I am beginning to outfit my new garage and as the temperature is dropping in Chicago I am starting to think about heaters. The two options I am looking at is traditional ceiling hung box type forced air furnace and and infrared tube type furnace. Both use natural gas. Both require a vent to the outside. I am leaning towards the infrared primarily because there is no fan so less dust and it is said to "hold the heat" when someone opens the garage. The only "potential" downside I can see from infrared is that is works by heating objects in the room NOT by heating the air, and I'm not sure this is bad for my cars or other equipment in my room.

I'm basically looking for any feedback from people that have either type furnace - good experiences or bad.

Regards

 

I have a forced air system. Hot Dawg by Modine. If I had to do it again, I would get an infared system. They seem to hold the heat better. The worst part is that my garage floor stays very cold. Actually if I ever build a house again, I would put radiant heating in the garage

I love having a heater in my garage. One of the most useful things I have done to my house

 

[Repeat from my garage thread]

I've been looking at heaters and I convinced the local IR panel rep to loan me a 2'x2' panel for the weekend. Here's the panel in operation (camera is a Fluke IR Ti10):



Here's the car that is about 5' away



Hot and cold points are shown in each image.

The heat registered on the car is very low.
The panel is running at 405W

The contractor recommends 2 4'x2' plus one 2'x2' to heat the garage.

I'm not sure I believe this is better than forced air heat.

 

Beautiful house and garage Davekrek. I was originally thinking that the ir heat we were talking about was actually the pipes that would go up in the corner where the ceiling and the wall meet. Maybe that is not what they are called. I have never seen those panels before. I dont now if I would want something that close to my cars paint. It's probably fine, but kind of worries me