Garage heater help. (heaters, insulating, ceilings, laundry room)

[benny the gimp]

I am needing to heat my two car garage. I have a kennel for my dog with a door for her to go out. I'm only have electric and i'm looking for a good heater that i can leave on safely when no one is there and that it dosent kill me on my bill. Thanks

[Threerun]

My last house I framed up a makeshift cover for my dogs kennel area and plugged in a radiant oil heater. Pretty safe and I only heated an area that the dog required, not the entire garage.

[harry chickpea]

Totally agree with Threerun. Kennel cover, kennel room, properly insulate and you'll spend less constructing one than you would on fuel the first year. Then you can just use an electric space heater, probably one of the oil or water filled ones, behind a fixed guard screen of hardware cloth (coarse metal mesh screen).

[Threerun]

Yup. I framed up a simple over box, put some canvas tarp over all sides but left one draped out as a lean too, then kept the heater in that lean to section, away from the tarp. Worked great.

[studedude]

Anything you do to heat the garage should include first insulating the garage. I'm in suburban Chicago and if I do not turn my garage heat on it seldom gets below 50 even with temp below 0 outside. When my dog stayed out there we would open the door to laundry room, close door to rest of house. She would walk around the garage but I would find her sleeping on a rug in the laundry room every morning. She did the same in the summer. Laundry room was A/C'd.

[benny the gimp]

The whole garage is insulated including the door. I'm just wanting a good heater that I can leave on and feel safe with it while we are gone for the day. Thanks for the replys, I just might close in her dog run but if I need to do something in the garage i just might keep it open. So, any suggestions on a heater?

[Threerun]

How big is the garage, how tall are the ceilings, how many windows, etc..

In my last house, the garage was 24x20 finished, insulated, one window, no heat, 10ft ceilings and an insulated Wayne Dalton 16ft garage door. If I was working in the winter, two oil filled radiator heaters would keep the room at 65deg no problems. But when I kenneled my dog overnight, with the little set up, I rolled one heater over, turned it way down, and it was a plenty for her. No need to waste $$ heating the whole thing (at least that was my concern).

[benny the gimp]

Threerun, my garage is the same as your but i have a side door w/ dog door cut into it no windows. I will probably go with the oil radiant heater. Thanks everyone for the replies.

[Bydand]

How about a kennel cover and one of these? Cabela's -- PetSafe Heated Dog Bed

[Threerun]

Ha... chew resistant cord. Reminds me when I built an insulated 4x4 dog box using 2x4 framing, plywood exterior and smooth plywood for the interior. I had that thing fully insulated, including the roof, with a slat opening so the dog would just fit inside. I filled it with straw and had it set up under a covered porch.

(Remeber I have Blue Tick coonhound, so she likes to stay out all the time).

So I rigged up one of those remote temperature sensors which would read the temp on our indoor weather station. It was pretty cold so I wanted to see how warm the box would get with the dog in it. It started out reading about 65deg on a 25degree night. Pretty good I thought. Then it climbed to 70deg, then 80deg, then 90deg... then nothing.

I went outside with a flashlight, looked in the box and there she was, chewing up the remote sensor!