Add Heating Radiator in Garage / Any Plumbers offer Advice Please ?

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pmcgsmurf

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I've got a brick garage on side of house where my boiler is, well insulated apart from the door which I plan to insulate or change to a roller door.

We have about a dozen radiators in the house, tend to leave 2 or 3 of them off/down low with the empty room doors closed and just on the one heat zone with Hive.

Keep the little car in the garage and after removing my "office" stuff to a new office in the house I have a bit more room and plan on setting up a machine work bench in it.

It's very cold though in the winter and I wondered if I could simply add a small radiator inline with the central heating feed? My thinking was it would not cost anymore than now but not sure if I have this corect.

Or any other suggestions for keeping it warm?
I have a little fan heater I use when in there but thought maybe something else would be better and keep the little car cosier.
 
Don't think you can do it inline Patrick. You would need to tap into the feed and the return, then again if you have a microbore system you would have to find the manifold and work from there.
 
Don't think you can do it inline Patrick. You would need to tap into the feed and the return, then again if you have a microbore system you would have to find the manifold and work from there.

Thanks, pretty sure I don't have the microbore type as my radiator feeds are about 11mm. Think it is just standard feed/return system.

I suppose I could also just tap into the feed/return as well but it had me wondering if I could just stick a radiator "inline".
 
I would think you only want to heat it when you are in the garage ? It will take a good size rad to heat a garage and that’s a lot of wasted heat to keep the car warm .
I would go towards either a radiant bar heater above your work bench or a 2000w heater/blower from screw fix or the like .
 
I would think you only want to heat it when you are in the garage ? It will take a good size rad to heat a garage and that’s a lot of wasted heat to keep the car warm .
I would go towards either a radiant bar heater above your work bench or a 2000w heater/blower from screw fix or the like .
As he said.
Im a plumber and I wouldn’t bother farting about with a drain down etc.
 
I would think you only want to heat it when you are in the garage ? It will take a good size rad to heat a garage and that’s a lot of wasted heat to keep the car warm .
I would go towards either a radiant bar heater above your work bench or a 2000w heater/blower from screw fix or the like .

I thought it would be a no cost option and would keep the car warm and damp free.

As he said.
Im a plumber and I wouldn’t bother farting about with a drain down etc.

Thanks, a 2.5kw heater blower is only around £40 so will do this or a radiant type.
 
I use an old infra red patio heater. It keeps me really warm and toasty in the small area when I’m playing with the bike, but doesn’t heat up the extremities of the garage.
 

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Change the door to an insulated roller shutter jobbie - I had one at the old house, with remote controls in both cars and the kitchen (big double garage) and a button on the wall inside the garage to operate it as well, lovely! Shop around for price though - I got mine from a mob on an industrial estate that normally did shutters for commercial premises, at 16ft wide it was cheaper than a "normal" up and over door, and the price included electric operation and fitting, which the up and over didn't! There's a mob advertises every month in our local mag, 8ft made to measure for £875 including disposal of your old doors.
 
You could easily branch off the flow and return from the boiler to fit a radiator in the garage, I have a setup very much the same. I did similar job when fitting 2 radiators in my conservatory. If you have a radiator behind the adjoining wall you could tap off that one if its easier, just drill through the wall and connect in parallel.
You may find your garage roof un-insulated though and with just a single course brickwork, so will never get warm.
 
I use an old infra red patio heater. It keeps me really warm and toasty in the small area when I’m playing with the bike, but doesn’t heat up the extremities of the garage.

Thanks, looks quite cool, pardon the pun, hadn't thought about a patio heater.
 
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Change the door to an insulated roller shutter jobbie - I had one at the old house, with remote controls in both cars and the kitchen (big double garage) and a button on the wall inside the garage to operate it as well, lovely! Shop around for price though - I got mine from a mob on an industrial estate that normally did shutters for commercial premises, at 16ft wide it was cheaper than a "normal" up and over door, and the price included electric operation and fitting, which the up and over didn't! There's a mob advertises every month in our local mag, 8ft made to measure for £875 including disposal of your old doors.

A mate changed his last year, he started off aorund £1,200 online but ended up getting one from one of his brothers work suppliers for around £800. Electric and rmeote control to so was thinking maybe doing same thing as it is a lot better insulated.
 
You could easily branch off the flow and return from the boiler to fit a radiator in the garage, I have a setup very much the same. I did similar job when fitting 2 radiators in my conservatory. If you have a radiator behind the adjoining wall you could tap off that one if its easier, just drill through the wall and connect in parallel.
You may find your garage roof un-insulated though and with just a single course brickwork, so will never get warm.

Original thinking was because we have lots of various size good radiators from a recent upgrade at another house.
The garage is below a large cupboard in an upstairs room that has always been very cold.
Any heat lost from the garage to upstairs assuming the radiator was on all the time would benefit the upstairs room cupboard.

Just went and checked temperature of things in the garage, all around the 4~5 degree mark, back of garage door around 1 degree, chilly. :)
 
Original thinking was because we have lots of various size good radiators from a recent upgrade at another house.
The garage is below a large cupboard in an upstairs room that has always been very cold.
Any heat lost from the garage to upstairs assuming the radiator was on all the time would benefit the upstairs room cupboard.

Just went and checked temperature of things in the garage, all around the 4~5 degree mark, back of garage door around 1 degree, chilly. :)
Give it a go then, nothing to lose apart from a bit of pipe, couple of rad valves and some inhibitor, not much else to keep us busy in this latest lockdown.
 
Over 30 years ago we moved to a house with "single pipe" central heating system. While far from an ideal system it worked better than I expected provided the whole system was carefully balanced with the first radiator having the valves barely cracked to make sure there was hot water left for the remaining radiators.

So yes the OP's suggestion can work but not literally in line. You don't want the whole flow passing through a radiator just have both radiator tails taken off the flow pipe.

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Over 30 years ago we moved to a house with "single pipe" central heating system. While far from an ideal system it worked better than I expected provided the whole system was carefully balanced with the first radiator having the valves barely cracked to make sure there was hot water left for the remaining radiators.

So yes the OP's suggestion can work but not literally in line. You don't want the whole flow passing through a radiator just have both radiator tails taken off the flow pipe.

View attachment 107077
I made the mistake of plumbing in a rad this way when I was a 16 year old apprentice.
It didn’t heat up properly.
 
Give it a go then, nothing to lose apart from a bit of pipe, couple of rad valves and some inhibitor, not much else to keep us busy in this latest lockdown.
Unfortunately it’s never that straight forward.

Can you access the existing pipework easily?
Do you have/need a pipe bender?
Do you have/need a blowlamp, flux, solder, heatmat
Do you know how to balance the system if needed?
Do you know how to put inhibitor into the system?
Will it need a power flush if you’re going to use a second hand radiator?

Don’t forget that if you do the job and it goes tits up, you’ll probably have no heating or hot water that night! And it’s cold outside!!

Is it easy to plug in an electric heater?
 
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In-laws used to have a Myson (not sure if there are other makes available, but they always referred to it as 'the Myson') in their garage so you could just turn it on when needed.

This sort of thing: WALLMOUNT fan convectors by MYSON - although theirs was more utilitarian looking, or perhaps that's just how they were years ago.
 
Unfortunately it’s never that straight forward.

Can you access the existing pipework easily?
Do you have/need a pipe bender?
Do you have/need a blowlamp, flux, solder, heatmat
Do you know how to balance the system if needed?
Do you know how to put inhibitor into the system?
Will it need a power flush if you’re going to use a second hand radiator?

Is it easy to plug in an electric heater?
Its not too difficult as he said the boiler was in the garage, he could use:
10mm microbore,
Compression fittings,
Restrict the valves to help balance,
Adding inhibitor to header tank or maybe towel rail in bathroom,
Jetwash the old radiator.

Nice little project.
 

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