Brad Kahler wrote:
> My main goal is to knock the chill out of the air prior to and during
> work periods. If on the coldest days it's still too cold then I'll
> find something else to do in the house
Then you don't want any kind of radiant heater. They don't heat the air
at all. They heat what ever surface they are aimed at (you, the floor,
your work bench, etc) and warm that surface/thing via radiation. The
warmed object then (eventually) heats the surrounding area via
conduction and convection. It will eventually warm everything up, but
it's a slow process and the air is the last to get warm.
I have a 24 x 48 foot pole barn with one roll up door, a couple of man
doors and a couple of windows. Open trusses. It has about R4 or 6 roof
insulation, and varying to no insulation (depending on what I bought and
how I did it) in the walls and gables. I use a forced air propane
heater when I am working in the shop, and two paddle fans to get the
warm air out of the ceiling space and down to the working space. I only
run it when I am actually working in the shop. I live in the Puget
Sound area, and I don't have any trouble keeping the shop around 55* or
so when I am working out there, but sometimes when we have a cold winter
the concrete floor gets pretty cold. Once the heater gets the shop up
to the setpoint it only cycles occasionally.
I don't know what your objections are to propane, but I think, given the
information you've given us, electric IR would be a pretty poor choice
for heating the entire shop. For portable spot heating, maybe.
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