Best Garage Heaters; Stay Warm and Comfortable While You Wrench | Autance

When the temperatures begin to drop, working on projects in your garage or workshop can be more daunting than it is during warmer months. After all, fiddling with nuts and bolts with frozen fingers is no fun. Luckily, there’s a wide range of garage heaters to keep you warm and working through the colder months, so Old Man Winter won’t stop you from making progress and enjoying time in your workspace. From electric to propane-fueled units, there are a wide variety of garage heaters with different warmth-producing characteristics and output levels. This article will compare some of the best models on the market across a range of different applications to help you choose the perfect heater that will fit ideally in your garage and heat it up to a toasty working temperature fast and efficiently.

The Best Garage Heaters

Best Garage Heater Buying Guide & FAQ

What to Look for in a Garage Heater

Power Rating

The first thing that you need to know about your garage heater is how much power you need to heat the space that you have. The best garage heater brands should list this power rating information, but some will tell you in square footage as well to help you get a more concrete idea. Remember that the power rating is assuming the best conditions possible, so you should go for a heater that has a higher rating than the one you require, which accounts for any drafts or poor insulation in your garage area.

Don’t forget to take into account the height of the ceiling as a garage with a tall ceiling requires a more powerful heater. As a general guide, if you have an especially large space that needs heating, a heater of around 4,000 to 5,000 watts is a great choice.

Heat Source

Not all garage heaters are created the same and one of the biggest differences is their heat source. Depending on your personal preference, space requirements, geographical location, and heating costs, you may choose from combustion-powered garage heaters or electrical garage heaters. 

Combustion

Combustion-sourced heaters use either natural gas or propane to power the garage heater and are usually ideal for larger garages or workshops, but are not to be used in small interior spaces, such as one-car garages, sheds, bedrooms, etc. 

Natural gas and propane are known to be very efficient, cost-effective, and clean methods of heating larger spaces. They cost much less than electricity and don’t draw any power at all when then they’re turned off. They’re also guaranteed to work in the event of an unplanned power failure, which makes them a great emergency source of heat.

The trade-off is that they can often be less safe than electrical heaters and can pose a carbon monoxide hazard, as well as a burn risk to children and pets. They also have a higher risk of unintentional fire. 

Electric

Electric garage heaters are a great option for most household one-, two-, and three-car garage spaces, with some of the stronger ones being able to heat upwards of 1,000 sq. ft. They’re often very quiet and come with many built-in protection features, like automatic shut-off in the event of accidental tipping and overheating.

Thermostats on electric heaters are more incrementally adjustable and often feature remote control operation. Oftentimes, these garage heaters are also wall mountable for space saving considerations.

The trade-off is that electricity is often much more expensive in the long run than natural gas or propane, especially if you need to use the heater very frequently and for longer periods of time. 

Safety Features

Keeping yourself safe is obviously the most important thing when you are at work in your garage. Check the reports online for safety ratings and any accreditations that have been issued. The most common safety features include:

Tip-Over Protection

A tip over switch will automatically shut your garage heater down if it happens to get knocked over for any reason. Sensors inside the heater will detect when the unit has been knocked over and shut it off immediately so as to minimize the risk of a fire starting.

Overheating Protection

This system will detect if the heater is producing too much heat and therefore becoming unsafe, stepping in to switch it off before any damage is done to your home or the heater itself.

Cool Touch Heater

A cool touch feature on your garage heater will stop the surface of the heater from getting too hot. This is especially important if there are children and/or animals anywhere around the vicinity.

Portability

If you need to be able to take the heater from one place to another with no problems, you should be looking for a device that is highly portable. A carry handle helps in your task of picking it up and moving the heater around whenever you want. Alternatively, wheels or casters help too – and you are not in danger of throwing out your back by trying to pick up something that is simply too heavy. Ultimately, this comes down to the question of whether you want a fixed or a portable garage heater.

Adjustable Features

It is worth checking whether the heater features any sort of adjustable features that allow you to redirect the heat as needed. Some feature a pivoting function, while you can also get heaters that are operational by remote control. Another common adjustable feature is the option to change the power setting from low to high.

Ease of Assembly and Installation

Some of the heaters that we have talked about above come pre-assembled straight out of the box, whereas others require some assembly work. If you are handy with DIY, the latter may not be a problem, but the former is better if you want something that is ready to go straight away. Other heaters will need to be hardwired into the circuitry, and this needs someone with professional electrical experience to take care of the task. Otherwise, you could find yourself in a dangerous situation.

Power Cord Length

A commonly overlooked feature that people don’t tend to think about is making sure that the power cord length is suitable to ensure that you can put it wherever in your garage. With high output heaters, it may be especially tough to find a safe extension lead, so you should double check to ensure that the cord is sufficiently long enough.

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Why You Should Invest in Garage Heaters

There are plenty of different reasons why keeping your garage warm is a good idea. First, you help to prevent freezing damage to pipes and equipment during the colder months of the year. This can impact various components inside your garage such as your car battery and other electrical features. In some areas, it is required to heat your home properly, which protects it against wear and tear, so it is worth knowing whether your neighborhood code dictates this. The garage can be an area that invites a lot of cold air into the home, so heating the area properly can help to prevent cold air from reaching the interior of your home, which can help decrease some of your overall home heating costs.

Garage heaters are a quick and easy way of heating this area of your home. They are easy to assemble and don’t tend to require a lot of maintenance. Since many homeowners use this area of the house as a workspace, this is a great way to maintain comfort, so you can get on with the jobs that you want, day or night – even when the weather has taken a turn for the worse outside.

Fixed vs Portable Garage Heaters

One of the main questions that you need to ask yourself when you are choosing a garage heater is whether you want it to be fixed or portable. The latter makes sense if you ever envision a time when you may need to move it to a different workshop space or area of the house. For the electrical garage heaters, you just need to plug them into the nearest available outlet, although sometimes, certain electrical garage heaters require specialized electrical outlets due to their size and power. Or you could go for a propane or natural gas fueled heater if you want to escape from the restrictions that a cord imposes on you.

There are plenty of benefits to using a fixed heater if you don’t think that you will ever need to move it. You wire them into the position that you like, and you don’t have to worry about finding somewhere safe to stand the heater where it is not in danger of being knocked over. This gives you more space to work with in your garage area and can eliminate the tripping or accidental burn hazard that many portable heaters pose.

How to Heat Your Garage Efficiently

When you are heating your garage, you need to do so in a way that ticks both the safety and efficiency boxes. When you are positioning your garage heater, you should choose an area that is off the floor and other work surfaces. Also, avoid putting a freestanding heater near any entrance or exit areas as it could easily get knocked over in the event that you need to make an emergency exit. If you can mount the heater directly to a wall or ceiling, this is the safest way of doing so that keeps it comfortably out of your way. You may need to enlist the support of a heating expert to take care of the installation for you.

Plenty of garage heaters have the convenient feature of giving you the option to direct the heat wherever you like. When you are choosing a direction, you should go for the middle of the garage or any area that you are going to be concentrating on working on. This will allow you to experience the full benefits of the heater. You could also look at investing in a radiant panel as this can help a garage keep warmer for longer.

As we mentioned before, you need to choose a heater that is effective in warming up the space. Bear in mind that some garage heaters require ventilation as well. But proper heating of your garage doesn’t only extend to using a garage heater. You should also insulate the space to stop any heat from escaping. If you use high-quality insulation, this will help to keep the heat in that little bit better. Also, check the window and door areas to ensure that the insulation here is adequate too. Any gaps can cause draughts, which allows the precious heat to simply escape outside. Remember, proper heating also has the other major benefit of lowering your heating bills, which no one is going to complain about!

Types of Garage Heaters

Garage heaters can take many forms based on what you require in your workspace. From small personal heaters right up to units that are capable of heating cavernous job sites there is a heater that would be perfect for your needs. As a basic rule of thumb, electric heaters have a ten to one ratio of watts to square footage heated. Therefore a 3000 watt heater will heat a space that measures 300 square feet. Listed below you’ll find some of the major heater styles as well as information on their characteristics.

Fan Forced

Fan forced heaters utilize a fan to move air past a heated electrical element. As the air moves past the element it becomes heated before moving out into the room. Fan forced heaters provide soft, comfortable, and gradual heating and are well suited to smaller rooms which do not need to be heated immediately after the heater is switched on.

Ceramic

Ceramic heaters replace the electrical element in fan forced heaters with a ceramic heating element to provide more heat while using the same principles. As such, ceramic heaters are suited to heating larger rooms. They also have a greater ability to focus the heat being produced than do their fan forced counterparts.

Quartz

Quartz heaters utilize infrared radiation to provide greater heat which is often compared to that of the sun. They are very useful for heating people and objects but less so for heating air as the infrared heat produced is of a different spectrum than the absorption spectrum of air. Quartz heaters use metal reflector sheets to direct the heat in the direction it is needed and are well suited to heating larger rooms as well as outdoor spaces.

Propane/Natural Gas

Propane and natural gas fueled heaters work on the principle of an extremely controlled flame within the unit heating the air inside before a fan pushes the heated air out into the room. These are the most common kinds of heaters found in industrial applications and can produce large quantities of heat for extended periods of time. Residential applications often value electrically generated heat over propane or natural gas because of the simplicity of plugging the unit into a wall over refilling and fueling with compressed gas.

Free Standing or Wall Mounted

The question of free standing or wall mounted heaters essentially comes down to your own application and personal preferences. Free standing heaters can be moved around a space which is useful if you need to direct heat to a few different locations. They can, however, provide a tripping hazard when sitting on the floor which is not ideal if you will be moving around your garage or workspace a lot. Wall mounted heaters remove the tripping hazard as they are not typically in an area that you would find yourself moving about in. The downside to this is the fact that they are difficult to move once they have been installed and therefore cannot be transferred as needs be. One upside of mounting propane or natural gas fueled heaters on a wall is the fact that you are able to isolate all of the necessary piping and fuel bottles away from walkways. If your heater is mounted on an exterior wall it is also easier to run piping for venting to outside your workshop.

Safety Precautions when Using a Garage Heater

Garage heaters are, by their very nature, capable of generating intense quantities of heat. Even electric heaters, which lack the controlled but active flame of propane/gas burning heaters, can start fires and have other adverse effects if used improperly. There are a few things to consider when using a garage heater in a safe manner.

1. Always make sure that any gas bottles or fuel sources are kept well away from your heater. Fuel sources can include oils, aerosols, gasoline/diesel storage containers, firewood, and any other flammable material. If possible you should keep substances that can add fuel to a fire are kept in a separate storage area, be that a different room from the one being heated or a specifically designed fireproof cabinet.
2. Keep your garage heater out of the path of foot traffic and other movements. This may mean mounting the heater on a wall/ceiling or simply finding a place for it that’s well out of the way. Avoiding the possibility of the heater being knocked over should be of high priority. Although modern garage heaters feature safety systems that will shut the heater off if it gets knocked over it’s always better to be safe than sorry when dealing with fire risks and ignition sources.
3. Make sure that your new heater is in good condition. Frequently check on it to make sure that it hasn’t become damaged without your knowledge. Gas-fueled heaters should have their burner nozzles inspected to make sure they’re functioning as they were designed to do. If you are not comfortable performing these inspections yourself, you can always take your heater to someone who is certified in their maintenance.
4. Make sure that the motors/fans are free of dust and debris. Keep any accessible areas of the heater clean. Dust and lint can prove extremely flammable and making sure they don’t build up on your heater can save you from an unnecessary fire.
5. Any gas fueled heater will require exhaust venting. Make sure that the exhaust piping ends up outside the building in the fresh air and that it isn’t being expelled near any windows or HVAC intakes. When used correctly and given their proper respect garage heaters are an excellent way to keep warm and keep working through the cold winter months.

Top Brands

Fahrenheat

The Fahrenheat® brand was developed in 1986 as part of the Marley Engineered Products family. It draws on the company’s long history of providing reliable, comfortable heating and ventilation solutions to both residential and light commercial applications. Some of its more popular products include the 202SL Series – Radiant Plug-In Under Desk Heater and the MMHD Series – Portable Fan-Forced Utility Heater.

Dr. Infrared

Dr. Infrared is a subsidiary of the USA-based Dr. Heater USA Brand. One of its more innovative products is the Dr. Infrared Music heater that features Bluetooth connectivity and AM/FM radio capabilities to play music while you heat your home.

Modine

Modine Manufacturing Company has been a leading force in  thermal management since 1916. It designs, manufactures, and tests heat transfer products for a wide variety of applications and markets. 

NewAir

NewAir was founded by Luke Peters in his garage over 15 years ago. Since then, the company has made a name for itself by offering high-quality, affordable compact appliances and heating and cooling options, such as the NewAir 126 Can Freestanding Beverage Fridge and the NewAir Countertop Ice Maker.

Dimplex

Glen Dimplex Americas is a member of the Glen Dimplex Group of companies based in Dublin, Ireland. It is the world leader in electric heating,  and offers a wide range of residential, commercial and industrial solutions. It offers such ground-breaking products as the Winslow 42″ Wall-mount Electric Fireplace and the Dimplex Indoor/Outdoor Infrared Heater.

Mr. Heater

Mr. Heater has been around since 1984, and is a subsidiary of the Ohio-based Enerco, which has been at the forefront of infrared combustion technology since 1957. Enerco also specializes in consumer heating products,  like the Little Buddy Heater and the 3.6 Kw Portable Forced Air Electric Heater.

Best Garage Heater FAQ:

Sources:

1. Need a Garage Heater? Key Features to Look For! – Air & Water
2. Quartz Heating – How It Works – Tansun
3. Great Tips for Safe Garage Heating – Heater Home