Any suggestions one the best way to heat a couple interior rooms in my barn? Going to have a bathroom roughly 4x10 and a seperate viewing/tack room roughly 24x18. Both rooms are in the center of a 2 aisle barn so will NOT be located along the exerior of the building.
Radiant floor heat?
I am not sure what questions you are trying to have answered.
What type of system to use? What kind of insulation to use?
We’ll only be insulating the rooms not the rest of the barn. We are only looking to heat those rooms. What are my options, Mini-splits, radiant floor heating, space heaters, etc. If I go with a gas option thoughts on venting? Have you all
I have a mini split and it’s amazing. Keeps my barn office and bathroom plus tack area lovely year around.
I use it for heat and cooling. I have a 15x16 office and a 10x15 bathroom and it heats it with zero issues and runs about 15.00 a month during the winter.
Do you vent to the outside? or just out into the stable area/indoor?
Mine vents outside.
Cheap solution is an oil-filled radiator.
I’ve used one to heat a below-grade, 12X16 tiled bathroom when baseboard radiators failed to do the job well enough.
Adding the single unit kept the room toasty (& doubled as a towel warmer 
)
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I would vote mini-split but it needs outside access, I believe. That doesn’t mean you can’t use them for an interior room, but you’d need to figure out a way to get the pipe outdoors.
I have a mini-split for my combined grain/tack room plus an adjacent closet that houses my hot water heater. It’s totally overkill for my small space but I love it.
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Awesome - Yeah that was my biggest concern. Getting the exhaust the 20 ft to the barn exterior.
Would going up thru the roof be easier?
It’s not a huge pipe and you could just put it directly under your ceiling. So you’d just need to put it through the wall. It’s probably worth having an HVAC company come out and give you a quote. They are used to mini splits going in odd spots - that’s half the point of them!
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They also will likely know the requirements and restrictions for maximum length and maximum fittings. Because there are such annoying things.
We use these in our barn lounge and bathroom. They are digital and come on and off as needed and we have the wall mount version so they don’t sit on a sometimes dirty floor. It’s important that your rooms are well insulated. We keep them at about 45 degrees in the winter when we aren’t in the rooms and turn them up when we are.
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The oil filled radiator is considered the safest option in a barn, from what I’ve ever heard. All electrical appliances in a barn carry a risk of fire…a nightmare in a barn.
An oil filled radiator is quite cheap to run if you have good insulation. I pull mine out as things start to cool off and use it only in the winter months. Then push it into a corner and out of the way the rest of the year.
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I had a good discussion with my electrician about electrical appliances in the barn. I think if you take the right precautions, the risk is acceptable. For example, all of my breakers are GFCI, I use dust covers for all outlets, etc. I also have temperature sensors in my grain/tack room and in my hay loft, so I get an alarm on my phone if the heat rises too much.
I mean, if you wanted to remove all risk, you couldn’t even have a hot water heater.
I don’t have a hot water heater in the barn.
If you want to really, really spoil yourself (jk, kinda), go with the radiant floors. It’s what we have in our house, as our only supply of heat. Only thing is, you have to decide what heat source you’re going to use to create the radiant heat. We use geothermal (ground-to-ground loop) as our source with an electric boiler as a(n) [extremely rarely used] backup and it’s such a cozy, dry heat and wonderful on the tootsies. Mind you, we also have an ICF home and concrete floors.
I really notice the difference when I go into other homes, especially my feet which are almost never warm when I’m not on my radiant floors.
Heavily thinking about radiant floors - Just can’t seem to find somebody local to get me a quote.
my son watched some YouTube videos (I believe it was Outdoors with the Morgans) , he contacted the company that makes the kits directly who prepackaged everything he needed to install the system in his large garage/office building (10,000 sq/ft) They provided complete instructions on how to install the system.
I did my own radiant heating in the house bathroom, put tile on top and it was super easy.
I put in this system: https://www.schluter.com/schluter-us/en_US/heated-floors?language=en_US
I still prefer my mini split in the barn due to being able to run it like a fan for air circulation and better room temperature control.
