Dave, I have been thinking about a shop heater myself (hey sometimes it gets down below 40 here, but rarely 3 days in row!) Any idea what the operating costs are?
Harry
Harry,
I don't know the specifics for the garage heater alone because the garage and house are all on a single gas line. The details I can give you is the unit I have is 95% efficient if I remember correctly and my highest usage months last year (which was mild) ranged between 150-175 therms for the months Jan-March. which covers the house and garage. The most recent month ending 1/10/13 looks like 190 therms. I average under $100/mo. over the course of the whole year, which includes a gas dryer and water heater as well. I don't expect the garage represents more than 20-25% of that total.
I tried portable electric and propane heaters early on and the small electrics I tried weren't adequate for a 34 x 36 ft space and the propane heaters created too many fumes to tolerate very long.
This unit mounts on the ceiling where it's out of the way and is vented through the roof and thermostat controlled. It just works really nice.
The other thing I did: when I purchased it around 6-7 years ago, the local heating & cooling vendor wanted about $1800 for one installed. I found a vendor online that sold the unit alone for just over $800, spent a little more on the vet pipe, and installed it myself.