Rick wrote:

Knothead wrote:
Well hello from a fellow Badger!
If you haven't built yet then I recommend radiant floor heat. At least
get the tubes into the concrete and you can add on later to finish. I do
the one, two punch. Radiant floor heat and a small wood stove to burn
scraps to bring the temp up quickly. The woodstove generally only gets
lit when the Packers are playing and the homebrew is flowing. My shop
doubles as a local watering hole for several of my woodworking buds.
About Thankgiving I turn on the radiant for the winter and keep the water
temp about 80 degrees which equates to the concrete being about 50 (ie
ambient room temp 55) and just leave it like that till well past the damp
days of spring. I like that working temp and have absolutley no issues
with rusting equipment. I live in the country so I'm running propane..
last two winters have been really mild so I have not gone through one
refill on a 300 gallon tank I can't give you much of an idea of annual
cost beyond that. Shop floor footprint I'm heating is 26x32 with 12'
ceilings. I also highly recommend having it super insulated with spray in
foam. I have r30 walls and about r60 in the ceiling. The comfort level is
noticeable but if your dealing with neighbors the sound control from that
insulation is excellent.

Knothead


The replies I have seen have all been very helpful. Thanks a great
much. I like the idea of adding the radiant floor heat but will place
on top of the concrete with a floor over that (standing on concrete can
be hard on the joints and I alreay have bad knees).

Make some kind of access provision if you can figure out a good way to do
it. Friend of mine lives in a very nice house that her father (an
architect) built. Used to have in-floor radiant heat, in the slab. The
pipe broke a while back and it cost less to put in a new warm air system
than it would to fix the leak, so no more in-floor heat.

This is still in
the planning stage with a build date at the earliest being late summer
05. I do plan on heavily insulating the whole building. There will be
a wall separating the garage from the shop with the possibility of
putting a garage door in the middle in case I need extra space for large
projects (SWMBO isn't aware of that plan hehe). The more I think about
it, with dust problems and all, I am leaning more to a regular furnace
placed on the garage side with vents running to the shop side. That way
the dust won't clog up the filters as quickly and both sides can be
heated. As far as electricity, I plan on running min 60 amp with a 220.
I also will be running water and a connection to my home LAN so I can
look up tips and such without having to run to the house (detached
garage in case you didn't get that by now) to look things up. I will
create a dust free box to protect my laptop.

I will hire a contractor to do the slab and shell of the garage and do
the electric, gas, LAN, phone, insulating (min R38), and drywalling
myself.

Thanks Again,
Rick

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)