On Fri, 26 Jan 1996, Chris Meier wrote:
> This is another question I had about radiant heat in a garage.
> Now, this applies more to the garage part, than a separate
> workshop area. Does this type of heating result in a high
> amount of moisture in the air? Does this cause more rust
> on tools, parts, etc.? I would think this an advantage of
> heating with a forced air furnace.
Only if the radiant heat pipes leak. Seriously, I cannot think of any
reason why one form of heat is better than another in regard to moisture,
*as long as the combustion products are vented to the outside*. If you
use a kerosene or gas torpedo style heater, which has no outside vent, it
puts lots of water in the air (hydrocarbons + oxygen ---> water, not to
mention CO2 and CO). When you first start one of these in a cold garage,
water will condense on everything until it warms up. Ungood.
Other types of furnaces vent water outside, one way or another, or in the
case of super efficiency furnaces, may condense the water in the exhaust
and pipe it out, so that water is out of the equation. They heat fresh
air, or more commonly, recycle interior air through the furnace and
add heat to that. It should not matter much what kind of heating system
you have, I cannot think of any that adds moisture to the air in the
course of operation. Forced hot air heat has a reputation of drying air,
possibly because the draft of hot air dries people who stand in front of
it, but I don't think the humidity of a house heated this way is
necessarily any different from one with radiant heat.
If the system brings in fresh air and heats it, the resulting warm air
will have low humidity because the moisture content of cold outside air is
low even if the relative humidity of the outside air is high. If the
system continually recycles interior air in a very tight structure, the
humidity can rise if activities in the warm space generate moisture, but
few garages are tight enough for humidity to rise very much unless you do
something like wash or wet sand a car. Leaky structures are likely to be
a bit dryer than tight ones, because there is greater air exchange with
the outside. The present house building tendency to make super tight
houses creates more problems than it solves, IMHO.
> a double deep configuration. If I wall off the new/old part, then I
> can keep the old part warmer for a shop, and yet keep the new
> part below freezing during the salt months (>32deg + salt +
> moisture + car metal = rust) except for brief periods to clean
My garage is attached to the house, which keeps it a bit above ambient.
When my appliance car is covered with salt, I often keep it outside for
its own good. Below 32F is good, but salt lowers the freezing point of
water, so essentially I believe the colder the better.
> Any comments from other sub freezing (esp sub zero)
> shop-talkers?
>
> Chris
> ChrisM@pptvision.com
>
A heated garage sounds like incredible luxury. I have become accustomed
to accepting any temperature warm enough that the tools don't stick to my
fingers.
Ray Gibbons Dept. of Molecular Physiology & Biophysics
Univ. of Vermont College of Medicine, Burlington, VT
gibbons@northpole.med.uvm.edu (802) 656-8910
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