I am in the process of doing some renovation in the garage I just bought (it came with an attached house). It has natural gas with the gas lines exposed outside of the drywall inside the garage. I would like to get a small gas furnace to heat the garage and have it tied into the gas lines. Have any of you done this and know of a small furnace that will heat 500 sq. ft. The climate here is relatively mild so I don’t need any thing extreme. I also don’t need anything that will run on a thermostat, just an on/off sort of thing when I am working out here. Thanks

See if you can pick up a used gas fireplace insert. They're all over the place in the papers up here. Just make sure you vent it outside or you'll be going for the big sleep.

This is what I have. Works great and can heat a 3 car garage nice & toasty. The temp is 19F outside and it took about maybe 10 min of running to have the garage warm enough that I could work in just shirt & pants. I don't know the BTU as there is to much crap in the way to get a good look but I will find ou tomorrow.

itsa914, that looks good. I see it vents outside. Does it have an on/off switch? If you could get a brand name and possible # I would appreciate that. If you are able to warm the garage in a few minutes with that sort of temp outside, I am sure the BTU rating would suffice here in Seattle. Thanks for the response.

riverman, what would the insert, insert too? Is it an open flame such as a fireplace?

here is a 10000 btu gas heater, vent less and 49 bucks, its a HF heater. i would bet they make it in natural gas to or go check HD the ones around me are having a sale on them.

BTW i just bought a 20 k to 30 k btu propane ventless fire place from HF, to cut down on oil use. it works great. and before you say propane instead of oil, my house is a 100 yo row home, and the furnace is 30 yo ( yes i need to replace it ) and the heat in the house rises up, and the fire place is on the first floor. the heat rises so bad when it 20 degrees out side i run a window ac unit in my bedroom on the third floor, if i tried to keep the first floor warm my bedroom gets to 85 degrees.

This would work John.
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/Disp...temnumber=45609
I'll even help install it.
The other ceiling forced air gas heater looks good and required a B Vent flue. Shouldnt be hard to install.
The used gas fireplace would be pretty big having to sit on the floor somewhere. Some are B Vent others are Direct Vent. Both have to vent to the outside.

Geoff

QUOTE

jones Posted on Feb 19 2005, 12:31 AM

QUOTE

riverman, what would the insert, insert too? Is it an open flame such as a fireplace?

It's just the innards of a gas fireplace. It's essentially just a box with a glass front and an open flame burner on the inside. The chimney comes out the top.

You don't need the whole fireplace (mantle and everything) just the insert. Some come with fans and some don't. For 500ft2, you probably don't need a fan.

Those heaters are radiant.. It will not heat the air. If you infront of it you we warm.. On the other side of the car it will be cold..

IF you run it for a while you will get some heating from f the mass of the garage but most times people just turn it on to work out there and turn it off when they leave.



Cheers
Kerry

For the price of one of those Harbourfreight heaters, I'll change my mind and say go for that.

Thanks guys. I will go check out Harbor Freight today. They just built one down the street. Come to think of it, Boeing surpluss is down that way. They have a ton of used odds and ends, used racking, computers, shelving, Stealth Bombers.... I'll check them out also.

yeah, pick me up a stealth bomber would ya. I would love to fly to WCC05 in style this year. I could do a fly by and bomb the dudes with leftover stickers!


Geoff

Like the idea of a ceiling mount furnace in a garage. Less chance of fumes from solvents or gasoline getting up to it that way. Keep it safe what ever you do.

John, you definately want to be careful in which heater you choose and where you mount it. In a garage enviroment the point of combustion should be a minimum of 18" above the floor. The heater itsa914 has shown is made by Modine and comes in 30,000 ,45,000 AND 60,000 BTU sizes. I have one in my garage and it works awesome. The best part is it puts the flame way away from combustibles. Bad part is it's more than the 99$ one.

QUOTE (jones @ Feb 18 2005, 09:27 PM)

itsa914, that looks good. I see it vents outside. Does it have an on/off switch? If you could get a brand name and possible # I would appreciate that. If you are able to warm the garage in a few minutes with that sort of temp outside, I am sure the BTU rating would suffice here in Seattle. Thanks for the response.

Well I can't get my fat head behind the stupid thing to get a brand name or model number My wife is looking for the manual, of course that is the one manual that is not in our "manaul" folder.

Anyway yes it does have a on off switch plus wall mounted theromstat. I dial it in to ~65 to just keep it cool while working in the garage.

edit: Yup with what Guy said. Our builder finished the drywall and stuff in our garage first so he could run the heater in there while cutting trim and other projects while build our house. I think mine is a 30,000 btu one. It works great, I would recommend it to anyone.

Our main tool room is not conditioned, so we have a space heater out there, one that operates on propane.

It's just a head for a tank, and it's puts out about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 BTU.

One minute it's cold, and the next second, you are in 4500sqft of hell.

Oh, it also makes a great tool for stripping off undercoating.




M