Electric Garage Heater

[jack bacon]

I have a 500 square foot insulated garage and have narrowed the 5000 watt electric heater down to Dyna Glo from Menards for $200 or a Vevor from Amazon for $130. Which one is better and which one one is more quieter?
The Dyna Glo has switchable output either
7500w or 5000w.

 

[Buckaroo5]

I have a King Electric 5,000 watt 240V Eco 2s from Menards in my 3 bay insulated attached garage. I use it to take the edge off when I am working out there in the winter. It will eat you alive in electrical cost if you run it much but I only use it when I have to. Electrical costs should be the deciding factor.

 

[kngelv]

I see your in Minnesota. I also have a 5000 watt King in my front garage. All of those are similar in that they are 100% efficient. They are expensive to operate and noisy as hell. It also depends on how much you do out there. If you are out there a lot get a small Mr. Cool mini-split or similar like a Pioneer. It will cost you around $1000.00 and you'll make up the cost on saved energy costs within two years. I built a second garage and put a Fujitsu mini-split in it. I leave it at 64 degrees all winter. It's so quiet that I can't even hear it when I'm out there.

James

 

[Jakemedic]

Run, don’t walk away from those electric heaters. I installed one from Menards once in a 2 car attached garage that was well insulated. I tried it for one weekend and it raised my electric bill 50.00. Friday night through Sunday afternoon. As others have said, consider a mini split. Much more efficient and you get cooling too.

 

[ipgenie]

We have pretty low power rates in Idaho. I have a heater like that, 240V, 7500W, in my well insulated shop (foam R42 walls, R49 ceiling R18 sectional doors). I used it last winter to heat 1500 sq ft.

I have an energy monitor on the heater and set the shop at 50 degrees last winter. It was one of the mildest winters we've ever had.

Running the heater only during off peak hours, it consumed 57.8kWh on the highest day or about $2.89 of energy charges at those off peak rates. The highest month was 2230kWh for the month of January or $111.50. (just under $0.05/kWh off peak winter rate for energy charges. Delivery charges are a flat rate of a little under $30/month, often offset by Columbia River credits.)

I already had the mini split for the shop and am finally getting it installed, but didn't have time to install it before last winter and the resistance heater was $65 on sale at Northern Tool so I bought one and hooked it up.

It'll be 2-3X cheaper to run the mini split, but I'll never break even on the savings of running the mini vs the purchase cost. It'll be quieter and if our winters go back to normal, it'll have more heating capacity at a lower running cost and AC if I ever want it, but it won't last long enough to save me any money when heating to 50 degrees.

 

[nadogail]

My Electric Heater has not raised my bill a signifikant amount.
I only use it during the day and the solar panels feed it.

 

[Sumboodie]

We have pretty low power rates in Idaho. I have a heater like that, 240V, 7500W, in my well insulated shop (foam R42 walls, R49 ceiling R18 sectional doors). I used it last winter to heat 1500 sq ft.

I have an energy monitor on the heater and set the shop at 50 degrees last winter. It was one of the mildest winters we've ever had.

Running the heater only during off peak hours, it consumed 57.8kWh on the highest day or about $2.89 of energy charges at those off peak rates. The highest month was 2230kWh for the month of January or $111.50. (just under $0.05/kWh off peak winter rate for energy charges. Delivery charges are a flat rate of a little under $30/month, often offset by Columbia River credits.)

I already had the mini split for the shop and am finally getting it installed, but didn't have time to install it before last winter and the resistance heater was $65 on sale at Northern Tool so I bought one and hooked it up.

It'll be 2-3X cheaper to run the mini split, but I'll never break even on the savings of running the mini vs the purchase cost. It'll be quieter and if our winters go back to normal, it'll have more heating capacity at a lower running cost and AC if I ever want it, but it won't last long enough to save me any money when heating to 50 degrees.

Dang. 2250 kwhr is around $600 here.

My bill averages about $100.

 

[Copymutt]

Name the most inefficient use of electricity. You got it, resistance heating!

 

[dscheidt]

My Electric Heater has not raised my bill a signifikant amount.
I only use it during the day and the solar panels feed it.

Both days you turned it on in San Diego? The op lives somewhere where he has more heating degree days in a week than you do in five years. Your experience is not relevant.

 

[nadogail]

Both days you turned it on in San Diego? The op lives somewhere where he has more heating degree days in a week than you do in five years. Your experience is not relevant.

I am living in Coronado because i choose to; where anybody else lives is their business and I will not hold there choices against them when asked for advice or opinions.

 

[dave*99]

Both days you turned it on in San Diego? The op lives somewhere where he has more heating degree days in a week than you do in five years. Your experience is not relevant.

I had the same thought.

 

[ipgenie]

Dang. 2250 kwhr is around $600 here.

My bill averages about $100.

I used to heat only with propane and power was $100-150/mo, but since installing solar panels the electricity is already paid for so I heat primarily with electric and use propane as backup now.
I used to drive only with gas/diesel but now drive an inexpensive EV for the same reason.

But that isn't what the thread is about so I'm just sharing real numbers for heating in a zone 4 climate last winter. Maybe it helps, maybe not. I'm looking forward to having the mini split up and running but in my case it probably won't save any money. Break even (self installed) is likely more than 15 years. Maybe it will last that long.

 

[dave*99]

I have this 5.6 kW heater. I used it in a 700 SF insulated garage for a bit. Electricity here in NJ is about $0.29 per kWh.
Electric bill was BIG.

I had to use it for a week when my NG furnace blower motor failed for the house. Electric bill was BIG.

 

[dcg9381]

Name the most inefficient use of electricity. You got it, resistance heating!

Legit. But other factors play. Electricity costs vary by over 100% depending on where you live. Splits that are designed for cold weather use are great, but factor in $2k or so it's going to take to DIY install one, it'll take a long time to make up the difference...

Totally depends on how often you're using it, the cost of electricity, ability to self-install a split...

This is a 500 sqft garage. I'm not sure I'd do a mini-split unless I was heating it a LOT.

 

[dave*99]

A ceiling fan to circulate the air helps. Bringing in a warm car helps.
The warm up period in my garage was quite long. If I really wanted to spend long hours out there, I'd turn the heater on hours before I needed to work out there. Cold cars and cold concrete are tons of thermal mass.

I switched to a NG unit heater. Not cheap to install, but very effective and it heats up fast.

An infrared heater near your work area may be an option too.

 

[bluedog225]

In my area (Texas), I’m thinking of rigging up a direct solar powered resistance heater using DC.

I have a lot of excess production in the winter. Could keep the 25’x25‘ generally warmer. Something that can be manually switched when wanted.

 

[dcg9381]

In my area (Texas), I’m thinking of rigging up a direct solar powered resistance heater using DC.
I have a lot of excess production in the winter. Could keep the 25’x25‘ generally warmer. Something that can be manually switched when wanted.

Direct solar itself is unstable. Just takes a little cloud to cover up the sun and **** 95% of your solar power is gone until it passes. I've never seen a direct DC heating system, so maybe if it's DC it'll be OK..

Otherwise, you have to "buffer" it into batteries. Batteries are really expensive. I heat and cool a little 16x8.5 cargo trailer with solar/batteries. 10kWh of 48V batteries was over $2k, just for the batteries. I can get about 14 hours out of it with no sun cooling in the TX heat.

Sounds like you're not grid tied?

 

[HoosierBuddy]

Back to the OP....not the question you asked, but is electric your only choice? Is natural gas available?

If so....it'll cost about 25% as much to run as resistance electric and would be an easy payback.

 

[WisJim]

In my area (Texas), I’m thinking of rigging up a direct solar powered resistance heater using DC.

I have a lot of excess production in the winter. Could keep the 25’x25‘ generally warmer. Something that can be manually switched when wanted.

I know of people using electric water heaters directly connected to PV and it works well, but takes some care and figuring to match the PV output to the water heater specs. For direct heating, you would want some kind of heat storage, such as water, concrete slab, etc.

 

[bluedog225]

Direct solar itself is unstable. Just takes a little cloud to cover up the sun and **** 95% of your solar power is gone until it passes. I've never seen a direct DC heating system, so maybe if it's DC it'll be OK..

Otherwise, you have to "buffer" it into batteries. Batteries are really expensive. I heat and cool a little 16x8.5 cargo trailer with solar/batteries. 10kWh of 48V batteries was over $2k, just for the batteries. I can get about 14 hours out of it with no sun cooling in the TX heat.

Sounds like you're not grid tied?

Yes. Off grid. I’ve got the whole battery and inverter deal for regular AC. I don’t want to mess with that for heat.

I do have a big honking concrete wall for a heat storage.

 

[Stuart in MN]

You're in Loretto, I'm pretty sure that's Xcel Energy. Their winter kilowatt-hour rate is a hair over $0.11/kwh, so running a 5 kw heater will cost you 55 or 60 cents an hour if it runs continuously (look at the second page of one of your bills from a winter month, all the charges are itemized there). Assuming your garage is well insulated and you're only planning on running the heater a limited number of hours when you're actually out there doing stuff, it shouldn't make a huge change to your power bill.

Off the cuff I think a 5kw heater should be adequate for a 500 square foot garage, but if you haven't done so already you should do a heat loss calculation for the garage. There are a number of free online calculators, you plug in the dimensions of the garage, insulation R values, number and size of windows and doors, what temperature you want to keep the space at, etc. and it will tell you how many kilowatts you need. It's best to run the numbers through a couple different calculators and compare, the online versions don't always agree.

Of the two heaters you mentioned I would go with the one from Menards. I'm still suspicious of Vevor, and if something happens to the Menards heater you have a store nearby where you can go to complain. Having said that, the Menards heater isn't necessarily top of the line either - I'd check how much it would cost for a Berko or Marley brand heater from a local HVAC supply. They're solid brands often used in industry. They probably are more expensive, but I've been retired for a while so I haven't priced them lately.