Construction projects can’t just grind to a halt when temperatures drop. Thankfully, temporary air heat can raise the temperature and provide a safe and efficient working environment. While heating construction sites can be costly, maximizing the efficiency of your heater will give you better performance at a lower price.
Find a Suitable Heater for Your Job Site
You can’t take a one-size-fits-all approach when you’re heating a construction site. Projects take place at many different sites, which is why you’ll want to consider both the environment and the needs of your workers. Are you going to be dealing with freezing temperatures? Will you be working with concrete? These are the kinds of questions you’ll need to ask yourself when selecting a heater.
Whether you opt for a ground heater, a direct fired heater, or another heating solution, your heater will be much more efficient if it’s well suited to the environment that you’re working in. You’ll also want to make sure you select a heater that’s an appropriate size for the space. If you select an appropriately-sized heater, you’ll be able to reduce your energy usage or fuel costs.
Take Steps to Insulate Your Work Space
Your heater will have to work hard in order to keep your work site clean, and it will need to work even harder if a lot of that heat is escaping. Insulation construction sites isn’t always an easy process, but there are steps you can take to keep more heat in.
How can you insulate your workspace? Your options will vary based on your environment. You could use plywood to secure windows and open spaces. You could also try tenting open workspaces to keep heat from escaping. While you may not be able to perfectly insulate your space, you can minimize the amount of strain that’s being placed on your heater.
Circulate Warm Air With Fans
While fans are typically used to keep cool, they can also be a way to make sure that heat is being spread throughout your work site. Well-placed fans can push heat around a space, making it easier to maintain the same temperature across the site.
Even though fans can cool you off when they’re used normally, you can change a fan’s settings so that blades move counter-clockwise instead. Heat normally rises, but when you have fans running, heat that is drifting upwards will be pushed back down, providing better and more efficient heating.
Adjust Your Settings for Better Results
If you leave your heater running all the time, you’ll spend more on heating and place more strain on your heating. You’ll see better performance from your heater if you adjust the settings and make sure that the thermostat is set to the temperature that you prefer.
When the space is heated to your preferred temperature, your heater will shut down automatically. When the temperature drops again, the heater will go back on. Adjusting your settings shouldn’t take much time, and it could lead to significant savings.
Break Up Your Workspace
Heating a large workspace may feel impossible, but if you utilize temporary enclosures, you’ll only have to heat areas where employees are working. Heating an entire job site can be a waste of money. If you’re able to break up your workspace, you can provide heat to the areas that need it the most.
This is especially important on large, open-air job sites that would otherwise be impossible to heat. Take the time to assess your site so that you can identify where heat is needed. If possible, you may want to use temporary enclosures so that those areas will be isolated until work is complete.
Herman Post
Herman Post is the owner of Heat-n-Go, which provides complete managed temporary heat services to the construction industry - removing frost in days, curing concrete or protection from deep freeze.