Entirely! The heated garage will keep your garage unit warm in any weather or climate, hence saving on costly energy bills and protecting the car from winter damages.
An unheated garage can prove to be costly in the long term. Along with raking up your energy bills on heating the house, it can cause damage to your car, stored tools, machinery, and garage wall and floor. Freezing damage is one of the primary reasons why homeowners choose to heat their garage. The cold will adversely impact the car, car battery, and other appliances within a short period. Moreover, an unheated attached garage easily seeps cold drafts into your home.
The only way to prevent damages is to heat your garage.
Why should you heat your garage/Pros of Garage Heating?
Table of Contents
According to IDCAutomatic, “Garages tend to act as a buffer zone between the heated indoor and outdoor weather.”
Here are six pros of garage heating.
Prevents Freezing Damage
A heated garage is an energy-efficient unit that provides functional warmth that makes it easy to stay or work inside the garage.
The freezing temperature exposes both people and equipment inside the garage to immense cold. If you live in cold weather, you’d know very well how freezing temperature can impact the car and equipment kept inside the garage. It can easily corrode metal parts and damage car batteries, car tires, and appliances.
A heated garage unit ensures that freezing temperatures won’t affect it.
Follow Neighborhood Codes
The homeowners’ associations and other neighborhood codes require homes to have a built-in heater in the garage to prevent possible wear and tear caused by the weather. Installing a garage heater and heated floor protects the home, family members, pets, and equipment from freezing temperatures.
Allows Further Development
For homeowners deciding to build a temporary shelter, workspace, and additional living space out of their garage, a garage heater product will help to provide much-needed warmth and protection from freezing temperatures. A heated garage will easily allow you to renovate your garage space for future developments.
Maintain Indoor Temperatures
A heated garage not only keeps the garage warm but also prevents heat loss from homes. An unheated garage allows a lot of cold air to seep into the home through leaks, significantly when the temperature plummets below freezing. Adding insulation and a garage heater help maintain indoor temperature for energy efficiency and a comfortable level.
Create a Comfortable Workspace
Many homeowners use the garage as a workspace. The heated garage provided a comfortable space for homeowners to spend time inside for a longer time and work on their projects. A heated garage also prevents homeowners from wearing too many layers of clothes when entering the garage, hence providing much-needed mobility.
Safe and Space-saving
Installing heated garage products like heated concrete floors helps save space and provides added safety. Heating units like radiators and heaters can quickly burn near objects if not monitored.
What are the cons of Heated Garage?
Here are five disadvantages of a heated garage.
Costly Installation
Heated garages are slightly expensive to maintain; moreover, installing a garage heater or heated floor can cost homeowners a lot of money. Installing an electrical heater costs up to $500, and installing an electrical garage floor could run over $1000. Hence, it may be costly upon purchase and installation.
Costly Maintenance
An electricity-run garage heater is generally more expensive than natural gas in almost all of North America. When the cost of heating a typical two-car garage, the electric heater can cost as much as 20% more to operate than a vented forced air gas heater and 40% more than a vent-free infrared gas heater. To save up costs, you can choose a garage heater run with natural gas or propane.
Affects Space
Adding a wall-mount or ceiling-mount heater in an already compact garage will eat up virtual space. The only option you have is to add a portable heater or consider adding a heated floor. However, adding a heated floor significantly increases the floor height. For smaller garages, adding a heating unit will eat up a lot of space.
Insulation Adds up the Cost
Most garages aren’t built well for adding garage heaters. You’d need to add insulation on garage walls and garage floors to prevent the heat from escaping outside. Moreover, semi-open garages would need a garage heater with higher BTU, which can be costly. If your garage is not insulated, any extreme heat you supply it with may essentially be lost either out the door, through the walls, or out the roof.
Things can Easily Catch ire
Placing a garage heater near flammable objects like plastic, cloth, polyester can prove to be dangerous. Things places near garage heaters with higher BTU can easily catch fire; hence homeowners must keep an eye at all times. For smaller garages, you’d need to clear up things before you can install a garage heater.
In Conclusion
Overall, turning your garage into a heated unit comes with many benefits. However, it would be best to determine your need and energy uses before buying any garage heater or heated floor to save costs in the long term.
Garage Heater vs. Insulation vs. Heated Floor
There are three ways to keep an entire garage warm: Insulation, garage heater, and heated floors. Let’s talk about the benefits of one over the other.
Is one better than the other?
Talking about energy efficiency, a well-insulated garage door saves energy loss and reduces the electricity bill. By tightly sealing the garage door openers, panels, and walls with types of garage insulation materials like Polyethylene, polystyrene, and fiberglass, you can prevent the warm indoor air from escaping through the small crevasses and cracks, and openings. The best thing is that you can easily buy an insulation kit from Amazon and install it yourself.
However, insulation can only do so much to keep the garage warm in the winter and cool in the summer. The only way to keep your garage heated enough to spend a substantial amount of time inside is by adding a heating unit. While insulation adds a layer to the walls and door panels to keep the garage’s temperature moderated, the garage heater provides essential warmth.
The type of heater appropriate for your garages depends on your garage size and heater’s output or BTU (British Thermal Units). You can get garage heaters ranging from 7500 BTU to 60,000 BTU, but anything advertised over is only suitable for larger spaces like warehouses, commercial garages, and outdoor use.
A heated garage floor is another great option to keep your garage functionally warm. By installing radiant concrete floors fitted with an underfloor heating system (electric or water-based), you can ensure that your garage remains warm during winter.
Much to the homeowner’s surprise, installing a heated floor is more energy-efficient than garage heaters as it covers the entire floor, making for a comfortable temperature.
Once installed, under-floor heating needs virtually no maintenance and lasts longer than any other heating unit. You can run it through smart/Wi-Fi control or use a programmable thermostat for custom heating purposes.
What about the cost?
The one-time garage insulation doesn’t cost much. You can buy it for under $100 and install it for free.
Buying an electric garage heater will cost anywhere from $100 to $400. However, the energy bill for running the heater will run about $20 to $100 a month. You can get a heater run with natural gas or propane to save on recurring bills as a cheaper option.
Installing an electrically heated garage floor costs between $10 to $20 per square foot, depending on the type of system your choose. And, the electrician’s cost for an installation could run between $200 to $500. As an option, you go for water-based systems that are usually installed during the build phase and incorporated into the construction. Still, it usually costs two or three times that of installing an electric system.
Is one better than the other?
Overall, insulation is a great way to keep your uninsulated garage temperature moderated for any weather or temperature. While fiberglass insulation and polystyrene insulation provide essential protection, the garage heater and heated floor provide additional warmth and protection to people and equipment inside.
Installing a garage heater will cost lesser than installing a heated garage floor, but you will save a lot of heating costs on heated floors in the long run because of zero maintenance and no replacement. If you have a limited budget and space, you should choose insulation and a garage heater. For homeowners looking to construct a new garage unit or renovation should consider adding a heated garage floor.