Heating For Garden Building

[GeoffT]

Having just completed a timber, single storey garden office/workshop building with a pent roof, I'm now looking into heating. Having fed the dimensions (15.4 sqM), location (inner Hebrides) and insulation (good) into a generic calculator, it tells me I should be looking at ~1600 Watts of oil filled electric convection radiator(s).

Thus far I have used an 1800 Watt fan heater and noticed yesterday (not the warmest) that once up to working temperature the inbuilt thermostat was cutting in and out on a roughly 50% duty cycle. Should I perhaps reassess the 1600 Watts prediction?

 

[Murdoch]

Isle of Mull - what a great place to live, we visited a couple of years ago

Did the generic calculator allow you to specify it’s a garden building!

And for clarity what do you mean by 50% duty cycle ?

 

[binky]

If 800w is enough, it's enough. It's fair to say fan heaters tend to warm up quicker. It's also fair to say if you bought a smaller heater and it wasn't enough, it's easy to add another.

 

[GeoffT]

Isle of Mull - what a great place to live, we visited a couple of years ago

Did the generic calculator allow you to specify it’s a garden building!

And for clarity what do you mean by 50% duty cycle ?

Thank you. My wife was born and raised on Mull, left in 1978 to find employment in SE England, we've been visiting ever since, and with retirement (hers, not mine) finally got the chance to move here a couple of years ago.

The calculator was very rudimentary and simply had floor area, location and standard of insulation with no chance to include a type of construction or purpose.

Please note my 'should've gone to Specsavers' edit in the OP. 1800 Watt fan heater. 50% duty cycle? Half the time on, half the time off. So I guess 1600 Watts not far off the mark.

 

[GeoffT]

If 800w is enough, it's enough. It's fair to say fan heaters tend to warm up quicker. It's also fair to say if you bought a smaller heater and it wasn't enough, it's easy to add another.

Please see my edit above. My mistake - it's an 1800 - not 800 - Watt fan heater and runs continually for a couple of hours before the thermostat cuts in.

 

[Andy™]

if you plan to use it often, consider air con instead of electric heaters. they are far more efficient and cost less to run

 

[UNG]

The problem with any external usuable building is keeping some low level heat in them when they are not occupied otherwise a lot of heat and time can be spent getting it back to a comfortable temperature and if used as an office any equipment will be prone to problems and issues caused by damp and condensation

 

[SPECIAL LOCATION]

Am I missing something here??

But isn't "watts" just the power consumed NOT the actual heat output..??

I thought BTU's were the actual heat output... (BTU = British Thermal Units)

Different devices can give higher or lower heat output for the same watts power consumption, dependent upon their efficiency!!

https://www.heatandplumb.com/acatalog/btu-calculator