Workshop warming

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

I agree with Mike. I spent several thousand dollars insulating my tin shed and getting a large split system air conditioner installed so I can work out there comfortably in the tropical summer heat. Best thing I ever did. Before that i locked the shed up in early November and didnt set foot in it again until Easter or later. Now i get to play with my toys year round. Priceless.

[Martin Johnson 1Participant @martinjohnson1]

Can I state the flaming obvius here? The smaller your workshop, the cheaper it is to heat.

Therefore, choose your equipment carefully, place it efficiently in a small footprint. Then worry about insulation & heating. I also have an unheated area for welding, grinding etc. Woodwork gets done mostly in twhe unheated garage (car booted out).

For reference I live in the Scottish Highlands near Cairngorm 800 feet above sea level, we know a bit about winter up here.

Martin

[MetalhackerParticipant @metalhacker]

1 insulate the socks off everything. I used 4” celotex everywhere……..the factory is quite close and I had a contact who got me seconds v cheap.

2 I have 2 greenhouse heaters attached to the lathe and the mill. Total of 380W and the machines act as low temp radiators to avoid dew and do some heating. I have a thermostat on an oil filled radiator. I have never actually seen it come on when set at 15 degrees but it is occasionally warm in the mornings

3 double glazed door and windows, latest 28 mm gap. Very effective

4 soft insulating ‘anti fatigue tiles’ on the floor from Machine mart. Stops all the cold coming from the concrete floor.

Seems to work quite well!

Andries

[BufferParticipant @buffer]

Mick You asked what about infra red. Well that's what I use in a 5.5m x 2.5m workshop and I think it's great. As you say it heats you up and not all the air. It's a 2kw 3 bar and it goes on 3 bars when I first go in and in no time at all I am turning it down to one bar. I did use fan heaters from screwfix but found these to be pretty useless. They did warm the workshop up but very slowly and I was normally only getting warm when it was time to go in. I used to have it slotted onto screws on the wall so I could take it down to either end depending on what I was doing but have since just left it up one end. It was about 40 quid and is shaped like a rugby ball from heatlab off amazon. My workshop is also insulated with celotex.

[SamsarandaParticipant @samsaranda]

I have just insulated a small storage shed that I built about three years ago, should have insulated it when I built it but that’s another story, the shed has no windows and is about 8 feet by 6 feet one wall is concrete block work and will be without insulation, the rest of the shed is wood framed covered in shiplap with insulation between the uprights. The reason for insulating it is that I store my beekeeping equipment in there, amongst other things, and contains sheets of beeswax which doesn’t tolerate being warmed when the sun shines. With only shiplap covering it gets very hot in there when the sun shines so I am using 50 mm Kingspan, bought 2 8×4 sheets this week and was surprised how much it has gone up recently, it cost £48.50 a sheet and a builder friend of mine advised me to buy it sooner rather than later because there is a further 20% price increase apparently in the pipeline. I probably need another sheet to finish the project and insulate the roof as well, which is probably next weeks job to do. My workshop, which is considerably bigger but the same construction was insulated when built with Celotex, 100 mm in the walls and roof, minimal heating with a small oil filled radiator and a humidifier used at nights on off peak electricity keeps the workshop comfortable and relatively low humidity. I would advise anyone contemplating building a workshop or upgrading a current one to go for as much insulation as possible, Celotex/Kingspan is my product of choice, and buy it sooner rather than later as prices are moving ever upwards. I have to a certain extent mitigated the increasing electricity charges because I have 4Kw of solar generation with 12 KWh of battery storage, doesn’t cover all my electricity needs but as they say every little helps, and of course the sun doesn’t shine very often in the winter so the solar generated in summer offsets power used in winter in the workshop. Dave W

[michael howarth 1Participant @michaelhowarth1]

As retrofitting my workshop with insulation and more ambitious heating systems is a no-go I took the advice of some of the posters and bought myself a heated vest. As far as i am concerned, never has money been better spent. We have not hit the worst of winter yet but on the lowest of heat settings it keeps me absolutely "toasty". On the highest of heat settings it is uncomfortably warm. The battery lasts about 3 hours + on the lowest setting and takes about 3 hours to charge at 1.3 amps which is peanuts compared to running a 2-3kWh electric heater. I did invest in a second battery which gives me all day heating capability. I did have reservations about my legs and arms getting cold but this has not been a problem and I assume that this is because the "core" heat is dissipated by the circulatory system to all parts of the body. Thoroughly recommended.

Mick

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

It's the heat I struggle with now, trying to keep going when you're panting like an old sheepdog

Once you learn to work in the cold it's actually the preferred option IMO

[Dave HalfordParticipant @davehalford22513]

Posted by Martin Cargill on 28/04/2022 19:27:28:

In our workshop the Gaffer allows us to all huddle around a candle. If the workshop temperature drops below -10 he will even allow us to light it.

Must have been my mother, she used to switch the bar fire glow blubs on and claim she felt warmer.

[Dave HalfordParticipant @davehalford22513]

Posted by Buffer on 29/04/2022 14:30:01:

Mick You asked what about infra red. Well that's what I use in a 5.5m x 2.5m workshop and I think it's great. As you say it heats you up and not all the air. It's a 2kw 3 bar and it goes on 3 bars when I first go in and in no time at all I am turning it down to one bar. I did use fan heaters from screwfix but found these to be pretty useless. They did warm the workshop up but very slowly and I was normally only getting warm when it was time to go in. I used to have it slotted onto screws on the wall so I could take it down to either end depending on what I was doing but have since just left it up one end. It was about 40 quid and is shaped like a rugby ball from heatlab off amazon. My workshop is also insulated with celotex.

Yep, fan heaters are both useless and expensive to run.

[jaCK HobsonParticipant @jackhobson50760]

Posted by mick H on 07/12/2022 10:50:43:

As retrofitting my workshop with insulation and more ambitious heating systems is a no-go I … bought myself a heated vest. … Thoroughly recommended.

Mick

I got vest, insulation, fan heater, IR, and form of exercise if I need extra 'warm up'. I recommend them all. Toasty. And all less than the price of a new milling machine every year. I still have to get to the workshop but once there, I'd rather stay than go outside again – and that is an excellent result. Banging numb fingers, getting the cuts all greasy, and wiping my drippy nose with my greasy/bloody hands… still happens but less often. And huge bonus – no rust problems.

Edited By jaCK Hobson on 07/12/2022 12:25:16

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

I don't know about heating. This time of year — summer here — I am using a split-system air-conditioner to keep my fully insulated shed a cool comfortable 24C.

Can you guys not use a reverse-cycle air-conditioner or heat pump to warm an insulated workshop? Much cheaper than creating heat directly out of electricity or gas. You are just moving heat from outside to inside via the "pump".

We still have a long way to go with such things, especially with integrating household heating/cooling/refrigeration needs. As a one-time building services/HVAC engineer, I hate seeing the waste heat from my air-conditioner being dumped overboard. It really should be used to heat the domestic hot water supply instead of wasted to atmosphere.

As one old mentor, a former marine engineer told me, the warmest part of the overboard discharge should be the sewage (in those pre-environmental days it shot straight out a hole in the side of the hull!). All other heat should be reclaimed onboard and used. Ships were doing it in the 1920s. Isn't it about time our millions of houses started to do the same?

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

Heat pumps are the holy grail of politicians in the UK. Ships have huge ocean to use as a heat source, my quite large garden is not rated big enough for ground source. For air source I'd have to replace all my radiators as the current ones are not big enough. Even then if the electricity to run them is made by burning gas the overall efficiency isn't as good as they claim. I won't live long enough to pay back the cost of installation. I'm just wearing lots of layers, but I can't do fine work in gloves, and with cold hands I keep dropping things. I must investigate the heated vest idea.

[Martin KyteParticipant @martinkyte99762]

Wear a hat.

regards Martin

[Michael CallaghanParticipant @michaelcallaghan68621]

Even with the garage fully insulated I still get cold. Tried an oil heater last year, but the electric bill was just too much to bar. This year I have gone for a infrared heater. These heat me and not the air and the spread of heat is better then I hoped for and I put it at the rear of my single garage and even on a very cold day I can nice and warm using just one bar. So far it’s working out at 25p per hour.

[Pete RimmerParticipant @peterimmer30576]

I lso use infra-red heaters. I have two single bar 2kw heaters but I only use one unless I'm painting. My workshop is all metal so I have one on magnetic bases and just plonk it on the ceiling and point it wherever I want it.

The beauty of infra-red is that it warms everything it shines on so the heat is not lost as quickly as a convector heater.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

The understandable desire to warm and insulate the workshop [or domestic areas] brings the added risk of high humidity … so I was interested to receive this in eMail this morning, from TLC

.

.

Note: All the links are tracker-based, so I am not hyperlinking anything here:

https://tlc-direct.us8.list-manage.com/track/click? <etc.>

.

I find it “interesting” that we are now being offered powered solutions to problems of our own making

MichaelG.

[Bryan Cedar 1Participant @bryancedar1]

To heat your workshop, just pray for global warming !

[John Doe 2Participant @johndoe2]

Had to work outside and up in the loft today, both of which were freezing cold !

Then I remembered wearing a hat with a wig at a fancy dress do once, and how really warm that hair was. (I used to have thick flowing locks but these days am follicly challenged !).

So I dug out a hoody I bought years ago but never wear. Wow ! Having a covering over and around my head is really warm – and it keeps the heat from the body escaping from the neck area. It also helps me avoid hurting my head when I bang it, now that I have lost some of my early warning system, (hair), and hit loft beams etc,, no matter how careful I try to be.

So, in a cold workshop; try a hoodie – being careful about safety obviously. I can understand now why the youth of today wear them out on cold street corners.

[John HaineParticipant @johnhaine32865]

If they realised that they would stop wearing them!

[Mike PooleParticipant @mikepoole82104]

When I finished my apprenticeship I went onto nights and one of the things we maintained was an outdoor travelling crane, the control panels were on a walkway about 30ft up in the air on the main cross beam of the crane. A woolly beanie hat was an early purchase despite my very significant mane of long hair. It still was a treacherous climb up the steel ladder on a frosty or snowy night.

Mike

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

I notice there are now some mentions on the media about wearing 2 thin sweaters instead of one think one. Is this still standard teaching in primary school where I remember it being repeated ad nauseum or was it dropped when central heating became so common?

[Martin KyteParticipant @martinkyte99762]

Not to mention that classic of fashion the string vest.

regards Martin

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

Rather than a hoodie in the workshop, which could cut peripheral vision, maybe try a beanie and a neck-warmer of the type worn by motorcyclists and snowmobilers etc, just a tube of very warm but thin material that is pulled down over the head and sits around the neck. Was a revelation the first time I used one on a motorcycle in the cold weather and not at all cumbersome to wear. Wish we had had them years ago when I actually rode in cold weather a lot!

And also from Rocky Mountain motorcycling experience, long sleeved thermal underwear tops beat the heck out of mulitple jumpers etc for keeping warm and are way less bulky. The modern materials they use are amazingly warm but thin.

 

Edited By Hopper on 13/12/2022 21:10:12

[JellyParticipant @jelly]

Posted by Hopper on 13/12/2022 21:07:59:

And also from Rocky Mountain motorcycling experience, long sleeved thermal underwear tops beat the heck out of mulitple jumpers etc for keeping warm and are way less bulky. The modern materials they use are amazingly warm but thin.

Based on Winter Mountaineering and Whitewater Kayaking, I would tend to agree that modern "Polartec" fleece thermals are the warmest thing I've found for a given thickness/restrictiveness, with other non-branded microfleeces coming in a reasonable second.

Full Pile fabrics as used in diver's and caver's "Wooly Bear" undersuits, or a Buffalo/Mardale/Montane Pile-Pertex Smock* is far and away the warmest option, but one of the smocks is about as bulky as a thick hoodie (although unlike a hoodie will keep you warm down to -15 as a single layer!)

The Helly-Hansen thermals with a sort of perforated texture and the stripey band down the arm (and other comparable ones) are quite good for their non-restrictiveness, but just aren't as warm as a piled fabric when you're stood still.​

It's all about finding a fabric which will trap the maximal amount of the air next to your skin, which is why the pile times work so well.

 

All that touting fancy manufacturers of outdoor gear aside…

Years ago when i was a poor student primark did a set of blue microfleece thermals (i think long-johns, short and long sleeved t-shirt) for a couple of quid a piece, I tried some and found them plenty warm, but felt they were not at all cut for movement so bought fancier ones once when I could… but if you're just pottering about the workshop this isn't a problem.

They appear to be largely unchanged (other than by inflation)

 

* I keep debating the utility of making a pile lined smock out of something like cotton ventile or cordura which would have a better abrasion resistance than Pertex for use as a cold-weather working garment, but i'm keenly aware that the specific qualities of the Pertex fabric is a large part of why that system is warm without being sweaty, so you need to hit a goldilocks level of vapour/air permeability for the outer with minimal water absorbance.

My ideal would be to use Durably or Inherently Flame Retardant fabric for both inner and outer layers, but all the suitable outers would have similar compromises to above, and i'm pretty sure that a suitable pile fabric doesn't exist at present…

Everyone has to draw the line somewhere, and I'm pretty sure that weaving with nomex is over mine.

Edited By Jelly on 13/12/2022 23:47:32

[egaParticipant @ega]

As I recall, the HH polypropylene underwear works by wicking away moisture from the body; it actually feels cold when you first put it on.

[Author]

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