Workshop heating - what you should look out for when choosing

Whether in metalworking shops, joineries, 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 need to pay attention to if you want your investment to continue to pay off in many years' time?

First things first: The right workshop heating system should match your requirements

If you search for workshop heating in search engines, you will find a variety of technologies. These include fan heaters, cannon heaters, electric heaters and free-standing radiant heaters 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, draughty)?
• How many windows and doors does the hall have?
• Are there adjoining offices

Utilization profile

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

Energy source

• What energy sources are available?

Further requirements

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

Once you have answered these questions for yourself, some heating systems may no longer be an option and the choice will become more manageable for you. In any case, you can provide your heating engineer with a clear requirements profile, which he can use to recommend the right heating system for your workshop.

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

Particularly for dust-intensive work, as is often the case in joineries, for example, you should make sure that your new workshop heating system does not contribute to additional air pollution. But clean air and a draught-free indoor climate are also important in other workshop operations, if only so that your employees feel comfortable and can work productively. You should therefore opt for a system that does not cause draughts that could stir up dust. This is where infrared heaters of the type Dark radiator particularly well, because they warm - similar to the natural The sun's heating principle - by infrared rays and not by heated air. And they have another decisive advantage for a good indoor climate, because they have direct exhaust gas routing, i.e. the waste heat is routed to the outside in a controlled manner without polluting the hall atmosphere.

Pay attention to high energy efficiency when it comes to workshop heating - then the environment & your bank account will benefit

In the heating sector in particular, legislation is placing ever higher demands on the technologies used. But it is certainly also important to you personally to keep the expensive use of resources as low as possible. You should therefore pay particular attention to the consumption values of your new Workshop heating. Seen over the life cycle, high energy consumption is not only expensive for the environment, it is also an unnecessary burden on your budget. Infrared systems specially developed for hall heating generally consume 30 - 40 % less than conventional hot air systems. However, these factors also make a decisive contribution to the cost-effectiveness of heating in your workshop:

1. the exact design of the heating system based on the usage profile (see above)
2. Controlled direct flue gas routing
3. the integration of other energies such as residual heat and
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. With dark radiators, you can heat storage areas in your hall at a lower temperature than the production area - this can save a lot of energy costs. Fluctuations in the outside temperature, day and night cycles, additional shifts or public holidays can also be taken into account with intelligent control systems and heating operation can be 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 additional modules automatically ensure that energy is not wasted unnecessarily when the workshop doors are open. This can be very lucrative, especially in vehicle workshops with high air exchange rates. Control systems are important today in order to operate workshop heating systems as optimally as possible - they play a crucial role in saving energy, CO₂ and energy costs.

Plan for future changes to your workshop heating system

Workshop heating systems are an investment in the future. Provided you have opted for a quality product. Then the life cycle can be as long as 20 years. A lot can happen during this time. It is therefore important that your new workshop heating system gives you as many options as possible. This includes important points such as

• the flexibility to relocate, extend or remotely control your heating system at any time
• keep the ceiling as open as possible, e.g. for cranes or lighting changes
• keep the hall floor as clear as possible, e.g. for changes to machine installations
• Gradually use more renewable energy sources (e.g. green gases) as soon as they are available

The last point in particular must be carefully considered, because a compromise between climate requirements and usage profile can cost you dearly. Technologies that only use renewable energies are always hot water-based and therefore relatively slow. If you want your workshop heating to be quick and flexible to control, we recommend gas-fired infrared heating technologies. 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, among other things.