Heating a small space

Everyone, I was cleaing my basement yesterday and my wife offered to let me have the space that goes under the stairs to use as a feremtation chamber. It is enclosed with carpet on the floor. I plan to insulate it in a couple of weeks but I need to add a little heat in there today. Any ideas? I do have a little electric space heater I could use but I always worry about burning my house doen.

Thanks,
Tom

Get a concrete patio block and set the heater on that. If it's got an anti-tip switch, you'll need a hard surface under it anyway.

Not sure exactly how big your space is but I use a hair dryer to heat my fermentation chamber plugged into a temp controller.It works great and it`s safe.

Light bulb. I use a 100W in my fermentation chamber (chest freezer) which I keep outside. Works a charm. Just set a lamp in there and it will heat up.

I'm heating a small 7x7 foot room in my basement with a space heater right now for carbing/fermenting. It has a safety switch that turns it off in the event that it is knocked over. It has a thermostat that is a little finicky but once set it keeps the temperature pretty constant.

Cost me $17.99 at Home Depot:

Link to Everstar Portable Heater

You might try a "foot warming pad."

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000079896/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

The pros would be that they don't pull a lot of power and they are fairly water resistant. The cons would be that, I believe, you would have to hook up a separate thermostat.

I have a small heat pad (my wife let me borrow) that I wrapped around my fermenter this morning. It's a hefeweizen that I brewed yesterday that I'm trying to get up to around 75F. Right now it's 73F, working like a charm so far.

If you have a cool spot in the basement, don't use a heater. Make up a water bath with an old cooler or a big Rubbermaid bin, and heat it with an aquarium heater. Aquarium heaters are cheap, they have a built in themostat, and are very accurate. Water baths are superior to other fermentation temperature control methods because they buffer temperature fluctuations very well, meaning that you can precisely control the temp of fermentation. The aquarium heater method is great because you have individual control over each fermenter and you can create a temperature profile for your fermentation (e.g., for Belgian beers, start cool then ramp up the temps towards end of fermentation to really dry out the beer).

Here is a shot of the setup I use -- cost about $20 per fermenter:

Kidder said:

I have a small heat pad (my wife let me borrow) that I wrapped around my fermenter this morning. It's a hefeweizen that I brewed yesterday that I'm trying to get up to around 75F. Right now it's 73F, working like a charm so far.

Click to expand...

I don't want to thread jack but I had to ask - why do you want to get it up to 75F?

Marsdude said:

I don't want to thread jack but I had to ask - why do you want to get it up to 75F?

Click to expand...

Probably wants
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