Heating a small summerhouse in garden

longwalks1

I've set up my weight benches in the summer house and want to keep it warm in there throughout winter (not like 20 deg, but warm enough to keep it from freezing, or being to cold to train in there), whats the best/most cost effective way of heating it?

arbrighton

Does it have electricity supply?
What's it made of?
How big?
Is it insulated?

longwalks1

Sorry I should of said, its wooden, it does have an electricity supply and is maybe 3m x 2.5m floor area and not insulated.

System

Saw a video on the inhabitat website the other day of a guy making a room heater from a loaf tin, a couple of plant pots and some tea lights! 8p a day the guy reckoned it would cost...
no idea if it works well but would be worth a try from a money point of view... Will see if I can find the vid...

Anne_Marie_2

Have a look at costs for running various types of heater.
http://www.cse.org.uk/advice/advice-and-support/room-heaters

bridgedino

Portable gas heater that use the gas bottles you see at petrol stations

sniggings

what about one of those light type heaters they use for heating smoking areas out side?

zaax

Why do you need a heater? Just start with a good winter fleece and after 20 mins take it off, you won't need any heater

Davesnave

the_r_sole wrote: »

Saw a video on the inhabitat website the other day of a guy making a room heater from a loaf tin, a couple of plant pots and some tea lights! 8p a day the guy reckoned it would cost...
no idea if it works well but would be worth a try from a money point of view... Will see if I can find the vid...

One of the first principles of physics is that you can't get more energy from something than it's capable of producing, so I don't fully understand how this would work.

People did a similar thing in air raid shelters during WW2, so there's something in it, like changing a small, intense source of heat into a larger, but cooler one, resulting in a wider transfer to the surrounding air.

Having just removed all the loft insulation from my house. so that the government can supply me with thicker, newer stuff, I can appreciate how heating an uninsulated structure is a hiding to nothing. The problem with doing this in something like a cheap garden building is the trapping of dampness, leading to rot. For this reason, some kind of solid insulation, like Kingspan, would be best.

By the time the OP has insulated, however, quite an amount of money will have been spent, which leads on to the matter of a pay-back period......

So, candle under flower-pot, or electric fan heater - not a gas heater for fairly obvious reasons! - the choice is yours, but into the calculations should go the number of days when the temperature is too low for a physical activity. I have a big polytunnel, and thinking about it, the number of days when it's too unpleasant to stay in there is relatively few.

Personally, I'd go with the fan heater.