Ventilation Tips for fuel heaters.

[DMucci]

I recently bought a Reddy propane heater, 40-80k BTU, and have been using it to heat my very poorly insulated 2 car garage. After getting the garage up to a workable temp, the fumes are unbearable. If I open the door enough to vent the fumes to a bearable level, the temperature gets too low. I'm in Chicago, and the winter temps will often stay below -10F for weeks.

Does anyone have any tips for possibly ventilating fumes while retaining heat? Maybe some sort of large scale accordion ventilation hose?

I rent the garage, so insulating and electric heaters are out of the question unfortunately.

Thanks,
Dave

 

[rlitman]

I used to use a kerosene torpedo heater to heat my garage on the coldest days. When it was burning diesel, the smell could get truly unbearable. With kerosene it's still pretty bad.

My propane catalytic heater makes no smell at all. Catalytic heaters are much cleaner burning.

Does your heater have any adjustments? I know that with the kerosene torpedo heaters, there is an important adjustment that you can't just fiddle with. Get it wrong, and you end up with nasty smoke, nasty fumes, and/or CO.

On that note, do you have a CO detector? If not, get one!

Now, here's one last thing. If possible, you want the heater burning clean outside air.
Any time exhaust gets recycled back into the heater intake, it will generate more CO, since exhaust is oxygen depleted. One thing I did that helped, was to open my garage door to the height of the heater, and place the heater centered under the door facing in. You don't lose too much heat out the bottom of the door, and the heater will make less fumes because it's getting outside air.

 

[DMucci]

That's a good idea. I was just reading up about the amount of fresh air needed. This might have lead to the bad fumes, as I had the heater at the opposite end of the garage, facing the open door.

Mine is also torpedo style, and has a single dial on it that controls the BTU setting. I assume this controls the influx of propane, so I leave the tank fully open when operating.