A disclaimer; I am well and have no interest in suicide!!! But I have a question about CO and CO2. I know that CO is a deadly gas. But when I was younger, the best method of suicide was to run a hose from your exhaust pipe in one window of your car, start the engine, and go to sleep. ( aspirin were the strongest pills available ) The news always said, “he died of carbon dioxide poisoning”. Carbon dioxide is CO2, right? Was the paper using the wrong term?
The reason I’m asking about this is snow is starting to fly here and I have no heat in my shop yet. My old chimney is gone and the lay out of my new shop area doesn’t leave room for a chimney. What kind of heat can I use. I am thinking about one of those “turbo heater”. They come in bottled gas or kerosene and not sure what else. What can I do for heat without a chimney??? Without a chimney am I asking to kill myself. I have worked with those radiant heaters and don’t like them. You have to stand close and directly in front of them. ( lots of nylon jackets melted standing in front of one.)
Suggestion please. Winter is knocking hard on our door. TomC
Hi Tom, I used electric heat force air stand alone 110v unit to heat my garage and one of those oil filled radiators 110v. Our washer and dryer are in the garage so we keep it heated in the winter months. I also live in the cheapest power area (Douglas County) of the USA.
If you are well insulated in your shop it would be the easiest way to go. Especially if you have a 220v to feed from, those units are much more effective and efficient than a 110v unit. Turn it on and warm air circulating in your work area and heating the area up. Put tools with warm air going over them nice to hand on a winters day. The safe way to go in my opinion. Turn it off when you are not in the shop working.
Bob
Hi TomC,
All of the old vehicles were easily capable of 1-3 % CARBON MONOXIDE exhaust emmiting prior to the mid 1970’s. Easy suicide killers.
Later era vehicles with catalytic converters and AirInjectionReaction (into exhaust air pumps) all certified below 1% carbon monoxide. And the more and more advanced electronic fuel injection types even lower yet.
However. You can kill your self just as dead with Carbon DIOXIDE poisoning. Just takes longer. Think back on some of the really old submarine movies and the Apollo 13 accident. Human exhaled carbon dioxide building up was the will-kill 'ya sooner or later danger.
Your shop heating will be much about fuel-use costs.
I’ve actually heated many shops with late model running vehicles INSIDE with tight fitting flexible exhaust hoses.
Coming back from town a then parked inside fully heated up 1000 pounds of engine/radiator/transmission will hours shed off a lot of heat too.
If you go with inside combustion heaters; complete combustion WILL produce a lot of air moisture. ONE gallon of fuel-in will make for more than a gallon(weight) of inside air moisture added!
Always below sub-freezing and too air dry maybe this not be a problem for you?
“Shoulder seasons” weather Fall and Spring; expect to make raining inside of a non-insulated metal building. Insulated? Non-exhaust vented combustion heaters will Wet sog that insulation if a mat/or absorb-able type.
Easier to heat a subdivided space than the whole space.
Regardless of the source; I like red-glow warm you at a distance radiant heating; or Hot-Black Body radiating and convection heating the best in a shop versus any type of noisy, disturbing, hot air blasting.
BTU’s may be the same . . . effects on the human body and human moods is far different.
Thanks for the comments; Al, yes one of the modern high efficiency heaters where you just have a 3 inch vent through the wall might work. Was hoping for something on the cheaper side, but that would be a good investment. I probably have about any fuel I want but piping the NG would be a project. We are working on putting in electricity, so as Bob suggested it will be a possibility.( if I could talk my wife into her washer/dryer out there, she would make it plenty hot.)
Good info on CO and CO2, Steve. Didn’t realize that was the reason for change to the more modern ways of committing suicide. ( always thought the air injection was a joke— If you put out a cubic foot of exhaust at 10% CO2, then pump one cubic foot of raw air in with the first one, you end up with 2 cu.ft. with 5% CO2–??) Anyway, my shop is divided into a parking area and a 15x30 area to be heated. It is not insulated and with a walk in door, a window, and a 10 ft rolling door and a cold concrete floor, I don’t think moisture will be a problem. I will only heat the one area when I am in the shop. I agree about the noise, but I don’t know anything about those radiant heating systems. Saw a shop once that had a radiant tube/shield down the center of two bays. Don’t know how well it worked or what kind of gas they used.
In Ohio I had a 3 car garage as a shop, and I heated it with a 150,000 torpedo heater. It through out good heat – in a half hour or so I could take off my coat and until then I pulled it around where it blew on me. Pretty good deal except for hours after I could taste diesel fuel from my lungs. If I went with a torpedo heater it would have to be propane and yet I think that in your throat gives a taste. TomC
The overhead radiant heat systems with a reflector are probably the most efficient, feels like the sun shining down.
The portable Mr Heater type units have a low oxygen sensor shutoff built in, so they are safe for indoor use, but will produce humidity, which will end up on cold tools, etc. There are kerosene higher capacity units, they would probably fit the bill, probably your most practical immediate fix, and then could be sold after if desired.
hi tom i am with any heating unit other than the diesel salimander type, the propane one are a little less exousting. if the electric is cheap, that sounds GOOD. You may have too insulate a big enough winter work area. I agree the newer cars dont kill too fast as a rule from exoust, i remeber seeing all the news cast from older cars, died just sleeping in a running car too keep warm. YOU could allways run your wood truck with a good exoust vent systom out the door for starters till you get a heater set up. If the hopper was too burp a time in beteen fill ups it should be fine for safty reasons.
Back when kids were born we lived for several years in a small cottage. I connected a small 12X12X12" cast iron woodstove to a 4" drainpipe vent and had a table fan blowing on the stove and the red hot pipe. Early winter mornings dress code was heavy coats and moon boots. After only half an hour we were down to knickers and T-shirts.
Nothing beats wood for fast heat.
Thanks everybody; I looked on the net and think I will go with a propane radiant heater. Steve’s comment about a car engine, made me think about heating with wood by feeding a gasifier to run an engine to heat the shop— but wait, the reason I need heat is to work on my gasifier. My old shop was heated with wood. My chimney was a 30 Ft. 8’’ culvert, one end buried 8 Ft. in the ground. It worked good for many years , but was rusting out because I didn’t put an ash / soot clean out.
TomC
If you have southern exposure, you might look at the passive solar panel heating. It is pretty cheap and it works. You may need another heat source, but you won’t have to run it as long.
Thanks Sean; My shop is in a quonset building and the south facing wall is curved. I put as big of windows in the east facing wall as I could get. TomC
Oh yeah! That is a neat shop. I don’t think you have to attach the panels to the building. You probably would want insulated pipe for the connector. Or to be quite honest, you could just design them to be curved, really doesn’t matter. That is just an easy way to keep it from getting ice cold.in the shop.
I’ve talked about my problems with the shop, but yesterday I got some time to work on “WOODGAS”!!! When I took the gasifer apart, I looked for white ash to give me a clue of where I might have air leaks. There was none. The way my gasifier is built, the gases have to leave the grate and circle around and go up around the air manifold before going out to the world. With out any ash was confusing, but the side of the air manifold was all white and had flakes on it like paint coming off, ( I never painted it this was just the steal from heat–I concluded). So as I said, I decided, air was coming out of the manifold and hitting raw gas and making some really hot areas.
It took some doing to seal the manifold but I got it sealed and drilled a small hole in on of the caps. I planned to pressure test it using soapy water but I didn’t have an air compressor and I don’t have electricity plumbed into the shop other than a drop cord from the house. So I went to HF and picked up an El- cheapo compressor for $45 with a two gallon tank-- and a blow gun with a rubber tip. It took 4 minutes for the compressor to fill up the 2 gal. container and about 1 1/2 minutes to empty it into the manifold. I found many little bulbles and a couple of rather large ones. After I sprayed water/soap on the surface, it was hard to mark the locations with soap-stone. Each spot had to be wiped dry and marked. while I was doing that the air ran out of the manifold and I had to air up the compressor again and find and mark another spot or two.
Finally I think I have them all marked. I learned long ago that you can’t seal leaks by just putting another weld over the top. So I started grinding down the welds in the areas of the marks. Many of them didn’t look like holes but there were slag pockets. I took my smallest screw driver and a piece of steal and chipped at the slag. Almost always it turned out to be a hole/gap that I had welded over. I bought a new mig welder but after looking at the holes I am concerned that the holes will get bigger if I try to Flux core mig weld them ( I don’t have the proper gas to wire mig them and the new welder came with a roll of flux core ) So I have decided to braze the holes. I can puddle and flow braze much better. A friend gave me some welding tanks and an oxy/acet welding set that he said he never uses. The hose and gauges look good but there was just a cutting end on the torch and the set was so old, I can’t get welding/brazing tips. So back I go and I bought a new chamber and welding tip. In the whole wide world up here I only found ONE tip and it is larger than I wanted, but it will have to do. Now the question is— do the tanks have anything in them?? I can’t get them filled but am hoping there is enough for this job. Then I will have to rent some new ones.
So there you are up to date. I will get my “bomb suit” on and go back out to the shop and see what can go wrong today. TomC
I do small brazing jobs with my cutting torch - just adjust the air/gas mixture for the best heat pattern and make sure you don’t hit the oxygen cutting lever. My torch regulator threads fit a standard 20 lb. propane tank so I have not used acetylene for a long time.
Thanks Don. I will try using my propane tank with my new oxy/acet torch and weld tip. The propane tank didn’t get lost in the fire because THAT is what I was messing with when I started the fire. Not sure how good these cutting torches are but if all else fails, I can try that. I don’t have a oxy/ propane tip for the cutting torch – it did go up in the fire. I hate to have to experiment with weld equipment, my welds don’t end up real good when I had the correct equipment. 50 degrees today and sunny. Maybe I can open the shop doors TomC
Don is right, the cutting torch will braze and weld too. I have done it many times, for me just harder to handle since the tip is not as close where you hold on to it. It would work fine if that’s all you have to use.
Im with kristijan on the brass melting, make sure its not in the hearth area or you will have a hell of a time trying too stick weld over the remaining brass. SWEM.