Cove Heaters

[Jason BrownMT]

Hello All,

I am looking at heating options for a 20'x30' garage shop. Since I am renting, I have limited it to electric heating units. I will be having an electrician install a dedicated circuit on the main panel. I have been looking at a basic forced air heater such as a Dimplex unit, but the electrician recommend a radiant heat system from Comfort Cove.

I did a search, but did not find much on the forums regarding the cove heaters. Does anyone have any experience with them ? Do these heating systems work well ? I am in MT, so I do get some periods of pretty cold weather.

Thanks

Jason

[Ray Newman]

Based on personal experience, electric heaters work, but the room or building needs to be very well insulated. From what I later read, electric heaters are not the most efficient. I do not know about MT electric rates, but electric rates here are not economical any more. I also found that it took awhile for the shop to get warm even though my shop is very well insulated. In my shop I ran a base board heater and a 220 milk house heater. Both had fans to circulate the air.

I have no idea if these electric radiant heaters work any better. Maybe a call to your electric company might provide you with more information.

[Jason BrownMT]

Thanks for the suggestions. I thought I would do a summary in case others may find it useful.

I did not find much information on the cove heaters, so I went with a King 4k Watt electric heater. My garage is well insulated. We have had temps close to zero, and the garage stayed above 43F. The reason I picked the King was that is had a listed airflow of 300 cfm. I figured that even though it may not put out as much heat as other models, it would push that heat farther. I just mounted the heater to the ceiling and the lowest setting brought it up to 58F before it cycled off. I will have to see how it does when the real cold hits.

[Dale Cruea]

I had a 4k electric heater in my garage shop. It heated the entire shop.
On real cold days (20 degrees or lower) The heater had a hard time warming my shop.
If I ran my kerosene heater for a hour or so the the electric heater did well.
It did OK when I left it on all the time to a lower temp. But this cost me an arm and a leg to run it.

4000w is about 13,650 btu.
Not a lot of btu for that space.
I have a 60,000 gas heater in about the same space.

[Chris Harper]

When we bought our house the third bay was divided in half and the back half was heated with two, 750 watt cove heaters. They did a very good job of heating that area but it was very well insulated. Even the floor was framed out and insulated.

I have since torn that wall and floor out and moved the wiring so the heaters can be directed down the length of the garage and towards the overhead door. Unfortunately I haven't hooked them up yet so I can't give you any experience beyond the previous application. I have a Reznor NG forced air heater on the parking side of the garage so I don't really need the cove heat until I put a door between the shop and the garage.

These cove heaters are distributed by our local electric supplier and are very common in my area. People who switch out their baseboard heaters to the cove heaters really like them a lot better. But that's not a shop, of course. I do see them in garages out here as well but I can't think of anyone I can go ask.

[scott weston]

I ran a 660sqft garage/shop insulated ceilings but not walls off a 4000W electric heater. I also had a wood burning stove and a 110k BTU kerosene heater I ran off diesel. Anyways what I am getting at is one year I used it solely to keep my garage shop at 50 during a very cold january in Iowa. It cost me $5/day to heat that space. The following year we had a very similar winter with same average temps and the cost was negligible. What I did differently was set the heater to keep the shop at 35 degrees just above freezing. Then I would fire up the wood burner and in an hour the shop was up to temp. In 2 hours it was over 90 if I didn't slow it down. You may not have that luxury.

BTW I left that wood burner in that house when I sold it this past spring. The new place I moved into has a dedicated 2 stall shop in the backyard fully insulated and plumbed with a gas furnace.