The Shop > Our Shop

workshop heating

<< < (5/5)

Pete W.:
Hi there, all,

I don't want to 'rain on anybody's parade' but I feel the need to make an observation about workshop heating.

The point is that even if a room is filled with comfortably warm air, an occupant will still feel cold if the walls are cold.  It's all to do with the balance between the heat that the body loses by radiation to any cold surfaces (i.e. < 98.4° F) and any heat it receives by radiation from any warm surfaces (i.e. > 98.4° F).  (By 'radiation' here, we're talking about infra red, nothing to do with Geiger counters!)

Of course, if you go on heating the air for long enough that air will, in turn, warm the walls but that can be a darn slow process.  Better to supplement the warm air source with something that radiates infra red energy.  If the IR source is warm enough, it doesn't have to have a lot of area to balance the effect of the cold walls.  I'm planning to use an electric tubular greenhouse heater in my workshop.  A quartz tube infra red bathroom heater would probably be over-kill for a small workshop, it would need a lot of space around it and protection from inflammable dust.

Of course (again!), the infra red source will also warm the walls as well as the shop occupant(s) and will do it faster than transfer via warm air.

The old 'pot-bellied' stoves are sources of both warm air AND infra red.

awemawson:
"The old 'pot-bellied' stoves are sources of both warm air AND infra red."

Also EXCELLENT for toasting crumpets on a cold winters afternoon for tea  :ddb:

vtsteam:
But if there's no room for one, since woodstoves require substantial clearance to combustibles, and you want to burn wood, an external furnace is the alternative.

Radiant heat can be produced from an external furnace if desired at the delivery end, via a radiator. While they are usually associated with hydronic systems, there is no reason a hot air heated radiating surface couldn't be built.  A thin sheet metal baffle painted black would heat quickly and radiate heat. So would the hot air duct system if exposed.

shipto:
I assure you Pete with a good blaze going in the chiminea the heat put out is plenty, you do need to get a good blaze to start but once that has burned down you just need to keep it going at a lower burn rate to keep the shop feeling warm.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[*] Previous page