Garage Workshop Cooling

[Carlos Alvarez]

Our cheap and easy solution, a swamp cooler, wouldn't work so well in FL!

[Bill Dufour]

Our cheap and easy solution, a swamp cooler, wouldn't work so well in FL!

Do you worry about wood movement with a swamp cooler or do you leave it on all summer.
Bill D

[Carlos Alvarez]

I don't worry about it, and I just run it when the shop is in use. I don't notice any effect. We're talking raising the moving air from 10% to 40-50% for a few hours. It doesn't mean the entire shop is full of moist air. I just set it on one end of the open garage door blowing in, and a fan blowing outward on the other side. Swamp coolers work by moving a lot of fresh new air, unlike the AC which moves a little enclosed air.

We made the mistake of running it 24/7 one summer, and with insufficient outflow. Had to do a lot of tool bed cleanup. The humidity "piles up" if you don't have sufficient outflow.

[Scott McFarland]

It may be worth about $200 more to get the mini split that is also a heat pump. Note that they have poor air filters so if you shop air has a lot of dust the coils will need cleaning often.
Bill D.
easy enough to install on a outside wall but you will need some tools. Around $200 used for hole saw, flaring kit, tubing bender(maybe) vacuum pump, manifold gauge set, adapter since mini splits use smaller then standard connectors. The gauge set is the same as used for car ac work with the old screw on connectors. I got all I needed at yard sales, ebay.
the vacuum pump is hardest to find but you do not care about horsepower or CFM.
Many here run all the wires and tubing then pay someone to flare and connect the lines, pull a vacuum and release the freon. They will charge around $100-200 for this service.

The unit I have in my garage does have heat as well as cooling. I don't need the heat very often, but I have used it.

[Bruce Lundgren]

We've moved several times in the last 12 years from Ft Myers area to Nashville area and now NH where we lived for many years.

In FL our garage was cement block with no insulation. We had a Mitsubishi mini-split (A/C only) installed. Worked great even in the heat/humidity of the summer. Insulating the door with 2"rigid foam (foil-side out) made a HUGE difference (but lots of cutting/fitting). Because we had hurricane bracing on the inside of the door, the framing held the foam in-place. Since you're much further North in Jacksonville heat and cooling might be needed depending on when you will be in the shop.

In Nashville area, I couldn't use a mini as there was no place to locate the outside unit so I bought a Honeywell portable heat & cooling unit that vented through an insert under the window. Again I used rigid foam insulation on the garage door...again a huge difference! The unit worked very well also and was much much cheaper than the mini-split.

Finally in my dedicated (and insulated) workshop (hurray) in our barn in Southern NH in March we installed a Mitsubishi mini-split heat/ and cooling system. There's a "head" in both the shop and adjacent storage room. Very expensive ($9K) but its hopefully the last time we've moved as I'm now retired. It worked very well even in some of the very cold weather we had.

I don't have the technical skills to install a split system but it would have saved a lot of $. Keep in mind though that if its self-install and there's a warranty issue you may not be covered.

Lots of good suggestions by others above. Hope this is helpful.

[Marshall Harrison]

We've moved several times in the last 12 years from Ft Myers area to Nashville area and now NH where we lived for many years.

In FL our garage was cement block with no insulation. We had a Mitsubishi mini-split (A/C only) installed. Worked great even in the heat/humidity of the summer. Insulating the door with 2"rigid foam (foil-side out) made a HUGE difference (but lots of cutting/fitting). Because we had hurricane bracing on the inside of the door, the framing held the foam in-place. Since you're much further North in Jacksonville heat and cooling might be needed depending on when you will be in the shop.

In Nashville area, I couldn't use a mini as there was no place to locate the outside unit so I bought a Honeywell portable heat & cooling unit that vented through an insert under the window. Again I used rigid foam insulation on the garage door...again a huge difference! The unit worked very well also and was much much cheaper than the mini-split.

Finally in my dedicated (and insulated) workshop (hurray) in our barn in Southern NH in March we installed a Mitsubishi mini-split heat/ and cooling system. There's a "head" in both the shop and adjacent storage room. Very expensive ($9K) but its hopefully the last time we've moved as I'm now retired. It worked very well even in some of the very cold weather we had.

I don't have the technical skills to install a split system but it would have saved a lot of $. Keep in mind though that if its self-install and there's a warranty issue you may not be covered.

Lots of good suggestions by others above. Hope this is helpful.

I have two portable heaters that I can use in the garage. But the garage shares two walls with the house so it doesn't normally get too cold for me.

Its the summer heat that has me concerned. Its already hit 90+ twice this week and its not quite the middle of May. But rains is forecast in the next few days with temps cooling into the upper 70s. Before I was retired I had a portable AC that vented out a window like you described in my office. Too many monitors and computers running made it uncomfortable warm in the evening as that side of the house faces west. It worked fine and may be what I end up doing to save costs.

Or I could speed up the time table for my move to the mountains.

[Tim M Tuttle]

I installed a Pioneer Mini Split back in January to heat/cool my garage shop. Did pretty well in the winter and so far it's done a great job cooling. In the winter I had to leave it on to keep the shop around 60. For cooling I have left it off and then just turned it on either when I went into the shop or maybe an hour before going in there. It's not the dead of summer yet but we've had 90+ days already and my shop was 69 degrees when working in it the other day. I have insulated walls but nothing in the ceiling. The total cost for the unit and installation was a little over $1500 I think. I did most of the install myself and paid an hvac guy $100 or 150 to do the final connections.

[Marc Jeske]

Insulate garage, cut an appropriate hole in backyard wall out of view of Gladys Kravits, install sleeve mounted 24kbtu "window" AC .. unit around $700.

What I would do (have done) anyway.

Marc

[Charlie Hinton]

After getting a quote on a turn key mini split for $6k I have decided to give a 18k BTU portable AC with heat ($500 from Costco) a try.
Located in Dallas, garage door faces east, currently no insulation in the garage I will probably blow some into the attic and put some foam on the garage door.
I will try to remember to post back here in a couple of months when it's really hot to let y'all know how it's going.

[Marc Jeske]

Charlie - "Portable" ?

You mean w the big hose(s) ?

If so, did you do yer Googlin due diligence on those?

Marc

[Jim Becker]

Marc, there are some more compact portable units available these days...there was a stack of several models at Home Depot the other day when I walked through. They are probably not as efficient as a MiniSplit, but then again, they cost a fraction of the initial investment, too. I suspect they will work fine for smaller shops, especially to get the humidity off.
-----

On another note, I switched over to cooling this week on my MiniSplit and am happy to say it performs just as nicely as it did in heating mode to-date.

[Marshall Harrison]

Woot has a 8,000 BTU portable uint for $205.99 - https://home.woot.com/offers/haier-h..._cat_home_12_5

I've used on in my office a few years back. Not ready to pull the trigger on one at the moment but This is probably what I'll do when the time/money is right.

[Carlos Alvarez]

I've used several of the small portables for various purposes (never a shop), and they are great. Easy to deal with obviously, and always solved the problem, but I only used them in small-ish spaces.

[Carlos Alvarez]

There's something very sketchy about that woot listing. The model number only exists there. Meaning, they changed it, made it up, or the product is made just for them. Google it; doesn't exist anywhere else. The HPB08XCM is seemingly the same.


Check out these options: https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_s...ir+conditioner

[Marc Jeske]

What I should have explained was....

The best "portables" DEFINITELY have TWO hoses, not one.

Think about THAT..... ""Make up" incoming air" is all I'm sayin.

A one hose unit is a Joke.. think about the incoming infiltrated hot outside air it will bring in as it needs to exhaust the collected separated heat energy.

Marc