Hi. New to the forums and recently moved from the Chicagoland area to Mid-Ohio (about 5 minutes from the Mid-Ohio Raceway). The deal for getting the house that my wife wanted is that I get a shop/garage (house only has a tiny 2 car attached garage, not even a shed). I'm in the planning stages (had the contractor out Tuesday evening and got the plot for my septic system yesterday to make sure the site that we want to use isn't on top of one of the septic fields).
We're in the 'country' and have an all electric house with, strangely enough, a heat pump with 15 Kw aux heat strip...electric bill jumps about $100/month during the winter (sellers of the house set us up advertising a low electric bill, then we realized that they spent their winters in Florida, so the aux heat probably never kicked in with the t-stat down low enough to just keep the pipes from freezing...I've got it closer to about a $60 increase by turning down the t-stat & using a couple of space heaters in the rooms we occupy, lessening my setback to use the heat strip less, etc). We were used to paying more in our smaller house in IL for electric plus getting hit for natural gas...all-in-all we're spending about $200/month less overall out here. Peak usage was 5790 KHW in January which is when it was the coldest (mostly teens, solid week below zero, several single-digit days)...I'm paying about $0.06/KHW by the time you factor in all of the fees.
I think that's enough basic background. I'm looking at going with a 30x40x15 pole frame building. Exterior walls will be plywood sheeted then metal sided (and I may go with the fiberglass translucent panels along the top on the 40' sides to let in some natural light, but I'm sure that introduces some heat loss which will probably cost me more than what I'd spend turning the lights on when I'm in there which will mostly be weekends and an occasional weekday evening/night). Roof will be metal as well. Interior will be insulated (haven't priced that out yet to decide on R values) and eventually drywalled, one service door, one 12x12 or 12x14 overhead door and one or two 8x8 overheads, 3 small windows at the most. Concrete floor. Reason for the height is that I plan to install a lift, so need clearance for the uprights plus some headroom for my Jeeps. Also like to be able to bring a loaded trailer in/out.
To the heat. I've done a good bit of searching and reading here and have *tried* to make up my mind based upon the reported pro's/con's. What I'm thinking is a combo of radiant heat and forced air heat. Basically, use the radiant to keep a baseline temp in the 40's or so and the forced air to kick it up while I'm out there working. My buddy in WI who did some of my welding & fab work has radiant floor heat, and it was absolutely fantastic working in there especially when we needed to lay on the floor. I had a small gas furnace in my 2.5 car garage in IL and it was great for the general warm up...the floor was cold, but you could work out there in a t-shirt and make margaritas within 15 minutes of turning the t-stat up. My thought is to insulate the slab and run the PEX so that everything is in place for the radiant in floor heat even if I don't do the rest of the setup right away (anyone have a good link/links for the installation? I'd like to do that myself to save some cash.) and whenever I set that up, use a t-stat for the floor temp rather than having that thing sucking up juice trying to heat the whole shop. Top side, use the radiant tubes either set low on a t-stat or set on a timer, then supplement that with one or two G73 type units or similar size LP fired heaters (and stick a 100# tank out back like I have for my standby generator) for the quick warm-ups, and possibly throw in one or two ceiling fans to help pull the hot air down and circulate it. Any thoughts or experiences would be greatly appreciated...don't want this to end up costing me as much to heat as the house does. I'd even consider doing half the shop at 15' and the other half at 10' if the truss setup doesn't break the bank so that I only have the high celing where I actually need it. Thanks.
We're in the 'country' and have an all electric house with, strangely enough, a heat pump with 15 Kw aux heat strip...electric bill jumps about $100/month during the winter (sellers of the house set us up advertising a low electric bill, then we realized that they spent their winters in Florida, so the aux heat probably never kicked in with the t-stat down low enough to just keep the pipes from freezing...I've got it closer to about a $60 increase by turning down the t-stat & using a couple of space heaters in the rooms we occupy, lessening my setback to use the heat strip less, etc). We were used to paying more in our smaller house in IL for electric plus getting hit for natural gas...all-in-all we're spending about $200/month less overall out here. Peak usage was 5790 KHW in January which is when it was the coldest (mostly teens, solid week below zero, several single-digit days)...I'm paying about $0.06/KHW by the time you factor in all of the fees.
I think that's enough basic background. I'm looking at going with a 30x40x15 pole frame building. Exterior walls will be plywood sheeted then metal sided (and I may go with the fiberglass translucent panels along the top on the 40' sides to let in some natural light, but I'm sure that introduces some heat loss which will probably cost me more than what I'd spend turning the lights on when I'm in there which will mostly be weekends and an occasional weekday evening/night). Roof will be metal as well. Interior will be insulated (haven't priced that out yet to decide on R values) and eventually drywalled, one service door, one 12x12 or 12x14 overhead door and one or two 8x8 overheads, 3 small windows at the most. Concrete floor. Reason for the height is that I plan to install a lift, so need clearance for the uprights plus some headroom for my Jeeps. Also like to be able to bring a loaded trailer in/out.
To the heat. I've done a good bit of searching and reading here and have *tried* to make up my mind based upon the reported pro's/con's. What I'm thinking is a combo of radiant heat and forced air heat. Basically, use the radiant to keep a baseline temp in the 40's or so and the forced air to kick it up while I'm out there working. My buddy in WI who did some of my welding & fab work has radiant floor heat, and it was absolutely fantastic working in there especially when we needed to lay on the floor. I had a small gas furnace in my 2.5 car garage in IL and it was great for the general warm up...the floor was cold, but you could work out there in a t-shirt and make margaritas within 15 minutes of turning the t-stat up. My thought is to insulate the slab and run the PEX so that everything is in place for the radiant in floor heat even if I don't do the rest of the setup right away (anyone have a good link/links for the installation? I'd like to do that myself to save some cash.) and whenever I set that up, use a t-stat for the floor temp rather than having that thing sucking up juice trying to heat the whole shop. Top side, use the radiant tubes either set low on a t-stat or set on a timer, then supplement that with one or two G73 type units or similar size LP fired heaters (and stick a 100# tank out back like I have for my standby generator) for the quick warm-ups, and possibly throw in one or two ceiling fans to help pull the hot air down and circulate it. Any thoughts or experiences would be greatly appreciated...don't want this to end up costing me as much to heat as the house does. I'd even consider doing half the shop at 15' and the other half at 10' if the truss setup doesn't break the bank so that I only have the high celing where I actually need it. Thanks.