Heating a garage with electricity

Warm the person, not the building

Bringing a cold, uninsulated 18 m² garage to 20°C takes serious fixed heating and a lot of electricity. Making the corner where you are working comfortable for two hours takes a plug-in heater. Spot heating is not a compromise — it is the sensible strategy for a space you occupy occasionally.

Realistic expectations by garage type

Cheap improvements that pay off

• Brush strips or foam seals around the garage door — the biggest single win.
• Insulation boards on the door panels.
• Board and insulate the ceiling if there is a void above.
• Screen off a working corner with a curtain or partition and heat that instead.

Safety in a garage

• Never run an electric heater near petrol, thinners, aerosols, LPG or anything else with flammable vapour.
• Sawdust and heater grilles are a poor combination — keep the heater clear of the cutting area and vacuum the grille regularly.
• Plug into a proper socket on an RCD-protected circuit, not a coiled extension reel.
• Choose a unit with overheat and tip-over cut-offs, and never leave it unattended.
• Damp garage? Keep the heater off the floor and away from standing water.

Running costs

At a 27p unit rate, a 1.5 kW heater running flat out costs about 41p an hour, so a three-hour session is roughly £1.20. In a leaky garage the thermostat rarely cuts out, so plan on the full figure rather than the optimistic one. See running costs.

Frost protection for stored things

If your aim is keeping paint, tools or a car above freezing rather than working in comfort, a low setting on a thermostat does that cheaply — the same logic as a greenhouse heater.

Using RapidHeat in a garage

RapidHeat is a portable room heater, not an industrial workshop unit. In a smaller or part-insulated garage, used as spot heating at a bench with the door sealed, it makes winter jobs bearable — and it then goes back indoors for the rest of the week, which is more than a fixed heater will do.