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First spend your efforts on improved insulation and weather proofing... otherwise it will be like heating your home with a window open.
When I did a lot of work on cars back in High School... my quick and easy way was to park a car with a warm engine in the garage... amazing how much hear would radiate from my old pick up...
I also had an old oil filled radiator type heater... no exposed flames to worry about an no fumes.
Friends have radiant heating and boy is that nice... most are circulation liquid and one is electric... he has a huge solar array with net metering at the end of the year... says he put lots of money into the solar panels and wants to use all he is producing...
Well chances are if the OP's garage lacks drywall- it's probably not insulated. One of the cheapest ways is to install infrared heating panels, you still need to insulate the garage, though. I'm not sure how well floor pads would work being constantly weighted down, drivin on, whatever, but the combo of the two sounds nice.
Is the foam board any good compared to 3 1/2 in fiberglass rolls?
Have you ever used a Styrofoam ice chest? Styrofoam is an excellent insulator, much better than fiberglass. It has several other advantages over fiberglass, only disadvantage is toxic smoke in event of a fire, so don't set your garage on fire..! Really, if the only fiberglass in your garage is on the doors, getting in toxic smoke in event of fire is remote...
We have an attached garage that has 2 exterior walls plus the door itself. I doubt they are even insulated. I don't want to heat it to "room" temperature. Just something that feels warm when you step in the garage. I suspect even 50 degrees should be fine when outside is in the 30s and 40s. One data point is that it always stays above freezing no matter how cold it is outside.
Got central forced air heating?
What we did was run a duct into the garage. No return, just a supply duct. Worked great, and since the thermostat was in the heated portion of the house it didn't "feel" the lost air that we could tell, so the cost of heating the house didn't change.
HVAC company can run it for you if you can't do it yourself.
What we did was run a duct into the garage. No return, just a supply duct. Worked great, and since the thermostat was in the heated portion of the house it didn't "feel" the lost air that we could tell, so the cost of heating the house didn't change.
HVAC company can run it for you if you can't do it yourself.
Interesting. Never thought of that. Although it is not exactly free heating. Others parts of the home will get less so the furnace may have to run longer. I don't know what your experience has been.
Think beyond paying for electricity, kerosene, gas.
I heated an attached 2.5 car garage in Central Illinois with a home made passive heating solar system.
I put it in the place of a 3ft tall by 5ft wide window on the South side. Used a $20 solar panel that fed power to a 5" standard computer fan. When the sun came out, the panel heated up, the fan kicked on and blew warm air into the garage. It would heat it up decently during the day and never dropped below 25 at night, even when it got down near zero because the concrete floor stayed warm enough and gave back that heat at night. Probably cost me $50 total in materials to make the box. The back and one side of the garage had "the house" against it. I also had decent insulation in the attic over the garage. I wish I had a picture of it. You should be able to find easy designs on the internet. That's how I did it.
Is the foam board any good compared to 3 1/2 in fiberglass rolls?
Just to compare apples to apples, since fiberglass batt generally comes in thicker sizes, I looked at 2" insulation for both products from the same manufacturer (Owens Corning). Fiberglass has an R value of 6.7 with a price of $30 to cover 4x8 ft and rigid foam has an R value of 10 with a price of $34 to cover the same area.
If you use 2x4's you can either frame it traditionally with 3.5" batt insulation which has an R value around 11-13, or place the 2x4's flat and use 1.5" of rigid foam insulation has an R value around 7.5. Since this is a garage I would recommend going with 2x4's flat with foam insulation since garages never seem to have enough space and this will give you an extra 2" of floor space per wall (4" if you plan on doing 2 walls). Make sure you use PT lumber, PT-rated screws and cover with greenboard. NOT regular lumber, drywall screws and regular drywall.
Do not overlook the 3rd wall with the garage doors. You can purchase a garage door insulation kit. They are easy to install if you buy the easy snap-on kits. Also make sure the door itself has a good weatherseal on the bottom.
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