How do you heat your barn/shop?

[RPK]

My shop is 32x48x12 wood framed and reasonably well insulated. I have 110,000 BTU hot air oil fired furnace. I keep it heated all winter. I keep the thermostat set at 50 degrees. If I want to work in a t-shirt I turn it up. I use about one full 275 gallon tank of oil per year. It has worked great for me the last 20 years.

RPK

 

[Volfandt]

I've got a 30 x 40 x 8 shop and I heat with an Early Morning wood burner.
I've also got a portable kerosene heater for short shop times when it's not practical to fire up the wood burner and/or for supplemental heat.
It IS my domain

 

[BubbaJr]

I have a 42x60 well insulated pole barn with 2 radiant tube heaters fueled by propane. I keep the thermostat set at 50 degrees, then turn it up when I want to work out there. The nice thing about my heat, is that it heats everything up in the barn, then after the heat shuts off, the floor, and everything in the barn gives off heat for quite a while.

We had an ice storm 2 winters ago that took out the electric for 7 days, and we had several days where the temperature never got above 20 degrees. During that time, there was no heat at all in the barn and the temperature in the barn never got below 42 degrees. During the summer with temps in the 90's, if I keep the door closed, it won't get above 75. I attribute this to all the time I spent making sure the insulation would be as effective as possible.

I guess the point of this story is that insulation will make a world of difference.

Good Luck

 

[3RRL]

I'm on top of a mountain in WV. Even on a hot day, I'm lucky to have a nice breeze. A woodstove would take some time to heat it up, but would be less expensive than oil or propane. LP Ceiling seems cleaner and easier.

I have to agree with you.
I'd love to get an LP heater like that, but propane is a commodity and I'm not sure what it would cost to heat my 40 x 50 x 14' barn/workshop. It's going to be a fully insulated metal building. Right now I have plenty of wood from all the downed Oaks preparing my homesite and from pushing in the road. I figure I'd have years of wood to burn just from that. So I thought a wood stove might be the ticket?

I thought about partitioning my workshop off and then using ducting and fans to circulate heat over to the other side? My wood stove for the house will have a similar feature like that. Since I'm off grid, I'm not worried about electric bills to run the circulating fans. That might also help with the building inspector issue that Highbeam brought up earlier. Dunno?

 

[scott_vt]

I have a 42x60 well insulated pole barn with 2 radiant tube heaters fueled by propane. I keep the thermostat set at 50 degrees, then turn it up when I want to work out there. The nice thing about my heat, is that it heats everything up in the barn, then after the heat shuts off, the floor, and everything in the barn gives off heat for quite a while.

We had an ice storm 2 winters ago that took out the electric for 7 days, and we had several days where the temperature never got above 20 degrees. During that time, there was no heat at all in the barn and the temperature in the barn never got below 42 degrees. During the summer with temps in the 90's, if I keep the door closed, it won't get above 75. I attribute this to all the time I spent making sure the insulation would be as effective as possible.

I guess the point of this story is that insulation will make a world of difference.

Good Luck

Mornin Bubba,
An interesting post ! You say you insulated the pole barn well but you didnt elaborate on amount or type ! Could you be a bit more specific as to where and how much you used R -Value etc ? Thanks !

 

[gizmo]

I moved mine just south of Atlanta. I am expecting my shop to warm up to about 115F today.

Actually, I installed a wood heater.

 

[fishpick]

Mornin Bubba,
An interesting post ! You say you insulated the pole barn well but you didnt elaborate on amount or type ! Could you be a bit more specific as to where and how much you used R -Value etc ? Thanks !

I second this request - now that the floor is in - I'm looking to the walls next!

 

[toy1]

I just installed a waste oil heater in my barn which is 30*80 with a 24*24 shop. I generate around 300 gallons of waste oil each year. I will keep you posted on how it works this winter.

 

[keving]

I just installed a waste oil heater in my barn which is 30*80 with a 24*24 shop. I generate around 300 gallons of waste oil each year. I will keep you posted on how it works this winter.

I have a friend that has a waste oil heater and it really kicks the heat. I don't produce enough waste oil to heat my shop... :-(

 

[BubbaJr]

Mornin Bubba,
An interesting post ! You say you insulated the pole barn well but you didnt elaborate on amount or type ! Could you be a bit more specific as to where and how much you used R -Value etc ? Thanks !

Hi Guys,

The first thing I did was to seal up all the cracks between the floor and walls and the ceiling and walls with spray foam and fiberglass before I added 6" of 24" wide fiberglass paper faced batts in the walls. Then I installed foam containment panels that keeps the cellulose insulation away from the soffit vents. After insulating the walls, I installed 1/2" OSB panels up to the 11' high white metal ceiling, and painted the walls white to help reflect the light.

Then I had 14" of blown cellulose sprayed in the attic on top of a layer of plastic. I also built an office and half bath in the barn and insulated the interior walls and ceiling with 4" batts of fiberglass. That area is heated and cooled with an Amana motel type heat pump/AC unit. The shop area is heated with 2 Detroit Radiant tube heaters and controlled by separate thermostats for each heater.

So far after about 5 years of use, I am very happy with it. I can't give you any info on propane cost for the heat as I also run a 12KW generator off of the same propane tank. The generator goes through a test cycle every other week, plus we have on average about 1 hour per month since the big power outage, that the electric goes off. So I'm not even going to try to guess what I spend on heat in the barn, but it's not a lot.