Will a Wood Stove Heat My Garage?

Wood burning stoves are extremely versatile – you can use them pretty much everywhere: the house, the cabin, the barn, the what you want.

On this post i will be writing about doing the same in a garage.

It will, but…

There’s always a but, isn’t it? In case of wood stoves, the main disadvantage i see is the up-front costs.

It can cost you thousands of dollars to set up a wood stove in your particular garage, or what have you. Even if you get one for free, all the piping and prep will accumulate to most of the money spent.

That being said, there’s more to spending money here.

The regulations

If you want to continue being insured, you have to follow the guidelines of your specific insurance plan to be able to install a wood stove there.

The definition of “garage” depends on what you do in there – many of the times it’s just a hobby shop where not much flammable materials are present. In that case, getting the approval shouldn’t be much of a problem.

Now if you do indeed store vehicles, gas cans, oils or what have you in there, you will have to do some amount of work to be able to prove the company that the stove will not cause issues in such environment.

All of this additional effort can add another grand to the whole equation.

The stove itself

Now with all that out of the way, let me explain why wood stoves may or may not be good at all to use in your particular garage.

The main gripe about them, even for me as this site is all about wood burning, is the time it takes to get one going.

Forget about coming into your garage late, starting the work on your project and feeling nice and toasty right away. We all know that it takes hours for a wood stove to heat up a place comfortably enough. Expect the process to take longer if the place isn’t insulated at all (which is normally the case, because well, it’s a garage…)

Yeah, if you’ll be staying there from the morning to the evening, all that stoking will definitely be worth it, but again, the times it takes for one to warm up a place is the main minus.

Get a different type of heater instead

Forced air electric heaters are, in my opinion, the best alternative to a wood stove there is. It is a lot more safe, easy to setup, and i would argue cheaper in general.

It’s just that getting it going and using for a longer time will definitely be more expensive, depending on the electricity costs.

Second great alternative are forced air gas heaters – they can even connect right to your house’s gas supply, and be even cheaper to use in the long run than the electricity option.

Heaters which have fans work tremendously well, because they warm up a place very quickly. Radiant types are not that bad either, but there’s nothing better than coming into a cold garage and making it warm in just a couple of minutes.