A garage isn’t just a place to store vehicles when people aren’t using them. The garage in your home is a place of solitude, where you enjoy working on important projects (and doing anything else you please without making anyone mad at you for getting things dirty). The garage at your place of work is even more important, as it is where you keep and maintain the valuable vehicles and other machines you need in order to make a living.
Your garage should always be pleasant to be inside. That’s a tall order for many residents of Minnesota, whose garages effectively become giant walk-in freezers every winter. But what if we told you that you could enjoy a heated garage with relatively little expense and inconvenience? That’s right – all you need is a garage heater. Here are all the benefits you can expect to gain once you’ve updated your garage to a heated garage!
Greater Comfort
The benefits of adding a heater to your garage will add many benefits to your space. You feel cozier while you’re puttering around inside a toasty garage. You’ll increase your productivity when you can work in a comfort controlled environment. You’ll also experience greater comfort if you have a medical condition that gets exacerbated by cold temperatures, such as arthritis or psoriasis.
Warmer Home
Do you have an attached garage with a finished room directly above it? Then a garage heater won’t merely make your garage more comfortable during the wintertime; the effects of the rising heat will dissipate into the room above and throughout the rest of your home. In contrast, a cold attached garage will sap heat away from your home – an undesirable disadvantage during this era of perpetually rising heating costs.
Longer-Lasting Vehicles
Freezing temperatures are unkind to vehicles. Every time you start a cold vehicle, virtually every single one of its metal components will gradually expand. Over enough time, the cycle of repeated heating and cooling can cause a vehicle’s fasteners to loosen. Some of its parts may eventually warp as well.
Cold temperatures can also have deleterious effects on a vehicle’s battery and plastic components, as well as thicken (and potentially freeze) its fluids. Even coolant that has been correctly treated with antifreeze can still freeze at temperatures around -35 °F.
Protected Pipes
If you have an attached garage, then part of your plumbing system is probably located just beneath its walls. If the temperature within your garage drops low enough, then that polar temperature can easily access your pipes, freeze and expand the water inside them, and cause them to burst. Burst pipes can be extremely expensive to fix, and they are always inconvenient as a rule. Keeping a nice little pocket of warm air inside your garage can prevent such a disaster entirely!
Improved Fuel Efficiency
If you’re a Minnesotan, then you are no doubt already familiar with the need to run your engine for a few minutes before going for a drive in the winter. A heated garage completely negates any need to warm up your vehicle before taking off. It may sound trivial, but every hour of idling burns about a gallon of gas. That adds up over a long winter!
Avoiding the need to warm up your car won’t just reduce your fuel costs. Car exhaust contains deadly carbon monoxide, which will seep into your home and potentially harm your family if you leave a vehicle idling in your home’s attached garage.
Convenience
Unless you’re talking about a massive industrial workspace, a garage typically isn’t all that big: 600 square feet, give or take. That’s why modern garage heaters aren’t very large, don’t take up much space, and have surprisingly low energy needs. Better yet, garage heaters typically don’t require any more maintenance than regular filter replacement and lubrication of a few key parts.
Would you like to install a garage heater that will make you more comfortable, save you money on heating and fuel costs, extend your vehicle’s lifespan, protect your plumbing, and safeguard your family against carbon monoxide inhalation? Then we welcome you to contact Gilk Services today! We serve commercial and residential property owners throughout Albany, Avon, Cold Spring, Eden Valley, Freeport, Kimball, Lake Henry, Paynesville, Richmond, Rockville, St. Joseph, St. Cloud, Waite park, Sartell, and Watkins, Minnesota for all their heating needs.