How to keep garage warm or cool and any issues with equipment

[Golfallday1983]

I live in Ontario where we get some really cold and really hot weather. I am setting my sim up in a finished garage the temp can get as low as -10 Celsius and as hot as 30.

I am in a 3 bay garage I plan to try to isolate the one bay with the sim and then use a thick curtain to seperate it from the rest of the garage then maybe install a mini split? Or is there a cheaper option?

How does cold or hot weather effect equipment?

[richerod]

I too have a three car garage with 12' ceilings in North East. . My simulator is in the middle bay with screen opposite center garage door. I recently had two of these heaters installed. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1. It's snowing here and the garage is a toasty 70 degrees. I don't leave them running all the time. When I know I'm going to play or practice I turn them on about 15-20 minutes before. So far so good. As for the warmer months, I haven't settled on a solution yet.

[jasonreg]

I use a similar Lennox Gas Product. I am in Ottawa FWIW. 3 car garage, kept at 15 degrees C. No Cooling option though the garage never really gets that warm.

[Golfallday1983]

What about cooling?

im told the equipment will not last as long if you run it in hot or cold conditions so I’m looking to maintain a year round temperature of say 15 winters and 25 Celsius summers

my garage I don’t think goes too far below 0 it’s finished

[GungHoGolf]

I love my mini-split, use it in a 20x30' garage with 13' ceilings in Austin (so mostly cooling, but also some heating for a couple months). Only $1100 plus installation. Senville 24,000 btu on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3msvDAE. Our garage now feels as comfortable as our house 24/7.

Don't waste $300-400 on a portable ac/heater like I did.

[Treyc321]

Ron, did the portable work at all? I have a garage where a mini split probably won’t work because of the condenser so portable will be my option...(mostly for cooling as I’m in AZ)

[GungHoGolf]

It lowered the temp maybe 5-8 degrees or so during the hottest period of the month - wasn't worth it. Then just stopped working altogether, about a week past the end of the 12 month warranty period.

[Treyc321]

Hmmm well I may be just sweating like I do on the regular course haha

[Golfallday1983]

I’ve used a portable air conditioner they are pretty bad

[Jnc10]

I am on the holly springs line but actually Fuquay I am real close to bass lake and a member at devils ridge

[Jnc10]

I have a mini split installed as well. Works great for heating and cooling. The hvac guy ran the pipes through the crawl space out to the side of the house with the other condensers. I live near Raleigh nc mostly colling but this time of year I do have to heat the garage a little

[3on3putt]

What part of Raleigh? I'm in Holly Springs

[Joe M]

My SIM is in my basement but I have a separate two car garage that also has a small kitchen and full bathroom for my pool area. I use a Daiken 3 ton mini split with 4 heads and keep the garage and kitchen / bath at 64 degrees f during winter and 77 degrees f in summer. I live in the northeast. I would highly recommend. The unit has a high seer rating and uses little electricity. Also the mini split worked when we saw temperatures at -5 degrees f a few years ago. BTW I was so impressed with the technology that when I finished my basement I did not tap into existing ductwork but installed a 1.5 ton daiken mini split in a central location to heat and cool my basement. They are extremely quiet and work fantastic. I purchased the complete package on Amazon for less than $1,000. Easy to install.

[chip_shot]

I bought this guy for mine, works phenomenally well, not sure a heat pump would do well in -10C though, heat pumps performance will drop off in heating mode in extreme cold https://www.alpinehomeair.com/viewpr...ctID=453077954

[DejaVu]

I use a wood burner and a portable ac unit with an attic fan mounted in the roof. It gets below 0 Fahrenheit and up to 100 before I heat/cool...no equipment issues to date.

[Golfallday1983]

I don’t think my garage goes below 0 Celsius’s outside the house gets below 10 Celsius so will a mini split heat a garage that is above 0 and summer cool from 30s to low 20s?

also how much extra is your electricity bills a year using a mini split in a garage I’m hearing it is pretty expensive?

im in Toronto area we get similiar weather as New York I believe

[chip_shot]

Heat pumps move heat from the outside to the inside. The colder it is outside the less heat there is to bring inside, I realize this concept might not sound accurate but trust me it is. Its not that a heat pump cant heat in extreme cold, its just not as powerful and thus might not be able to keep up, but it might. I havent researched how effective they are for that type of climate

[Joe M]

It does not use a lot of electricity. Unlike traditional heat pumps my 2 mini splits run off 110volt and only a 20 amp breaker. Get the highest seer rating you can.

[Golfallday1983]

Ok perfect thanks so the amount of money spend on electrical bills wouldn’t be noticeable?

[bm11]

I went a full winter in Maine in an un-insulated stone garage, only heating when I used it. Occasionally I’d need to wait for the projector lens fog to clear, but I never ran into a failure of any sort.

[RollinRox]

I live in the Northeast, and my setup is in an uninsulated 3 season porch with lots of windows. I covered the windows with these insulating blinds https://blinds.homedepot.com/p/venet...ades/306379081, which have significantly reduced the temperature fluctuation when the weather changes. I highly recommend doing this if your garage has a bunch of windows, as it will make warming or cooling the garage faster and more effecient.

[JohnLew]

So what's the consensus on low temperatures? Just recently installed my EYE XO, computer and a flat panel TV in my garage. Have a screen and projector coming in the next couple weeks.

Minnesota winter so it can get pretty cold. 5 degrees here right now, was -5 or so over night last night. My garage is finished and semi-insulated. I do have a good heater in there but I don't run it all the time, I usually only run it when I'm going to be out there doing something. For the last week or so since I installed the install I've been heating it up to about 60 degrees before going out there and turning anything on. The EYE XO is powered off via a smart plug so it has no power draw at all until I turn that plug on. Will likely do the same with the projector.

Am I likely to have issues here? Got me thinking a little because when I heated up and powered on the EYE XO today and hit some balls I noticed a very faint buzzing noise from the unit when the infrared came on fully when identifying a ball. Hadn't noticed that before in previous sessions... although now that I think about it, I've never hit balls out there without music playing either.

[chip_shot]

So heat pumps are for sure more efficient then electric inductive heaters, even in extreme cold. The problem is they are less efficient, or less powerful, when the outside air temperature is extremely cold. Heat pumps pull heat from the outside and then expel the heat inside. My best semi-educated guess is worse case scenario in Minnesota or Canada the heat pump wont be powerful to keep the space maintained at setpoint in the winter but it will still provide more heat for the money then a electric heater. Its just my best guess though...

[JohnLew]

I have a gas heater in there right now, the question is just how consistently/often to run it and how low to let it go.