Wood Stove in a Garage

Thread from 2011

I have an 1100 Square foot garage that is fully insulation. I was talking to my wife about temporally walling off a section of my garage for winter with 2x4s and plastic and using a space heater to warm it up. I know it wouldn’t be great but still better than nothing. She suggested putting a small wood stove in to heat the whole garage. My gut says a wood burning stove in a garage is a bad idea but often my gut is wrong. So I would love to get your thoughts on this idea. Thanks.

Bad idea especially if your working on a car. Anything that creates flammable fumes will be a major issue.

I would see if you could do a waste oil burning furnace for the long run. I have a couple friends with them and they are happy.

Check that your homeowner's insurance is cool with it before you do an install.

the only bad thing about a wood stove is that you don't really have a way to regulate the amount of heat that it puts out and you can't just shut it off when you don't need the heat.

novaderrik wrote: the only bad thing about a wood stove is that you don't really have a way to regulate the amount of heat that it puts out and you can't just shut it off when you don't need the heat.

Having lived in a home that is completely heated by a single wood stove with a masonry chimney running up the center of the house I must disagree. The damper and drafts will allow you to regulate the heat and in the event of a chimney fire will smother the fire in a short amount of time. I assume he isn't talking about installing a great hearth open type fireplace but an enclosed one.

The draft is still letting air in from the interior so you'll have to take that into account if you are are doing any fuel maintenance or anything with combustibles. There are explosion proof/resistant heaters out there, I believe the ceramic panel ones fall into that category, (though I don't see that in any of the listings but the ones I've dealt with run cool enough that I can touch them with my bare hands), they're pretty efficient and can be wall or ceiling mounted. Worse comes to worse call the manufacturer.

Edit: Just remembered there are also outdoor wood burning furnaces which were popular installations back home in PA after the home was built (usually with an oil furnace). Basically its a shed out back that acts as a boiler and pipes the heated air or water inside the home, wall, or radiator. If you want to do wood that might be the way to go so that it keeps the fire completely separate from the garage. Only draw back is that you need to go outside in the cold every couple of hours to throw a couple more logs on.

Looks like this

I had a wood furnace in my 1008 ft. sq. garage. Once stoked up and running it was fine, but you had to stand there and baby sit the thing to get it up and running. On weekends it was fine, but for a few hours after work, by the time it was warm and you could walk away from the stove it was time to go in.

I replaced it with a propane wall unit. I also drop a sheet of plastic so I only heat half of the garage. I installed a ceiling fan due to the 11 ft. high ceiling.

My neighbor just installed a heater from a camping trailer, runs on a bottle of BBQ gas. He vented it outside and it throws enough heat to make his two car garage with a work area plenty toasty.

Wood is a PITA.

Dan

I have a stand alone LPG powered heater I got from Home depot a number of years ago. I usually run it LOWER than the low setting and it is enough to get my 2+ car garage toasty

I have a 2100 sq.ft. insulated garage with 12ft ceilings that needs heated. I too thought about a wood burning stove. I have since realized that I probably won't be in my garage much in the winter. My father-in-law has about a 24x36 or so building so just had one put in last year. It does a good job, but I think it's time consuming to use.

A happy medium may be a pellet stove. I'm installing one in my detached garage for heat (CT gets mighty cold some times). Pellets run about $200 and up per ton, and a ton should easily last you a season if you heating it on weekends. New stoves tend to be $1k and up, but I picked up a used one of CL for $250.

Exhaust goes outside, you can feed outside air in for combustion (mine has an air inlet port on the back that plumbs outside). There are dials you adjust for feed rate and temperature, so you can light it and set it when you get up, go get coffee and breakfast, and when you come back in an hour the garage will be warm and you won't have to manage the fire. Turning it off is simple, just turn the dial to OFF, and it'll shut itself down.

The downside is that you need to buy and store pellets.

We had planned to heat the g/f's 900 sq ft detached garage with a wood stove. She got the stove for free from her parents. Then a few issues became apparent: First, the time to get warm as mentioned above. Second, we go through about a cord of wood as-is running her house wood stove and this would at least double the need. While she gets wood for free, we still have to find the time to go get it. Third, the installation costs. Double wall pipe is not cheap. Installing the "free" stove (which needed 8" pipe) would have cost around $2000. Eventually, we'll run a gas line out there and install a suspended shop heater. For now, I just dress warmly and use a tank-mounted radiant heater since there is a big hole in the ceiling into the vented attic. Or I take the car to my house where my smaller attached garage is easily heated by a 4kw 230V electric cube heater.

I run a propane torpedo style heater with a BBQ tank for quick jobs, and it heats up my 20x20 workspace quickly, but it generally stinks (literally... ) and the fumes it kicks off can be a bit of a nuisance if working for prolonged periods. It's great to be able to fire it up for instant heat though.

I have long considered getting a wood stove oven to use in coordination with the propane heater. Friends of mine have wood stove's in their garage and for longer weekend projects in the dead of winter they are fantastic. Once up and running they can kick off nice radiant heat for hours. No noise. No air blowing around. etc.

Oh, and another plus for a pellet stove is that the exhaust is much cooler, and a pipe kit is usually like $150.

My FIL had an old wood burning stove in his garage for like 25 years. He usually worked with wood but I got my start working on cars in that garage. As others have said it takes some time to get up and running and once it is "cooking" the space will get very warm.

I also think a pellet stove would be a good choice aside from not being able to burn wood from your back yard.

I have access to a couple old wood stoves that used to be in my parents house and garage. They're both smallish, but one has some really ornate iron work, a really cool old piece. Is it possible - or is there really any advantage - to run pellets in a wood burning stove?

I wouldn't hesitate to run a wood stove in a garage, so long as it was properly installed--unless you're in the habit of splashing gasoline around for fun.

The time to get heat is problematic if you are not there all the time to stoke it and chopping wood in freezing weather would steal my drive to do any work on the car.

Liquid propane (assuming you don't have natural gas available) is nice, clean and easy. The units are light and reasonably priced - mine is a sealed unit so I can spray starter fluid into it and not have a fire. I have about $500 in the whole thing and it will warm up the garage at the flick of a switch. LP is not cheap - but it is not terrible either. I keep the garage at 50F for less than $35 a month thru the winter.

electric heat

Will the miracles of human technology ever cease?

I worked in a warehouse that used those.. unless you are directly in the "path" of the radiant heat, it stays cold.

Ive also been considering radiant heat under a layer of skim coat cement on the garage floor

4cylndrfury wrote: Ive also been considering radiant heat under a layer of skim coat cement on the garage floor

That's an interesting idea if using electric mats. In theory, you would only have to put the mats under the work areas, rather than trying to heat the whole garage with it.

Hydronic requires a lot more concrete than just a skim coat.

My workspace is a ~600 sq ft garage with NO insulation, and an upstairs loft.

I heat the whole thing in the dead of winter with a forced air kerosene heater.

It might be 0 degrees outside, but i can work inside with a short sleeved shirt and sweat. Downside is that the floor never really gets warm.

Ran me about $200 from Sears, i think i spent $70 on kerosene last winter, working at least 7-8 days a month.

The only downside is that on "high" setting, it's pretty loud.

If your garage is insulated, that's the route i'd go. You'd have no problems keeping it warm, and it heats up quick. And it's cheap. Mine has a built in thermostat, so it'll maintain anything up to 70 degrees if i tell it to. I usually leave it on 50 or 60 depending on how hard i'm working.

Ian F wrote:

4cylndrfury wrote: Ive also been considering radiant heat under a layer of skim coat cement on the garage floor

That's an interesting idea if using electric mats. In theory, you would only have to put the mats under the work areas, rather than trying to heat the whole garage with it. Hydronic requires a lot more concrete than just a skim coat.

yes, electric...similar to what goes under the kitchen/bathroom floors in "Fancy" houses . The stuff only requires a skim coat to isolate the mat from any sharp objects.

I like woodstoves. Have one in my house.

A woodstove would not be my go-to for heating a shop though. Mostly because of the comparatively slow start-up, the stoking, and to a degree the shutdown. In the shop, I'd rather have a propane tank and a $19 infrared heater. Instant on, instant heat, instant off.

I like woodstoves. Have one in my house.

A woodstove would not be my go-to for heating a shop though. Mostly because of the comparatively slow start-up, the stoking, and to a degree the shutdown. In the shop, I'd rather have a propane tank and a $19 infrared heater. Instant on, instant heat, instant off.

4cylndrfury wrote: yes, electric...similar to what goes under the kitchen/bathroom floors in "Fancy" houses. The stuff only requires a skim coat to isolate the mat from any sharp objects.

The thing is, those electric mats don't have a lot of horsepower - they're enough to warm the bathroom floor so your bare feet don't get cold but they won't do much to actually warm up the room.