[Uncle ENzo]

1000sqft garage. Insulated. Currently using a propane heater but chews through the fuel so fast that im getting my tank refilled every week. I am thinking of either putting in a pellet stove or 10k electric unit. If you have any advice please shoot it over.

[cmartin]

How long do you plan to be in the house? Hard to beat a mini split for efficiency and comfort, not cheap short term. Also, depending on your insulation and air sealing it can take a while to bring a cold shop up to temp. Short term, sporadic use its hard to be a kerosene heater, just be safe/smart. I used to work in a shop with a diesel torpedo, would cook you out, but was loud and smelly. I'm very heppy with forced air propane in the ceiling for long, cold days and smaller electric and kerosene heaters than I move around when I'm only working an hour or 2.

I grew up working in a shop with a woodstove, loved the heat. Thinking back to all the brake clean and other chems we used its a little scary. Be careful.

[SRG]

Through wall heat pump, like a motel room. Same as a mini split, just no split and less $$. Heats and cools, reasonably efficient. Turn on and off as needed or set thermostat.

[cmartin]

ptac's can work. Noisy, take up wall space and I've only seen resistance heat for sub ~40 ambien. Doesnt mean they dont exist, do they sell inverters now? But, cheaper than a mini split up front.

[Vicegrip]

Do you have cooling now? If not a through wall or mini split heat pump would be my first go to. How often are you in the space? How many hours in winter? If not often then perhaps a bigger propane tank. If lots of hours then back to the heat pump. Pellet stoves are a pain in the ass. You have to buy the fuel and it is bulky. If a heat pump is the final answer get one that is variable speed on the compressor and fans then oversize it. In other applications I prefer to error on undersized it a shop gets shock loads and variable occupancy. You want to go from unoccupied to comfortable as quickly as posable and reheat or cool down after the main door opens and shuts. A gas furnace is tops for fast makeup.

More details on existing equipment and planned usage. Things like if you need to have the system maintain a min temp when unoccupied. That would rule out most pellet stoves for example

Cool shops are good. Frozen fingers from ice cold tools sucks.

[mlytle]

Mini split FTW.

[cmartin]

Pellet stoves are a pain in the as

Ha, I'm not the only one

Another thing to think about is how often you open the door. Capt obvious but that little efficient heater works great, until you open the door for 2 min to shuffle cars and the shop is ice cold again. 5-10k btu vs ~50k is night and day. The days where I'm plugging away on one job the little heaters work fine. A couple oil changes or brakes, I'm thankful for the forced air hot dawg.

For the most part if I'm not picking up cold wrenches I'm ok, no need for 70f. But maybe you want to relax in a warm shop. Another obvious and simple thing is gear. I finally picked actual professional clothing, reasonably warm and thin jacket, warmer pants... again, skull cap, silly stuff but makes things much more comfortable.

[Dr K]

Originally Posted by cmartin

skull cap

In Ski Patrol we say "if your feet are cold, put on a hat."

[jhsmith]

Agreeing with cmartin and Dr. K. Most economical solution is to put on a hat.

I use Mitsubishi min-splits for the garage. Not the most economical solution but I get plenty of heat (even on 15F days) and bonus AC in the summer.

[rbpeirce]

Originally Posted by Uncle ENzo

1000sqft garage. Insulated. Currently using a propane heater but chews through the fuel so fast that im getting my tank refilled every week. I am thinking of either putting in a pellet stove or 10k electric unit. If you have any advice please shoot it over.

I use baseboard heat set at about 50°. The garage is insulated but I have no idea of the cost. However, it works. I have a high/low thermometer and it never goes below 50° even when the weather outside is near 0. The only problem is the thermostat has too broad a range. Once it turns on it will heat the place up by almost 10°. However, there are probably better thermostats out there.