Learn me easy garage heating

Combustion air in is taken from the outside. 

Exhaust is run through a marine bulkhead fitting.

It's a steel building so no worries about fire.

In reply to ShawnG :

This is the way. you can get them to run on a waste oil diesel mix too if you are really cheap

In reply to ShawnG :

Yikes.  That's a lot of Canadian Pesos.  Maybe since my garage is already relatively warm it's not as bad on the pocket book.

If the electric gets you above freezing, how much warmer does the diesel heater get ya? 

In reply to ShawnG :

Thank you.  In this thread is the first time I've heard about these units.  Much appreciated 👍 

In reply to Scotty Con Queso :

I can get my 500sq/ft shop up to about +15c with it. Plenty warm with a shop coat on.

I've run a bit of waste oil in mine but I've got so much stale gas to use up, it's just easy to mix it 50/50 with diesel.

I installed mine last night. It really pumps out the heat. If their rating is accurate it's almost 30,000 BTU, and it seems like that's possible. The controller, in auto, controls pump speed, and heat output based on temp setting and would probably work well in a smaller, better insulated space, or more normal temperatures. My shop was around 0C and I had it set to 10C. At that setting it ran the pump at a lower speed so the heat output was not enough to raise the temperature significantly.  You can run it in manual and set pump speed, so that's what I'll do.

The muffler and associated piping gets really hot, so there's opportunity there. I tried putting a bike radiator on the output and it got really hot, really fast, so I'll be putting a rad and fan on the exhaust before long. May as well try to maximize all the available heat. One problem is that it's a little loud. Perfectly fine for a normal shop, but I do a fair bit of listening in my shop, and I found it annoying. I will be installing it outside the room, in the main part of the barn and piping the heat in.

So far I'm pretty impressed. It cost half what I paid for my ventless propane heater and should do the same job, maybe even more efficiently.

Mine started throwing an E8 code this morning and won't fire up.

Going to order another and then tear this one down to see what happened. 

I ran the heater for two hours this morning. The shop is a little more than 600 sq/ft semi insulated, and the starting temp was -2C/28F.  After two hours, with an outside temp of 2C/36F the temp in the shop was 7C/45F. I burned a little less than 1.25L of fuel. So I don't think there's any way this thing is 8kw, or 27,000 BTU. My propane heater is supposed to be 30,000 BTU, and it would have brought the shop up to 15C in less than half the time. Watching some video reviews, one guy tore down a 5KW and an 8KW, compared the parts and said they were identical. So maybe some shenanigans going on there.

Still, not bad for the price and not bad for the amount of fuel burned. I'm going to set it up outside the shop, run the hose in, start off using both heaters, shutting off the propane when everything is up to temp.

In reply to ShawnG :

Really, they're cheap enough you can do that. In fact, after running this one I kind of regret not buying the kit version, it comes with a 10L tank, and installation can be completely customized. Maybe next year.

Let us know what it turns out to be.

It's easier to keep the garage warm than to heat it up. I fought this battle for years before installing a used electric forced air furnace from a house.  I keep the thermostat set at 52 most of the time, when i go out to work in the garage i bump it up a few degrees. It costs about $20 month in additional electric. I was spending more on kerosene for a turbo heater, that was loud and a PITA to deal with.

I joined a FB group for these heaters hoping to learn a little and avoid mistakes, it's called Diesel Heaters for Dummies

It is very appropriately named.

In reply to Peabody :

I'm on there too.

It's entertaining to say the least.

Weird, I typed up a long story, stopped to take a pic and it's gone. Hmm

Well, it's been about a month now, the diesel heater is working great. Output is probably about half what they claim, which seems common. For whatever reason, the shop seems warmer at a given temp with this thing. I know that sounds silly but I've had to take my coveralls off at 10C a few times now, I  was so hot, that's never happened before. 
I've heard that if they don't power down correctly they can destroy themselves, not ideal if the power goes out, and mine often blips. So I installed a battery in parallel with the power supply and set the voltage to the float voltage of the battery so I can just leave everything connected when not in use. Pretty good, and reasonably efficient heater for $135CDN. 
 

Installed outside the shop with the heater vent running through the wall 

Update, the new heater is running well. I've got it running on a 75/25 mix of Diesel and black diesel (filtered drain oil mixed with stale gasoline that comes out of customer's machines). 50/50 causes it to shut down and re-start intermittently but 75/25 keeps it running smooth.

The old one stopped working because it developed a layer of waste oil sludge in the bottom of the tank. The sludge finally reached the fuel pickup and starved the machine. A quick clean and it's back in business. This was entirely my fault for not filtering the waste oil before using it. Best, dirt cheap way seems to be to let the oil stand in a jug for a few days to let the heavy stuff settle out, then pour it through a layer of shop towel in a funnel.

My waste oil is mostly ATF, 0W20 or 5W20 from my vehicles.

I'm afraid to run waste oil in mine. I don't like paying for diesel but I prefer it to working on a heater in the cold. 
Funny timing, I went to fire it up yesterday afternoon and it had switched on its own from manual to auto, I wondered why the output was so low.  Then about 6 hours in it was doing the same thing. Low output, and you could hear the pump running slowly. But it was still in manual. I powered it down, then back up and it ran fine. Kind of odd out of the blue. 

I just used an old swage fitting that is like a needle and seat. You mentioned you do your own oil changes, I use the swage to drip used oil onto a used brake disc. There is a writeup online, I think I spent maybe $20 since most of it was online. Not sure if you can link, but I used "practical survivalist drip oil waste burner" in a google search as a guide and couldn't be happier. Make sure you vent outside!

Not really sure how I'm going to fit a used brake disc into a diesel heater but I'm glad you found something that works for you.

I took the wood stove out of my shop because my insurance was 30% more with a wood stove.

I had a chat with my plumber neighbour when he was out for another issue. Sounds like the cost for him to run a gas line from my house to my shop with me doing the trenching will be about the same cost as a fill of propane for a stationary tank. After that it's about $800 for a unit heater.

I think I'll be switching to a natural gas unit heater in the next year or two. The install will set me back the same as electric heat for two winters and after that it's just the cost of the natural gas which is way cheaper than diesel or electric.