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Old 11-20-17, 04:09 PM   #8
bennelson
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Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: SE Wisconsin
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My Dad put a natural gas furnace out in his shop, which is attached off the back of the garage. The dog's kennel is also off the back of that building, and there's a small dog door for the animal to get inside to an interior box.

The detached garage does NOT have natural gas running to it. There was also a pond, rock garden, and driveway in between the house and the garage, so trenching and burying natural gas pipe to there didn't make sense.

He instead converted the furnace to propane. My understanding is that it's pretty easy to do that, it's mostly just an orifice change. Lots of people live outside of towns, where there's no natural gas, and instead have one of those large "pill" propane tanks in their yard. So, there's a lot of gas-to-propane adapter kits out there.

The furnace itself is in a "lean-to" area which was originally outdoors, but under the overhang of the garage roof. That area was walled in, but it's still essentially outdoors. The main vent out from the furnace is wrapped in insulation before going into the shop.

The other thing to think about here is that the NEW furnaces are CONDENSING. They magically pull out the "latent" heat which means more of the natural gas fuel gets converted to heat (higher efficiency) but that you also get WATER, which has to be drained away.

In a garage (which suffers from below freezing temperatures here in the American Midwest winters,) a CONDENSING furnace can actually be a bad thing, as you need to make sure that water can drain away and NOT freeze. If it does, that should activate a safety feature, and shut down the furnace, but it could also possibly damage the furnace.

The furnace my dad got was an older NON-condensing model.

Overall, it worked great. We just put a big propane bottle out there and leave it hooked to the furnace. We just use the heat out there when working on a project and then make sure to turn it OFF when not using it. It has a typical, basic thermostat in the shop, and we use that to turn the furnace on and off.

I've been at Daox's place before, and I think it makes perfect sense for him to bury a natural gas line to the garage. It doesn't have to go far, and it will make that space much more useful in the winter.

(Tim, you HAVE insulated the whole thing by now, right?)

The condensing/non-condensing furnace may still be an issue, so make sure to double-check that.

You might also want to take a look at running the chimney through the wall instead of the roof. Walls are easier to fix and less likely to leak than roofs.
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