Junge Frau, die in einer Werkstatthalle steht

WORKSHOP HEATING - WHAT YOU SHOULD LOOK OUT FOR WHEN MAKING YOUR CHOICE

Whether in locksmith shops, carpentry shops, welding shops, car dealerships or railroad companies - workshop heating systems ensure warm working conditions in the workshops when it gets cold outside. But what requirements - apart from heat generation, of course - can you place on a modern heating system today? And what do you have to pay attention to if you want your investment to continue to pay off for you in many years to come?

First things first: the right workshop heating should fit your requirements.

If you search for workshop heating in search engines, you will get a variety of technologies mentioned. Fan heaters, cannons, electric heaters and radiant floor heaters are among them, as well as infrared heaters. However, before you take a closer look at the technologies, you should first be clear about your requirements. The following questions can help you with this:

Building

  • What is the height, length and width of the hall building?
  • What is the insulation condition?
  • What is the hall atmosphere like (e.g. dusty, damp, drafty)?
  • How many windows and doors does the hall have?
  • Are there any adjoining office rooms?

Utilization profile

  • How is the hall used?
  • At what times - are there work shifts?
  • Are there different usage zones?

Energy sources

  • What energy sources are available?

Other requirements

  • What goals do you want to achieve with the heating system?
    - Economic efficiency
    - High heating comfort
    - Flexibility
    - Future security
    - other?

Once you have answered these questions for yourself, some heating systems may no longer even come into question and the choice becomes more manageable for you. In any case, you can give your heating engineer a clear profile of requirements, which he can use to recommend the right heating system for your workshop.

Bring a clean and draft-free working environment into the workshop

Especially in dust-intensive work, such as often occurs in carpentry shops, you should make sure that your new workshop heating system does not also contribute to additional air pollution. But clean air and a draft-free indoor climate are also important in other workshop operations, if only to ensure that your employees feel comfortable and can work productively. So you should opt for a system that avoids drafts that could stir up dust. This is where infrared heaters of the dark radiator type have proven particularly successful, because they heat - similar to the natural heating principle of the sun - through infrared rays and not through heated air. And they have another decisive advantage for a good indoor climate, because they have a direct exhaust duct, i.e. the waste heat is conducted to the outside in a controlled manner without polluting the hall atmosphere.

Look for high energy efficiency in workshop heating - then the environment & your bank account benefit

Particularly in the heating sector, legislation is placing increasingly stringent requirements on the technologies used. But it is certainly also important to you personally to keep the expensive use of resources as low as possible. Therefore, pay special attention to the consumption values of your new workshop heating system. Over the life cycle, high energy consumption not only costs the environment dearly, it is also an unnecessary burden on your budget. Infrared systems specially developed for workshop heating generally consume 30 - 40 % less than conventional warm air systems. However, these factors also make a decisive contribution to the cost-effectiveness of the heating system in your workshop:

  1. precise design of the heating system to suit the usage profile (see above)
  2. controlled direct exhaust gas routing
  3. the integration of other energies such as residual heat
  4. good and transparent control

Benefit from the possibilities of intelligent control systems

Today, modern heating systems can be controlled flexibly and according to demand. For example, you can define production areas and storage areas in the workshop as different heating zones and heat them individually. You can use dark radiators to keep the temperature of storage areas in your hall lower than that of production - which can save a lot of energy costs. Fluctuations in the outside temperature, day and night cycles, additional shifts or holidays can also be mapped with intelligent control systems and the heating operation optimized accordingly. Via the display or PC, you as the user can view the performance and important parameters of the system, such as operating time or energy consumption, at any time. Smart add-on modules automatically ensure that energy is not unnecessarily wasted in the area of open workshop doors. This can be very lucrative, especially in automotive workshops with high air exchange rates. Today, control systems are important for operating workshop heating systems as optimally as possible - they play a decisive role in saving energy, carbon dioxide and energy costs.

Plan for future changes with your workshop heating system

Workshop heating systems are an investment in the future. Provided you have chosen a quality product. Then the life cycle can be as long as 20 years. A lot can happen in that time. That's why it's important that your new garage heating system leaves as many options open to you as possible. These include such important points as:

  • The flexibility to move, expand or remotely control your heater at any time.
  • keeping the ceiling open as much as possible, e.g. for cranes or lighting changes
  • Keeping the hall floor as clear as possible, e.g. for changes in machine installation
  • Gradually use more renewable energy sources (e.g., green gases) as they become available.

The last point in particular must be well thought out, because a compromise between climate requirements and utilization profile can cost you dearly. Technologies that use only renewable energy are always hot water based and therefore relatively sluggish. If you want your workshop heating to be fast and flexibly controllable, gas-fired infrared heating technologies are recommended. Apart from the fact that they can generally be operated with biogas, methane is also increasingly becoming a green energy source through the addition of hydrogen H2.