My roll up garage door is a heater ??

I was doing preparation work for my garage floor seal project today, with heat on higher than usual in the shop, set to 22C. When nearing the roll up door, I noticed a fair bit of radiant heat and wondered how the reflective insulation on the door could be so efficient. Turns out the radiant heat was coming from somewhere else.

We're a pretty cold climate here, so I ordered the roll up door from smartgarage.ca in black (with self adhesive foam/reflective insulation kit) thinking that maybe I'd see some benefit on cool days from solar gain. The door faces south-east, so for part of the day it sees direct sunlight. I was so impressed with what I observed, I had to pull out the FLIR one and take a few images.

Outside temps right now are -15C, or 5F!

We're right on the 49th parallel:


Temps outside when these images were taken:


Sun is not so high in the sky here at this time of year:


This gives a good idea of sun angle and azimuth:


FLIR ONE from inside:


FLIR ONE from inside:


FLIR ONE from outside:


FLIR ONE from outside:


Looking into the shop at night:


Looking out with door closed:

side note, love the slatwall.

Are you sure the door isn't just absorbing your interior heat?

Man I love that Flir camera. I need to find a local owner and rent it for a day to check out my house.

Back to your "heater door":

There is a gentleman in the midwest that does a lot of work on passive solar heating. While that is not technically whats happening with your door it's an interesting concept.

http://www.iedu.com/Solar/Panels/

The technical similarities / dissimilarities can spawn a 300 post thread - seen it happen on a hot water return loop discussion in the past.

If I ever get an appropriate place to use on of these, I would consider building one.

Cheers

Jim

Jim_No_Garage said:

Man I love that Flir camera. I need to find a local owner and rent it for a day to check out my house.

Back to your "heater door":

There is a gentleman in the midwest that does a lot of work on passive solar heating. While that is not technically whats happening with your door it's an interesting concept.

http://www.iedu.com/Solar/Panels/

The technical similarities / dissimilarities can spawn a 300 post thread - seen it happen on a hot water return loop discussion in the past.

If I ever get an appropriate place to use on of these, I would consider building one.

Cheers

Jim

Click to expand...

skip renting, get your own for a pretty good price and tent your services out instead.

http://thermal.com/what_is_thermal.html

Guys, thanks for chiming in. The FLIR ONE plugs into an iPhone 5...$250.

We shot a video review of it:

https://vimeo.com/118175972

RvDan, the outside temps pretty much tell it all. The outside door surface is 93F, on a 5F day. It's definitely radiating heat into the shop!

My 48x80 pole barn is dark green and the south wall picks up alot of solar heat. I blow a box fan down the length of the long wall when I'm out there in the day time.

I wonder if there is some sort tape like thermostat I could hook up that would sense the temp of the sheet metal wall and turn fans along the wall on?????

Clik, I've used line level thermostats that would simplify the task. Something along these lines: http://www.princessauto.com/en/detail/plug-in-thermostat/A-p0770061e

It's not a ribbon, but mounted to your "hot" wall, it would turn on the fan when the wall got warm.

Wait until summer!

The reason I chose black is that even in summer we're generally looking for some heat. We're about 1000 ft away from Lake Superior. The Lake's surface temp in summer is 8C.

That said, I think my post clearly shows why you want a white garage door where cooling is an issue!

If your outside FLIR reading was 12* higher than your inside reading, the insulation is keeping heat from coming in. It's not heating your garage as much as it would without the insulation. It probably does keep more heat in without the sun than you would gain from the sun without it.

Tommy

Yes, there would be a significant net heat loss removing the roll up door insulation as it only sees about 5 hrs of sunshine. The roll up door for at night (it's been -30 here last few nights) represents significant heat loss. I have quite a few FLIR images of the door in my build thread. Overall, a well insulated sectional door (not a roll up like mine) is going to be more efficient.