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Re: Shop heaters

To: Larry Schuler <lrs@clark.net>
Subject: Re: Shop heaters
From: Phil Ethier <ethier@freenet.msp.mn.us>
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 1996 09:57:52 -0600 (CST)
I realize that you have to think about this before construction, but an
autocrosser (are you on this list, Don?) swears by the heated concrete floor.

Plastic (or, years ago, copper) tubing is put in the floor, which 
is poured over insulation.  Hot water is run through the tubing, making 
the whole floor the heater.  

Don says he and some others built a race car in a North Dakota winter in 
such a shop heated to an air temperature in the 50s(?).  He told me 
that he was more comfortable than in garages with higher air temps and a 
cold floor.

I could have had experience with this myself, but it was thwarted.  The 
house my Dad built in the sixties was supposed to have heated floor in 
garage and family room, but the morons with the builder screwed up and 
poured the wrong two floors first.

It is too late for me.  If I expand my garage, the new part will be 
closer to the house and will be the cold garage for daily drivers.  The 
shop would be my present 22x24 garage, so the floor is already in.  If I 
try to reverse them, it could get messy.  Especially the divorce.  I 
don't want anyone tracking salty slush through the shop, and my wife 
would not appreciate walking around the outside of the shop carrying 
packages.

If I use the present garage as the warm shop, the side door will be 
inside the the new cold garage.  This will give a nice vestibule effect, 
keeping the winds out of the warm shop whilst entering and leaving.  I 
can still use the 70,000-BTU salamander (bullet, jet-engine) heater in 
the cold garage for quick winter repairs to streeters.  And the tools I 
carry in from the warm shop won't freeze to my fingers.

So how do I get the warm shop warm?  Is there a through-the-wall unit?  I 
would want the combustion air and exhaust outside.  Natural gas line 
could be laid under the new slab and come up thought the wall into the 
old garage (new warm shop).

Dreaming in Saint Paul.

Phil Ethier <ethier@freenet.msp.mn.us>


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