"Troy" wrote in message
...
I'm wondering with winter roaring in, whats the safest way to heat my
refrigerator of a 2-car garage. It has roll-up doors so theres some gap
there. It's insulated on some walls and not on others, and covered
with 1/2" plywood. It has about a 6" "flue vent" from the previous owner
where apparently they used to have a wood stove, but now that would be in
my office space, so not much help to the shop itself.
I'm still working on a good dust collecting method, but with sub-zero
temperatures coming I really don't want to freeze my fingers off.

You have two considerations, safe for intended use and safe per
code/insurance for a garage.

Safe per code for a garage you really need to consult the building inspector
or the local code--in general though a flame less than x distance above the
floor would be a no-no due to the possibility of igniting gasoline vapor,
but there may be other limitations. And as long as it has a door large
enough to pass a motor vehicle the inspector is going to consider it to be a
garage.

Safe for an office or workshop the main concern unless you are spraying
coatings is carbon monoxide--the danger of heater-induced fire in a wood
shop is greatly exaggerated--you do want to keep piles of chips and sawdust
away from the heater/furnace though. If you do want to spray coatings in
cold weather then you've got a whole nother set of problems to deal with
besides the heater.

If you want to be super-safe then a hot water system with the boiler in
another room would be the way to go--it moves the flame to a point external
to the shop. Trouble with that is that unless you do an in-floor radiant
system the radiators use up a lot of wall space. Also you _have_ to run it
in the winter in areas where the temperature goes below freezing or it will
freeze.

Anything that uses gas or oil is going to need to be vented--the new high
efficiency designs vent with a piece of PVC pipe, not a conventional flue,
and may be easier for you to install for that reason, but you'll need to put
up either radiators or duct work to use one (I don't know of any that are
standalone). A conventional vented gas or oil heater will certainly keep
the place warm but may not pass code for a garage unless hung from the
ceiling, and if the ceiling is low then it may not pass even then.

As far as your walls go, there are constractors who will cut holes from the
outside between the studs and blow in fiberglass insulation, then close the
holes. This is the easy way to do it if you don't want to pull down the
interior sheathing, but it isn't necessarily the cheap way to do it--pulling
down the plywood, putting in fiberglass, and putting the plywood back up
isn't going to be quite as great a task as it seems before you get started
on it.

You need to seal and insulate that door. There are purpose-made garage door
seals that work more or less well, but if you don't need it to open never
understimate the utility of duct tape. It's not pretty but it _is_ a seal.
Some pink foam glued to the back will go a long way toward cutting down the
losses through the door material itself.







Troy