Dave,

An open flame heater is not dangerous as long as you respect the
fact that whatever you are doing in the garage may have the potential
to put that garage into orbit ;-)

Basically what I am saying is just use your head when you have an
open flame. You can rip, cut, saw and plane all you like as long as
you keep the sawdust piles cleaned up and not near your heater. I
have never heard of sawdust in the air exploding like gasoline fumes.

Don't have a messy shop with piles of sawdust all over the place.
Get youself a couple of STEEL garbage can's and when you clean up your
sawdust keep it outside in those can's. The reason for the steel
can's is that if you ever happen to get smouldering embers in the
sawdust, it won't melt the can if it does start on fire. And make
sure you keep it outside, if anything does go wrong and you have a
fire, it's not inside your garage. Same goes for shop rags etc. that
you may use for refinishing. Put them in a steel container when
finished with them and don't keep em inside your shop. Spontaneous
combustion is well known to happen to solvent soaked rags, you don't
even need an open flame for them to go up !

Now as for what I heat my shop with.... well I have used 4 different
types of heat. In my old shop I used one of those propane
construction heaters, and like Charlie says, they are hard on
propane.... until I discovered one thing. Put a fan behind the
heater. It was amazing how low I could turn the flame on the heater
once I put a fan behind it. Only thing I then had to worry about was
to keep a door cracked to make sure the shop got adequate oxygen. I
didn't need to kill myself from carbon monoxide poisoning. The other
problem I found was that the shop smelled of burned propane then, it
wasn't bad, but not pleasant either.

Once I moved to my new place I got myself a little bigger shop. Now
I have one about the same size as you, 22'x 22'. I used the propane
heater for a while and it worked great, but then I decided to give a
buddy's kerosene heater a try. It worked fine, but I hate the smell
of burned kerosene so I didn't use that very long.

Then my father built himself a new house, and I inherited his old
wood stove. I installed that, and it worked wonderfully except for
one thing. When I wanted to paint something I had to go back to the
propane heater only. I didn't want to run the risk of having the
woodstove cause an explosion. I couldn't just turn the woodstove off
and on easily like the propane heater. Even when you think there's no
embers in the woodstove, you don't need to take that chance.

I worked like that for a couple of years. Using the propane heater
when painting so I could turn it off to paint, then back on after I
got the shop cleared of paint fumes etc. ( And I do mean WELL cleared
of FUMES )

Two years ago I had an HVAC buddy give me a natural gas furnace out
of someone's house. I installed that ( in a room outside of the
garage walls ) so the furnace was isolated from the shop and all paint
fumes etc. So now I use the furnace in conjunction with the
woodstove. But I still make sure the furnace is off when painting, I
respect the fact that I can't outrun and explosion like they do in
movies ;-)

The furnace is used mainly to keep the garage at a constant temp. or
if I am just going out there for a couple of hours. The woodstove is
used when I am going to be out in the garage for a while and to save
me from really high natural gas bills ;-) Plus it gives me a place to
make my mistakes disappear.

Hope this helps.... just make sure whatever you use to heat with
that you work safely around it. You only have one shot to get it
right, mistakes with flames can be deadly.

Todd

PS: If you install a wood stove make sure your insurance company
knows about it, otherwise if you have a fire they WILL NOT cover your
losses. Plus they will insist on having it inspected, which makes
sure that you installed it properly.... good for your peace of mind
too.



"Dave Rathnow" wrote in message news:OZ3Xc.55635$X12.38428@edtnps84...
With winter immanent, I'm looking at putting some heating in my shop
so I can work and not freeze. I've heard people say that any
kind of open flame heating is dangerous because it could ignite saw
dust--I've heard others say this is rubbish.

Could people share their opinions and advice? Is an open
flame heater dangerous? What type of heating do you use?
Any recommendations to heat my shop: it's about 20x20
with a 12 foot ceiling.

Thanks,
Dave.