HVAC for a (tiny!) room

[RCbuilds]

Hi All,

I'm converting a very small (about 25 sq ft), closet in the rear of my unheated attached garage into a small kennel for my dog. It will have outside access through a dog-door and an exterior grade human-door. The room will be very well insulated, but it is positioned on the corner of the garage with two exterior walls and a concrete slab floor.

I'd like to find something other than a space heater to install to keep the room reasonably warm and perhaps even cool during the summer months (can you tell my dog is a bit spoiled?!). I'm in NE Ohio, it gets pretty cold around here! Any ideas on what I could install to heat/cool this area? Thanks for the help!

 

[WorthFlorida]

With a small closet space, be sure that there is a fresh air supply. The doggie door may not be enough. You may want to install a bathroom exhaust fan, a quite one, on a timer that would run it a few minutes per hour. It’ll pull fresh air from the doggie door.

No cooling device is made for that small of a space but you can look over the delonghi portable AC units. The smallest is made for about 400 sq ft.

For heat the electric oil filled radiator works the best for comfort heat and safety. It provides steady heat and most have three settings; low, medium and high along with a thermostat control. I use one in my Florida home for those chilly days. Not to heat the room but for the infrared heat directly heating you. You’ll may find your dog curling up to it on those cold days. Another option is an electric base board heater about 2’ in length. Depending on your type of heating system expanding it to this space is the more costly option.

https://www.delonghi.com/en-us/products/comfort/air-conditioning/portable-air-conditioners

 

[Sponsor]

 

[Dana]

For the truly pampered dog, a low voltage radiant floor mat is probably the nicest way to heat a 25 square foot space. Since the mats are trimmed to fit the space and have an output per square foot, sizing for the actual heat load is pretty easy. You'd want to lay down at least 2" of EPS under a subfloor to be sure you're heating the dog, not the slab, but it's pretty cheap to run. This is just one vendor's variation- there are several out there. If you set it up with only half the floor heated the dog will figure out which side of the floor is most comfortable as conditions change. There are 120V versions out there that would require an isolating mat for safety, but I'd be reluctant to use those- dogs chew, scratch, pee, spill their water dishes etc.

For cooling, a 5000 BTU/hr through-the wall AC unit is noisy and complete overkill, but could bring the temp down very fast when needed.

If room has no exterior windows it's likely that just the heat thrown off by the dog could pretty much heat the room to canine-comfort levels on all the coldest days, so having thermostatic control (whether a floor thermostat or wall thermostat) would be important.

 

[Dana]

If you're willing to do what it takes to make a 120VAC radiant foor pad dog-safe, for under $250 you can get a 30" x 48" Sun Touch Floor Warming pad + associated non-programmable thermostat. That's about the right size for a dog-warmer.

If your dog isn't a chewer/shredder and won't shred the bed, for $25-125 there are any number of pet-heater pads out there. (Why heat the room when you're only looking to heat the dog?) This outdoor model runs about $90 from Petco:

This outdoor model runs about $125, comes with dual thermostats set to keep the dog at 102F. That's probably better than heating the whole room.

 

[Jadnashua]

If you were to tile the area, there are lots of floor warming mats or cables that can be embedded underneath. For an area where you might have an accident or two, you might also want to consider epoxy grout instead of a cement based one. Some of the one-part acrylic based ones would be pretty immune to uric acid (check with the manufacturer for recommendations), but regular cement could literally start to dissolve in acid. One of the neater floor warming systems is https://www.schluter.com/schluter-us/en_US/Floor-Warming/Schluter®-DITRA-HEAT-DUO/p/DITRA_HEAT-DUO that contains a thermal break to help isolate it from the slab.

Obviously, it won't do anything to cool the area, though.