural gas boiler system. May be a little tricky using wood heat, but you could feed it during the day and the slab would retain heat all night. It won't freeze up.

I keep my thermostat turned all the way down, so it is usually 53-60 in there, depending on outside temps. It does take a couple hours to reach a higher temp if I crank it up a mite. Usually I don't - coveralls, maybe with a hoody or sweater underneath, is easier and quicker than waiting for the temp to get above 65. In the summer, I turn the boiler off, and the garage maintains about the same temp - On a warm day, I can just open the bay doors to warm it up a bit.

The biggest problem I have is humidity in the winter from melting snow and ice, plus my wife keeps all her stupid flowers in thef loft area and waters the hell out of them every week or two. A $1500 commercial dehumidifier from Home Depot , with a drain tube running into the utility tub below pretty well handles that.

If floor space is a problem, either the slab heat or an overhead heating system may be the best options. Whatever - if heating the inside, You definitely wanter a vapor barrier, unless just stud-wall and outside paneling. Even then, you will get condensation/frost on the inside of the outside paneling in cold weather.

You did not say - will it be full-time heated or part time? Are the interior walls bare 2X construction, or does it have paneling, which will complicate insulating the place. I would also recommend using high density batt insulation, or, if the interior walls are paneled, with a vapor barrier behind, you could use blow-in stuff, filled from holes in the top. Do not neglect the roof/ceiling!

If inside paneled, it might be worth it to take that down, insulate and vapor barrier, and reinstall. especially if the builder was intelligent enough to use screws and not nails, much less a nail gun.... Paneling- especially sheetrock, tends to get damaged to one extent or another upon removal if put up with nails. Screws, even in sheetrock can be located and removed, and the sheetrock- if carefully done- reused. New is running about $25 for a 4X8 1/2 sheet here. I just bought 4 sheets. OSB is several times that, last I checked some time back. OSB or plywood interior paneling is real nice for hanging stuff on and securing shelving - it's not that stud dependent, but likely won't meet code unless it has sheetrock over it.

Have fun....... I hope this helps.

Or, you can plug the vehicles in and wear insulated coveralls out there. :

I hate retro-fits? I'm working on an unfinished, wood heated recreation cabin right now, a few days a month, as third owner, purchased last January.. It was started 20 years ago - my wife and I finished the vapor barrier a couple months back, and just that, over the already installed batt insulation made a big difference. The first order of business after purchase was to move the location of the death-trap stairs to the upper bedroom story and rebuild it to safe. Of course, you can't get there from here, so a couple non-load bearing stud walls had to come out, wiring re-routed, vb finished, & sheet rock put up and finished (still working on it in the stairs area - still have most of the rest of the cabin to do). A hole for the new stairs cut out of the 1st living-floor ceiling is pending , after the walls and ceiling in that area is finished. Just a little "remodel, is all! Thank you, Lord there isn't any indoor plumbing! I figure I can actually start building the stairs in a month. Or two. Maybe three. It's a rec cabin, after-all.

Judging by the barrel of empty beer cans and a couple cases of full ones that came with the cabin, the previous owner(s) should have done less recreating and more cabining.

Stay in Georgia over the winter?

Lots of good ideas here though, some I may have to consider. But mostly I don't go out there when it's much below freezing except for a few minutes at a time.

Something like this will do a great job if you insulate the building and have enough power in the building to power it. You would need a 30 amp 240V supply to this heater and it will bring your shop up to heat in just a few minutes... hang if from the ceiling in a corner away from any flammables

https://www.amazon.com/Dimplex-EUH0...it+heater&qid=1634925246&sr=8-26

Spray-foam insulate then pick your poison.

Toyo stove and a 200 gal fuel oil tank, used to heat my house in Alaska with one

I have used natural gas fired heaters mounted close to the ceiling in our garages in Alaska, Colorado, and Tennessee. Our current workshop and garage in Tennessee both have one as well. Workshop is 1000 sq feet with 10 feet ceilings. A flick of the thermostat can change the interior temp from 45 to 60 in 15-20 minutes. But all the garages an workshop were well insulated.
If you want to skip the insulation step then go with a good wood stove.

Years ago a cousin of mine rigged up a simple but unconventional wood burning heater setup to help heat his all electric home and it worked. What he did was build a small concrete building up close to his house. and install a basic wood burner inside it. The building had just enough room inside for the wood burner and a few feet extra to walk around it and to store a little fire wood. He added a insulated duct with powered fan at the top and ran over to and through a wall in his house. The heat from the wood burner built up inside the little block building was blown into his house via the duct.

Exactly what I did and have been very pleased with the results.

Like already mentioned, the Modine gas heater has been great for my shop. Even though I have access to an infinite supply of firewood, I went gas.

yeah baby the sotz double drum
250000 btu

Infrared that uses outdoor air for combustion, or a hydronic fan coil system that's either fired by an outside wood burner or an instantaneous tankless water heater.

Your fear of fumes igniting can be reaolved. *IF*you have reached the LEL where the fire can be the ignition source....the place likely went up un a mushroom cloud when you turned on the light or walked across the room.

My family has owned a wood stove in an auto repair shop for at least 50 years and never seen an issue. The heat that can be produced by the wood is un comparable to anything else. My shop was uninsulated and 16' walls 48x60 and one little stove could heat the whole thing incredibly well.

Might as well put up a windmill, or solar panels ,cause petroleum will be to expensive under Brandon ,and he'll probably ban the use of wood cause of global warming