Anyone used there vehicle for heating there garage???

[pgfpro]

I have a idea that I have been kicking around for some time now.

I'm going to take my work truck that I use most of the time driving 8 hours a day, and install a 50 gallon water heater tank in the back that's connected to the coolant system. I have noticed during freeway driving that the fuel mileage changes very little with this truck even when I have large loads (mixing equipment)

It will help me with two different things.

1) Keeping our water born automotive paints (Automotive Paint Jobber) warm during my 8 hour drive in route to deliver them. Has a canopy already.

2) At the end of the day hook it up to my garage (20' 6"W x 20' 6"L x 8' 6" tall) water radiator with a small fan to heat my garage.

If a third of the energy in a ICE is lost to cooling, I figured if i can store some of that energy in a 50 gallon water heater I can use it the rest of the night to warm my well insulated garage.

I'm thinking about a couple solar panels and a small wind generator to run the garage small pump for circulation and the garage fan???

I wish I would have installed a in ground concrete floor heating unit but its to late so it will have to be a air unit.

The truck and garage pics.

[Frank Lee]

I wondered about such a thing with my car, but I use it so little and the car is so little I kinda dropped it. Don't want to carry a big heavy vessel in the car either.

But for you and a big truck, there might be enough easily recoverable energy to be worth it!

[pgfpro]

Originally Posted by Frank Lee

I wondered about such a thing with my car, but I use it so little and the car is so little I kinda dropped it. Don't want to carry a big heavy vessel in the car either.

But for you and a big truck, there might be enough easily recoverable energy to be worth it!

I was going to do this with my Talon but 417 lbs worth of water plus the weight of the heater and the space the tank would take up I would only be able to deliver one pint of paint.LOL

My truck has always bother me trying to figure a way to make it eat less fuel and keep it mostly stock. So I figured why not just transfer some energy to my garage with it since I'm paying for the fuel anyway?

[user removed]

My well insulated garage 35X21 is under the left side of my house. Parking the cars in the garage allows the cars (and bikes) to heat the garage in winter. In summer when it is already hot enough, I have a $4 yardsale squirrel cage fan I used to keep myself cool when working in the garage when it is hot. It also serves to blow out the excess heat from the vehicles in summer. The garage seldom drops below 50 degrees in winter, even when outside temps are in the 20s.

Just park the larger vehicle in the garage and let all of the heat warm up the garage.

Heating up a 50 gallon reservoir would cause the truck to run cold for a very long time and cost you a lot more in fuel overall. The heat in the vehile that you would lose anyway is basically free energy if you can utilize it for garage heating.

A simple solar thermosyphon heating system would also help, if you have enough sunlight to justify the cost.

regards
Mech

[pgfpro]

Originally Posted by Old Mechanic

My well insulated garage 35X21 is under the left side of my house. Parking the cars in the garage allows the cars (and bikes) to heat the garage in winter. In summer when it is already hot enough, I have a $4 yardsale squirrel cage fan I used to keep myself cool when working in the garage when it is hot. It also serves to blow out the excess heat from the vehicles in summer. The garage seldom drops below 50 degrees in winter, even when outside temps are in the 20s.

Just park the larger vehicle in the garage and let all of the heat warm up the garage.

Heating up a 50 gallon reservoir would cause the truck to run cold for a very long time and cost you a lot more in fuel overall. The heat in the vehile that you would lose anyway is basically free energy if you can utilize it for garage heating.

A simple solar thermosyphon heating system would also help, if you have enough sunlight to justify the cost.

regards
Mech

You brought some very good points.

My first problem is the truck won't fit in my garage. My garage is 20' 6" long and my truck is about 21' 3" due to the ext cab and long box.

Last year I did notice how nice my wife's car would heat up the garage during winter months. So her car will contribute to heating this winter. During summer months I have her park it out side until it cools down at night then bring it in to keep the garage temperature nice and cool around 70 degrees.

As far as taking along time to heat up the water on the truck my thoughts are to run a tee with a smaller with control valve on the heater hose return line. So most of the flow would return back to the radiator. It would take some time to heat the 50 gallons but I usually run the truck for 8 hours or more on my longer routes and on the shorter routes I would deactivate the system. I would also incorporate a massive grill block during the winter months.

"thermosyphon heating system" not to sure what this is???

We don't get to much sun light during the winter. But I do get a lot of wind I could use.

[ChazInMT]

I'm with old Mech on the point of don't get too efficient at removing the heat from the tank, just let it naturally radiate heat all night, it will probably keep you above freezing just by being there. As for heating the water in the tank, you probably want to rig a way to send a portion of the coolant into the tank, you certainly don't want the tank to be in series with the coolant system in such a way that the engine doesn't warm up until the tank in back of your truck does......

Although, if we think this through, the thermostat won't open if the water is cold, so maybe this would sort of self regulate, route the water from the outlet of your thermostat, to the water tank, then to the radiator.

Would the tank be subjected to the pressure of the cooling system would be another thing to consider, or would you just run a loop of coolant hose through the tank which would be under pressure to heat the water/antifreeze in the tank which would always be at atmospheric pressure?

Which brings up another thing to bear in mind, if you leave the truck outside on a sub-zero/freezing night, you darn sure better have some sort of anti-freeze mixture in there, which could be quite expensive.

Interesting idea here, I just moved from Montana to Florida, so it is just a thought exercise for me at this point.

[ksa8907]

I noticed my garage stays relatively warm and its not even insulated. Un-attached 2 car garage 24'X20' stays above freezing all night even when the ambient temp is in the low 20s.

[Frank Lee]

When it's -40F the garage gets cold.

In my case I was thinking of piping heat into the house after a drive... but yeah, for a garage, just park in there; maybe open the hood if you want the heat out faster.

[redpoint5]

It's an interesting idea, but seems like too much effort to just warm a garage. You aren't sleeping in there are you?

[Grant-53]

If you run the vehicle inside make sure you have an exhaust hose from the tailpipe to the outside. An auto parts store should sell these. GM did a project on this years ago using V8 stationary engines. A transmission engineer from Chrysler designed a windmill to create heat by compressing air.