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Temporarily Heating Garage

Discussion in 'Technical Help' started by Symon Moore, Apr 7, 2021.

  1. I thought about posting this during the winter when I’m pretty sure my freezing cold garage destroyed my battery, but with a new battery, Upgraded leads added and being fooled by the temporary spring we had last week, I didn’t bother.

    Solihull this week however is currently like Siberia and my garage despite being an integral part of the house and having a working steel door on it is still unreasonably cold overnight, so I wondered if there is an easy fix without installing permanent or semipermanent heaters or replacing/re-insulating the door?

    Electric blanket? Convection heater on a timer perhaps? Oil filled rad? Would any of this (or anything else) work in just keeping the garage closer to room temp?

    Any ideas fellas?
     
    #1 Symon Moore, Apr 7, 2021
    Last edited: Apr 7, 2021
  2. I put a fridge/freezer in mine, seems like a good use for all that wasted heat energy.
     
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  3. I have an electric blanket with another blanket on top.
     
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  4. Start by insulating the external envelope of the garage. No point installing heat if it is simply going to exit the space. Bit like filling a bucket with water when theres holes in the bucket. After this a small heater should suffice to keep the temp above 15°C all yr round. This will help keeping the room above the dew point temp. Its simplistic but a good approximation without resorting to psychrometric charts.
     
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  5. I have a small chest freezer in mine although TBH I’m not sure it needs to be plugged in!
     
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  6. The external envelope? Not sure what you mean as it’s an internal garage with two sides a part of the heated house.
     
  7. As bootsam says ^^^^^ insulation first! That steel door is your No1 culprit I expect...
     
  8. The external envelope is that part which on t'other side is outdoors. As you say you dont need to worry too much about those parts connected to the house (as long as those parts are heated and the insulation levels are adequate). Garage door for a start, fix gaps with draft excluder. Fill gaps with exp foam. Theres some insulated plasterboard you can dot and dab onto the walls. But as keith says, that door is likely just thin steel and you'd be surprised just how bad those are. Polyurethane insulating board can be cut and spray glued to it which will help, plus its lightweight.
     
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  9. Psychrometric? There's a new word I can casually throw across the bar to remind my friends how smart I am next week. Thank you for that one.... :p
     
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  10. Heres a chart to show them
     

    Attached Files:

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  11. Thanks Bootsam, appreciate the response. Think the door is going to be difficult as the moving mechanism is right in the middle of it but I can do the insulating board to the wall.
     
  12. In my old house I had an oil filled rad between the bikes set on low, seemed to do the job OK.

    New house I've got a wall mounted electric rad, it's got wifi and it's own internal thermostat, from the app I can set a minimum temp etc to keep the room ticking over. However this was expensive (given the size of the garage) and also it's not shy on going through the electricity also. I've also got an insulated roller door on the new place which helps a little.

    As has been said your main culprit will probably be your existing door and gaps around the door sides and base.
     
  13. Oil filled rad was my initial thought too. Will try that on low overnight in the short term. Thanks all!
     
  14. And concrete floor. Lose a lot there.
     
  15. I considered doing a thermal store system using an old hot water tank (the kind with a coil to heat it from the central heating system - loads of them seem to be getting removed now) connected to a radiator with no valves on it in the garage. Tank would have been in the house and used an antifreeze type mix for the radiator. I reckon it would have circulated sufficiently without a pump if connected properly and pipes run sensibly. I even have a suitable cupboard in the downstairs bedroom to locate the tank. Might try it yet.

    My next door neighbour has a small pot-bellied stove in his workshop and it fairly heats the place. But that is probably not really suitable for overnight heating if the temperature were to drop a lot in the middle of the night - you might need to get up at 2am to light the bloomin' thing.

    I too have suffered with the battery problem and now remove them from bikes laid up over winter and store them in the house. The winter bike just gets some blankets over it.
     
    #15 Mick-Bob, Apr 7, 2021
    Last edited: Apr 7, 2021
  16. +1 for insulation, I stuck polystyrene sheets to my garage door, trimmed around the mechanism & adjusted the door counterbalance weights to suit, it made a hell of a difference without even heating the garage, simply holding on to the heat you've already got.
     
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  17. Remember what you 'feel' isnt the air temperature. You feel the combined temperature of the air and all the surface temperatures of everything around you. Everything radiates heat. Even cold things like a garage door. It will radiate coolth. It will also be about the same temp as outside if its a generic steel door for example. What you 'feel' is called the dry resultant temperature or the operative temperature. So whilst the air temp may say 21°C, you may actually feel much less than that. Insulating cold surfaces will help bring the dry resultant up to closer to the air temp.

    btw, most thermostats control on air temp. If you want to control to dry resultant you need a black box thermostat.

    You lose less heat thruogh the ground floor than you think. You do lose some, but the majority will be through walls, windows, roofs, doors etc. The ground is insulated. You have a whole planet beneath you. (hopefully). It will have a steady state temp of circa 10-12°C all yr round, plus it has a planets worth of thermal mass. ie a mahoosive storage heater. Thus will absorb heat slowly and steadily. The air on the other hand is moving around all the time and can be as low as -10°C in UK, lower even. So the temp pressure for heat loss is a whole 22°C greater at peak loss conditions. Thats a lot. Most of ground floor heat loss is the thermal junction between floor and wall. Its the temp difference that is the variable, most other aspects are a constant. (more or less)

    I tend towards conservation of energy. In summer, stop the heat getting into the space rather than throwing money at fixing it when it does. In winter stop the heat leaving rather than throwing money heating the space back up.
     
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  18. Insulate, then a DeLonghi Dragon 4 2.5kW Oil Filled Radiator TRD41025T which keeps a 16 x 18 (ft) garage at 12-13C even on the coldest nights on its lowest therm setting. Would be warmer I guess if I didn't have a double width alu roller door. The good think is it is dry heat so doesn't generate condensation. The therm on the heater is mechanical but I have it plugged into a wireless sockect that can also be activated off temperature from another device (e.g. blink, or a smart app) if there is a need to have little bit of sophistication around the level of control - which I don't :)

    PS. I would add that this is for the benefit of my snowflake son, and not the old bikes, who likes a warm garage when getting his bike out for school... :joy:
     
  19. A pal of mine tackled the same problem with some heavy charity shop curtains. Once the door's closed, he simply pulls the curtains across. They make a huge difference.
     
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  20. All great ideas. Also when you add that small whatever to heat the place make sure there is a fan to circulate the air or you will have a very warm ceiling and not much else.
     
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