How bad are portable heaters for a healthy house?
user-2310254
| Posted in Green Building Techniques on
We have hit cold weather (well, cold for Georgia), and my builder wants to use propane or kerosene heaters to finish out the drywall work and interior painting.
Because we are trying to build a low VOC healthy house, I am reluctant to introduce all the chemicals that go along with combustion. I would prefer electric or indirect heat, but those options don’t seem to be too popular with our local rental stores.
How bad are the combustion heaters? Will I regret using them? Are there any practical options I’m not aware of?
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Replies
Matt Risinger has a great blog post on drying out a house during construction. He recommends against the type of combustion heaters you mention, because combustion actually produces a bunch of water vapor. He has an image of a big outdoor heater with a heat exchanger, but I'm not sure what it is called. Other options are dehumidifiers and fans.
http://risinger.blogspot.com/2013/02/drying-wet-framing-lumber.html
Steven,
I think Nick has brought up one of the more important considerations - water vapour in the exhaust.
As to the other not-so-nice stuff in the exhaust, I wouldn't worry about it once the heaters have been removed after the job.
If the house can be ventilated and all you need is a little heat, then ventless heaters will do the job.
There are construction heaters that provide indirect heat but the only ones I've ever seen are much larger (200k+ btu/hr) than what you might ordinarily consider for a residential space heating application.
Thanks, Nick. I missed that post. Matt does a great job covering a lot of key issues.
Lucas, you're probably right, but I'm building a 100% electric house because I want zero combustion. I'm not even putting in a fireplace. Big rental operations offer indirect heaters with 320K btus. There are also portable electric blowers, but those units generally need a minimum of 208VAC. Chicago Rentals says they have them and will ship anywhere. Whether I can get 208 volts from anywhere is questionable.
208 is generally 3 phase, not in residential areas
I would not think twice about using a brand new kerosene torpedo heater with K1 [and only K1] and I do in my current garage in the winter. Kerosene has much less moisture than propane, and after the first 10 seconds runs very nearly as clean
I am not you however, and you may find even that objectionable.
you could run a lot of small electric heaters, but you would need to run them non stop because they will not have the grunt of the big gas or kero heaters
you need heat for the drywall and paint, so nothing is really not an answer
how close is the HVAC to being done......
Thanks, Keith.
You are correct. The 208 VAC is three phase. But they also offer a 240 VAC single phase. Maybe my neighbor would loan me her dryer connection. ;-)
The next 10 days have us in the upper 50s to upper 60s for highs. My builder and contractor seem to think that will get us through the drywall and painting. If the weather turns sour, I will certainly reconsider the torpedo heaters since I've trying to wrap up this build by the end of December.
I don't understand how you are doing paint and sheet rock without power. It takes seconds to hot wire a dryer outlet, maybe 30 bucks for the outlet and a breaker, 3 feet of wire.
I did buy a 12 inch cube type electric fan heater some years ago that ran on a dryer outlet. Mostly seemed to spin the meter really fast, but I could have been expecting too much of it.
Hi Keith.
I have power from the service drop, and it has plenty of juice to run tools and compressors.
My drywaller uses fans to keep the air moving while taping and after some drying time when spraying drywall with paint.
The best heat source for clean warm air is a used propane fired furnace, just set up a temporary exhaust to the outside. Used with fans works like a charm. I have not used dehumidification yet but want to sometime soon. Dehumidification has been discussed here at GBA.
edit; I also use portable electric room heaters and they do a great job for the cost. IE Tractor supply etc $20 for a 15amp/120volt 6000btu heat source. 5 running (24,000btus) in a large home for a month would cost me $1000 here but in a Duke Energy area half that.
A couple of 240v 4000-watt electric heaters and one rented dehumidifier will do wonders. The electrician should set you up a couple of plugs inside, at the range, dryer, water heater, etc.
I went through this too; in my experience, it was not a problem. You just don't want to be around when those heaters are going. Also, don't be alarmed if there are fuel spills on the subfloor. That freaked me out, but the odor dissipated quickly, on Advantec and even on a concrete slab.