Shop/garage heating & cooling: what'd you go with?

[Charley Lillard]

Mine are standard ground units with Propane for the heat.

[RS69]

For a 60x100 you'll need 12 tons. thats 500 sq.ft. a ton. if your doing ground source in the house, while the contractors there drilling the wells go ahead and have him drill wells for the garage. one well for each ton. when installing the ductwork, if you supply up high, the return should be low, and visversa. be carefull if you bring in oa to the system, so as you don't bring in to much. to much will cause humidity problems if the equipment is not sized to over come it. (i'm a mechanical eng. and design hvac systems by day and work on cars by night.) hope this helps

[JChlupsa]

Can someone explain the concept of heaters

[rsatz28]

[ QUOTE ]
For a 60x100 you'll need 12 tons. thats 500 sq.ft. a ton. if your doing ground source in the house, while the contractors there drilling the wells go ahead and have him drill wells for the garage. one well for each ton. when installing the ductwork, if you supply up high, the return should be low, and visversa. be carefull if you bring in oa to the system, so as you don't bring in to much. to much will cause humidity problems if the equipment is not sized to over come it.

[/ QUOTE ]

While the initial cost may be a bit more, you may want to install two smaller units (that add up to 12 tons) so that they can be staged for better humidity and temerature control. I do not think you can get a 12 ton single phase unit, but would have to go with a 3-phase unit.


An oversized unit will short cycle the unit (esp the compressor in AC mode) to death. Aslo, the "noise" factor may be an issue.

Electrical costs may be lower running lower HP blowers, compressors and condesner fan motors.

Keep in mind that you will only need max heating and cooling a samll portion of the year.

[DarrenX33]

[ QUOTE ]
I had a very similar set up in my old gargage...it`s a vertical wall unit at is only 17" wide and 5 feet tall...made to fit between the the standard wall studs...vents out the rear. 45,000 btu... worked great. I bought mine from Grainger Supply.

Dan.

[/ QUOTE ]

Pretty much the same setup in mine.. Works like a charm.

[J_D]

Rob........we just built a new home and a new shop. Went Geo-Thermal in both. We have vertical wells for the house (5 of them) and then the dug a big pit inbetween the shop and the house for the shop and put 1600' of tubing in the pit and covered it up for the shop. In the shop we have radiant in-floor heat and forced air central air conditioning. Both Geo-Thermal. The shop is 36' wide by 44' long. We insulated the shop to the max and then sheetrocked every bit of it. We just moved into the house the middle of March but so far my highest electric bill for heating/cooling the house and shop together was $158.00. The house is a 2100 sq ft ranch style house with a full basement under it.

Good luck ! ! !

[mmcporter]

Rob,

I am building a garage as this is being written and I went with the 75,000 BTU Modine Hot Dawg unit running on Propane. Radiant was simply too complicated and expensive for my detached unit, and we don't plan to do AC, so this option made sense. Like many of the others who responded, we are putting in a ton of insultation and sheetrock to make sure it's a tight structure.

Good luck.

Morris

[budnate]

last advice..at least for out here, a guy wants to lay real heavy duty plastic on the ground prior to pouring the floor to hold back the moisture/cold from coming in that way..

[mmcporter]

Actually budnate, you are correct. We put several mil polly on the ground between the crushed stone/sand and the slab. We also put fiberboard around the perimeter of the foundation before pouring the slab so that expansion and contraction can happen in a controlled way. We also took the masonry saw and cut some lines into the slab so that there is less likely to be cracking later. Finally, we used 3,500 PSI cement and put a ton of rebar along the front end where the garage meets the driveway so that the beginning of the slab won't crack if a car sits there.

Fun stuff!!

[budnate]

I dont cut my floors we rebar wall to wall with 5/8 rod...back breakin pain in the a$$ work.... but ya never know when a guy might score a Sherman Tank and want to bring it home, I dont want the shop floor cracking under a fellas new toy...at least that's what Dad said when I complained about all the drilling...