No water lines in the tack room.
@Yankee Lawyer - I did investigate mini splits but I couldn’t justify the price + installation and any repair costs for a one person tack room. If room was larger + was a lounge/tack room in a boarding barn situation and AC was also needed, then I think it would make sense.
@HungarianHippo - the QMarks look interesting.
We have well houses and we use these milk house well house heathers in them:
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Utility-M…1702/642591645
Turn them on in the lowest setting in the fall and turn them off in the spring.
They come on and off on their own.
We never had any of those catch on fire or give any other trouble than needing replacing every so many years.
We used one of those in our old tackroom for many years also.
They only heat enough to keep things from freezing, not to make it cozy in there.
I wonder if those would also work where the OP is?
They also sell heat lamp bulbs that go into normal light fixtures at Home Depot/Lowe’s. They aren’t quite as strong as a more expensive IR heater but they do keep everything warmer and they are no more dangerous than leaving the lights on in the barn.
Only problem is that the air temp only rises slightly, it’s the objects that get warmed up. Not a problem if you are only trying to keep saddles and such in a more controlled enviroment, but if you have medications in a cabinet it won’t warm those up.
Just to clarify the IR heater concept, infrared is the same kind of energy as the sun. If you think about being outside on a chilly day, if you step into the sun it instantly warms you even though the air is still cold. These heaters work the same way. Turn them on and BAM! you feel the warmth. If you leave them on full time, the objects exposed to that IR will begin to radiate heat into the space, warming the air.
StormyDay is exactly right though about objects in a cabinet. IR works on line of sight-- it generally won’t warm things that are sealed off from it.
This is what I do. I have a 10’ x 20’ tack room with insulated walls and an insulated ceiling, but just an outdoor carpet over the cement barn floor. I have one of the little oil heaters that I leave turned to the lowest setting (maybe 60-65-ish degrees?) 24/7 year round. In the warmer months it almost never kicks on. In the cold months it’s on much more often. But I can say that during times we’ve lost power briefly (12-24 hours), the tack room doesn’t change much in temperature (though, of course, everything in it is also at the warmer temp and I’m sure that goes a long way toward maintaining the temp in the same way that a full freezer will stay colder longer in a power outage than an empty one).
I’m currently living in my tack/feed room while my house is being renovated. This is the heater that we have in the room where we sleep: Stiebel Eltron 074058 1500W, 120V CK 15E Wall Mounted Electric Fan Heater. It is wall mounted, not plugged in.
We bought in on Amazon and you can set the temp on a dial from low to high. Our room is 12x14 with a 14’ sloped ceiling (I think it slopes up to about 15’). The room is well insulated and 2 of the 4 walls are 2x12/insulation/2x12, so about 5" thick.
Two of our 9 dogs stay in the room during the day when we are at work and we leave it set on low. When we arrive home the room is always toasty warm. During the night when we are sleeping, we set it at medium. We don’t have a thermometer in the room, so I don’t know for sure the temp, but it’s well above freezing.
We have an identical room that has a wall mount AC/heater and we felt like it was overkill for the size of the room and how well insulated the room is so we bought the separate heater for the second room and will install a wall mount AC when it gets warm in the spring. The room we live in has water, but the pipes aren’t in the concrete foundation, they from the outside of the building, so if it gets really cold we have to completely shut off the water supply. We live in Texas, so thankfully that doesn’t happen very often.
So…
I’m leaving the oil filled radiator heater ON all night on low setting – actually it’s on 24/7 during this zero degree cold snap we’re having. Room stays a balmy 50 degrees all the time in this freezing weather even by morning.
My contractor insulated walls with Rockwool – 2x6 walls/bats is what made the difference I think.
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