Anyone who has ever tried to accomplish anything in their garage during the cold months of the year is aware of the benefits of a heated garage.
Whether you have a shop out there or rehearse with your band, an unheated garage is extremely uncomfortable. It need not be as cozy as your den, but a little heat makes all the difference in the world. While that may be true, there are some disadvantages to heating your garage. The cost of insulating might be prohibitive, but without it any heating tends to be quite inefficient. The other problem is the cost of energy. Before you decide whether or not a heated garage is worth the cost, look at both sides of the issue.
Pros
An unheated garage is a most uncomfortable place to have your shop, workbench or makeshift recreation area. During the winter months you will spend as much energy keeping warm as you will on your project. Having to wear gloves, a hat and a scarf while building a model, jewelry box or anything else is no way to work. There are methods to heat your garage while you are present that will neither require a great initial investment nor extravagant monthly costs. All in all, if you use your garage for anything other than parking your car or storage space and spend any length of time inside, heating it is well worth it.
Cons
If your garage is not insulated, any heat you supply it with may largely be lost either out the door, through the walls or out the roof. Garages are infamously drafty. Spending the money to heat a garage is ineffective. It is not worth it to fully insulate and run heating duct to the garage, especially since it will be used so infrequently. Besides that, any space heat provided will only warm a small section of the garage, so it must be adjusted to accommodate different areas.
Garage Heating Options
It is probably not worth the money to insulate the walls and roof and route the heating duct to a garage. On the other hand, it can get very cold in a garage. If you use it for any length of time, during a cold winter it can be like going outside. A happy medium, then, is to purchase a space heater to supply the garage with heat just while you are in there. From portable heaters that provide radiant heat to propane-powered heaters, you have options. You can also run space heaters from your home’s natural gas line. Another option is to use an oil-filled radiating heater that is powered electrically. Each one, whether powered by propane, natural gas or electricity can effectively heat a small space. Whichever model you choose, space heaters provide a temporary heating solution that will increase comfort within a space.