January and February were harsh months in Michigan, with temperatures regularly dropping near zero. They also happened to coincide with my decision to swap guts from one broken Jeep to another. Desperate to reduce my vehicle count to something more manageable, I invited my friend Dustin from Wisconsin to help me with the wrenching. It was grueling work, but it wasn’t so cold thanks to my garage’s small electric heater, which, I recently realized, burned away an absolutely absurd amount of my money.
Ever since I began writing about cars in 2015, I’ve taken pride in admitting my mistakes. They are oftentimes deeply foolish and embarrassing, but I have no shame, so why not share my idiocy with you, dear readers? If reading this spares even one of you the financial ruin I just suffered, then my mission is accomplished.
The image above shows me sitting on a rare 1994 Jeep Grand Cherokee five-speed that I bought for $350. Unfortunately, the Jeep was missing its most important attribute: the stick shift. Luckily, my friend Dustin from Wisconsin had sold me his rusted-out manual ZJ for just $350 delivered, so I had donor parts ready to revive the red Jeep.
For three days straight, Dustin and I toiled. We had to tow both broken Jeeps into the garage, remove a transmission and transfer case, gut an entire interior, and deal with far too many rusty parts to even mention. (I documented our struggles in an article on Jalopnik a few months back). Since it was so cold outside — and since my landlord had asked me to make sure the pipes in the poorly-insulated garage don’t freeze — I had an electric heater turned on in the corner:
It’s tiny and doesn’t really shoot out a ton of heat, but it gets the garage to a comfortable 45 to 50ish degrees. Throw on a jacket, spin a few wrenches, and it’s enough to help me break a sweat.
I Wasted A Grand Because I’m A Fool
After Dustin and I had swapped the green Jeep’s transmission into the red Jeep, he headed back to Wisconsin, and I continued toiling on The Cheapest Car In America In 2009 (a cheap Nissan Versa) before driving the thing all the way down to Arkansas. From Arkansas I flew to LA for work, and a few days later I returned home and continued work on The Autopian, banging away on my keyboard all day for weeks.
One day, during a lunch break, I checked my bank account and saw an enormous withdrawal from my energy company. “What in the actual hell?” I thought. “I’ll look into this later.” The following day, I received this bill from my energy provider:
Holy mother of god.
FOUR HUNDRED AND EIGHTY FIVE DOLLARS AND SEVENTY FIVE CENTS!
My heart began racing as I tried avoiding thinking about how many Jeep 4.0-liter engines I could buy for that amount. I logged into my DTE Energy account to look at my other bills, and that’s when I found the previous month’s statement, which I had somehow overlooked:
OHGODOHGODOHGODOHGOD.
SIX HUNDRED AND NINETY SIX DOLLARS AND TWENTY THREE CENTS!
Oh no. Oh no.
That’s $1,182 for two months of electricity. I could literally buy eight used Jeep 4.0-liter engisfiewiodaiosfbasfbas [sorry, I fainted on my keyboard there for a sec].
To put this into context, the U.S. government’s “Energy Information Administration” lists the average monthly residential energy bill in Michigan as $109.86. And since I’m just a single dude living in a small shack, I’d guess that my bill should have been about $200 for two months, meaning my dumb ass wasted nearly a thousand dollars over over that span. One thousand dollars.
To understand what the heck happened, I looked at my energy usage, and saw that it spiked in February and March. Yes, you might expect to see a higher energy bill during these dark, cold months, but definitely not a 15-fold increase over a fall month (you can see that my average daily energy use jumped to 126.4 kWh; typically I use about 10 to 20 kWh).
Upon seeing this plot, I remembered my heater, and I sprinted as fast as I could to my garage to shut the damn thing off, as it was still blowing somewhat-warm air. Then I called up my energy company to better understand if this was indeed the cause of my now-inevitable bankruptcy.
“What I am seeing is a huge increase in usage during those two months,” the representative told me over the phone. “By any chance were you running any space heater or anything of that nature… or any sort of electric heat source?” she said immediately after, at which point I realized that maybe, just maybe, this whole stupid dilemma that I was now in was achingly obvious to most people, and that I was just an absolute cretin.
She then told me that her husband wrenches on cars, and experienced a similar shock when he saw what the electric space in their garage did to their energy bill. “Any sort of electric heat source…it quadruples your energy usage..it’s actually kinda shocking how much energy they use,” she told me, going on to suggest either routing my heater ducts from my house or using a kerosene space heater.
Let’s Crunch The Numbers
The heater in my garage is the King EKB2450TB, a 5,000 watt unit that runs on 240V of electricity. To convert the power output of that heater (which we’ll assume was going at full-bore: 5,000 watts) to energy, I have to multiply by time (Power = energy/time).
Given that I’m pretty sure the heater was on for the entirety of both billing periods — i.e. from January 12 until March 10 — I’m going to multiply 5,000 by 57 days in that period by 24 hours in each day to get 6.96 million watt hours, or 6,960 kWh. That’s roughly how much energy this heater should have used.
Let’s check this math real quick by looking at my overall energy usage, per my energy company:
According to my bills, I used 3,462 kWh between February 10 and March 10, and in the billing cycle before (January 12 to February 9) I used 3,462 kWh. Together that sums up to 5,840 kWh used in two months!
This is less than the 6,960 kWh that I just calculated my heater would use, so to understand this better, I dug into my energy data:
The data shows that the initial spike occurred on January 9. Then on February 10, it took a week long break — that’s the gap you see there between the two peaks. My energy usage spiked back up on February 17 and continued until March 7, when I apparently frantically turned my heater off.
From the start of my billing period, January 12, until February 10 (when I apparently turned the heater off) is a total of 29 days. From the start of the second spike, February 17 until its end, March 7, is 18 days. So the total amount of time my heater was on was probably 47 days.
So if we adjust the calculation I did earlier for my heater’s energy usage, it’s 5,000 watts times 47 days (instead of 57) times 24 hours a day. We end up with 5,640 kWh — that’s roughly how much energy I wasted during those billing periods solely on that heater.
That’s 200 kWh shy of the 5,840 kWh my energy company said I actually used over those billing periods. And as I said earlier, a typical household like mine would use about 100 kWh per month when not being an idiot with a space heater, so the math checks out. Electric space heaters are absolute guzzlers, and I wasted $1,000 to get a lukewarm garage for 47 days.
Natural Gas Is The Way To Heat Up Your Garage, Trust Me
Meanwhile, it only cost me $200.30 to heat my house — which is bigger than my garage and which I keep toasty at 72 degrees — during that same period. What it comes down to is that natural gas is just extremely cheap relative to the amount of energy it carries. I pay about $8.65 per thousand cubic feet of natural gas, which contains 1.037 million BTU (300 kWh) of energy. That’s about 3 cents per kWh compared to Michigan’s 16.26 cent average price per kWh of electricity .
As for Kerosene, which people commonly use in their garage space-heaters, that carries 131,890 BTU (38.65 kWh) per gallon, which — per the Energy Information Administration — costs about $2.65. So that’s about 7 cents per kWh — less than the 16.26 per kWh electricity rate.
Obviously my calculations don’t include losses, but these heaters are all fairly efficient, and that 16.26 number is so much more expensive than natural gas or Kerosene that it doesn’t affect my point, which is that gas is clearly a much more cost-effective way to heat your garage than electricity.
So don’t be a fool like me, a man who literally turned $1,000 into heat. I could have done exactly the same thing by simply lighting $1 bills on fire. Honestly, it might have been more cost-effective.
Update: Jason and I calculated that last statement, even though it was clearly hyperbolic (he forced me). According to a letter written on science website “Mad Science” by associate chemistry professor Todd Whitcombe, one dollar probably contains about 12.44 BTU of energy — or 0.0036 kWh. One thousand of those would give me at most 3.6 kWh of heat, which is obviously not the 5,840 I got from my electric heater. So I guess this whole debacle isn’t so bad when you compare it to literally burning currency…
It would be cheaper for you to do what I did – buy a house in Florida for the winters. My mortgage is only $525/mo….
But I do feel your pain – my big garage in Maine has a Monitor kerosene heater – and while the garage is very well insulated, it is also 1450sq/ft. I figured ~$10/day to heat it when I am wrenching up there in the winter – when K1 was half the price it is now. So if I ran it all winter that would add up to big money too.
Dave, shame none of your engines run, it would have been cheaper to run the engines than run the heater.
With the exhaust out of the window, obvs.
A modern split unit would be an infinitely better choice, and you can get AC!
It’s unfortunate to learn some lessons the hard way but that’s life. My unheated garage froze water lines to the washer and extended line to the garage door sidewall for washing cars, etc. The fault was the flimsy garage door made in the ’60s – no insulation. Replaced with insulated up to date roll up doors, repaired trim and added weather stripping to ward off freezing temps. Temps inside doesn’t go below 45F, still unheated as part of the house. Winter outside temps average down to around 25F.
If unable to replace the garage door for better insulation to lower heating, monitor winter temps inside the garage and adjust the heater for minimum heat to keep pipes from freezing. Adding foam insulation to the garage doors can help as well as checking weather stripping around the doors. All work can help lower electrical use of that 5kw heater.
I’ve long dreamed about installing a natural gas powered co-gen system. Use the smallest liquid cooled ICE needed to meet power needs; something like the REX out of a BMW i3 but smaller – maybe using a small motorcycle engine and a hybrid battery as a buffer. Bonus points for using an Atkinson cycle, cylinder deactivation, 6+ stroke cycles or whatever to maximize thermal efficiency and to match output to demand. Use as much of the waste heat as possible to warm the garage, water pipes, house and water heater and maybe repurpose a few engine blocks as thermal reservoirs for when the generator isn’t needed.
Would this be worth it? Could be, especially if there was any chance of the power going out for a long time especially during extreme climatic events.
At least electric heaters are 100% efficient!
One look at David’s garage:
No way is that just the “gubbins” from 2 Jeeps.
That’s got to be the detritus from at least a dozen various vehicles deposited over many years.
Thousand years from now, some neo-archeologist will search this site and presume it was a repository for an eccentric collector of specialized vehicular rubbish. Then, she will be absolutely stunned as to why it was housed inside 4 rudimentary walls while multiple rusted skeltalized heaps were found in the surrounding yard. Like any archeological site, she will just presume that it was all for religious/spiritual purposes to worship some unknown Rust god.
I feel your pain…. The place I rent in northern North Dakota has the water heater, washer and dryer in the garage for some inane reason! It’s not like it’s an old build, only 10 years old. While the house has gas heat, the garage has a similar electric heater to yours, means $$$$ from Jan-Mar/April to keep the pipes thawed depending on the winter. This year the bill went from a spring-fall norm.of around $70 a month to almost $300 a month, and the garage is well insulated.
When I lived in coastal CT in 1988, I paid $100.00 monthly rent for one room studio. It had electric baseboard heaters. One month we had 10 days of below 10 degree weather, which was unusual for the coast. Being a naive student from TX, I wanted to keep the heat at 70 degrees. That month the electric bill was $650.00! I was so overcome, I could not have coped with calculating kW usage. Thereafter, the room was kept at 55 with many down comforters.
So, if I read this right, at least partially, you needed to use the heater to wrench on your Jeeps so that you would have content for your job…so you can write this off as a job expense?!
Wasting a lot of energy goes with owning Jeeps, doesn’t it?
Your work is virtual, so *why* do you continue to live there? Sell (more) of your cars. Clean up the garage. Move to the southwest and actually enjoy your off roading hobby. Stop fighting the f’ing rust. Been there, done that… It isn’t worth it.
I’ve watched you struggle over pointless crap for years while people cheer for it here. They aren’t doing you any favors because there’s nothing noble about it. It’s just reinforcing bad behavior so that they can continue to behold the spectacle. You can do better than this.
First – electric space heaters aren’t TOO bad if you’re just running a 1,500W one – I throw my infrared one out into my garage during the coldest month or two of the winter just to take the worst off the cold off and its very reasonable.
Second – if you’re going to switch to Kerosene, be prepared for everything to smell. 2 years ago, I had to change out a fuel pump on my old truck and let it sit in a closed garage for a day with a kerosene torpedo heater. Granted – attached garage, but my entire house, car, all of my car washing towels ALL smelled of kerosene for weeks.
David,
I would look into insulating your pipes so you no longer have to worry about them first. Then look into a heater that uses old oil to burn. You should have plenty of oil on hand with all of your vehicles.
https://pripyat.smugmug.com/Car-Nerdery/The-Barn-1/
I feel your pain…
If it makes you feel any better, the place I work at bought 36 million kilowatt hours of energy last month.
“Meanwhile, it only cost me $200.30 to heat my house — which is bigger than my garage and which I keep toasty at 72 degrees — during that same period.”
Dude – get your free Nest from DTE and have that shit automatically turned down overnight and while you are gone! You’re a cheap bastard, but you haven’t achieved cheap NORTHERN bastard status yet – 68ish during the day, 64 or lower at night. Blankets are cheap after all.
David, you should talk to your landlord about adding some insulation. If he’s worried about the pipes, insulation would help with that, and you’d get some benefit too. Even just styrofoam insulation on the walls would do something. And putting vapor barrier on the ceiling rafters, then blowing in insulation would help a lot. Probably wouldn’t cost much if you did it yourself.
And my garage is just as messy as yours, but with kids stuff and yard tools. I would say that you should do a Marie Kondo and get rid of stuff that doesn’t spark joy, but you find joy in old Jeep parts, so the point is moot. Now organizing these things might help……
Use an air to air heat pump and insulate the garage. I heat 4 units each 700 sq feet and I’m pretty sure my tenants pay way less than that for electricity to do that.
They are pricey for the install but the mitsubishi come with a 15 yr warranty. You can also DIY (but you lose the warranty). Get the Mitsubishi Hyper Heat ones which heat down to -14F. Encouraging people to heat with Natural gas in today’s environment is socially irresponsible and with prices for Natural Gas skyrocketing it’s not going to be that much cheaper than heat pumps over the long term.
Honestly I’m perplexed how YOU would be surprised a tiny, 240v electric heater in an uninsulated garage, would be a bad idea and inefficient. ????♂️
Holy Crap! My whole house is heated by electricity and I never got that high of a bill! Actually, electricity is my only utility bill. Your two bills are near the same money I’ve put into a cheap $350 Mini Cooper S, including a cylinder head and supercharger.
Insulation first, then a mini-split heat pump, you can get them whole sale and install them yourself for the price you paid in electric heat, plus they provide cold air in the summer should you need it. You aren’t locked in to using fossil fuels as your grid changes, and you can pull them out and move it with you when you relocate.
Lolol. I think the electric heater costs ~2.5x what heating with gas would. The rest of the cost increase might have something to do with heating an uninsulated space
Dude, I have a propane torpedo heater collecting dust that I could have lent you
Changli brazier