Propane Heater Guide

Archive for the ‘Electric Heaters’ Category

Garage heaters are used to make sure that your garage has a comfortable temperature, especially during winter.  There is not one kind of garage heater, some or electric, some use natural gas to run.  Garage heaters may use propane, hot water, natural gas infrared, or propane gas infrared to run.

What are the differences between these different types of garage heaters?

Electric garage heaters use electric energy to warm up your garage.  It employs an electric fan to move the warmed air from inside to device to the surrounding area.  The only disadvantage is that electric garage heaters can be quite noisy.

Hot water garage heaters meanwhile, use hot water from your boiler, which goes through a radiator coil.  An electric fan is again used to push air into the radiator coil and the warmed air is dispensed through the area. Water is recycled through the coils afterwards.  The heat from hot water garage heaters is clean and odor-free; there is also no need to worry about flammable situations and no gasoline or oil to hassle about.  Additionally, hot water garage heaters are effective and do not require heavy maintenance.  However, hot water garage heaters are dependent on your home boiler system.  So if that fails, then the garage heater fails as well.

A natural gas garage heater is hooked up to your natural gas line and uses the fuel from there. This type of garage heater uses a spark to ignite the heating device.  This garage heater has a vent pipe where by-products of the heating process are released.   A natural gas garage heater necessitates the highest level of maintenance among all the others but is more efficient and powerful.

Propane garage heaters uses liquefied petroleum gas to run it, and it runs like the natural gas garage heater. However, if you do not have a natural gas line then the propane gas garage heater would be more convenient.  Portable type propane tanks can be filled in gasoline stations that carry LP gas.  The only disadvantage would be that you will need to have proper ventilation to suck in fresh air and then push out dangerous fumes from enclosed areas such as your garage.

NG infrared and PG infrared garage heaters are probably the most economical types of garage heaters you can use.  It uses infrared principles to heat up only objects and people.  It maintains a stable temperature and as soon as the temperature comes in contact with mass, that is the only time it reacts to produce heat. When the objects and people get warm, they act as natural radiators of the heat thus keeping the whole area warm.   A disadvantage would be that infrared heaters are more costly than the rest of the garage heaters available.

What do you need to consider before buying a garage heater?

There are some factors that you need to consider before deciding on the type of garage heater that you would want to purchase.  One is the area that you want to heat up; second is the efficiency of the heater you will choose, and the last is the cost and maintenance of it.

Before buying a garage heater, make sure that you have carefully read the descriptions mentioned above of the different garage heaters available.  This way, you will know which of them will suit your needs best.