Can I heat my Ottawa garage with just an infrared heater and no insulation in the walls?

Technically yes, you can run an infrared heater in an uninsulated garage — but you will be fighting Ottawa's winters with one hand tied behind your back, and your heating costs will reflect that struggle every single month from November through April.

Infrared heaters work differently from forced-air unit heaters. Rather than warming the air in the space, they emit radiant heat that warms objects and people directly — similar to standing in sunlight. This makes them reasonably effective for spot heating in an uninsulated space, because you feel the warmth even when the ambient air temperature is still cold. For an occasional-use garage where you pop in for 20 minutes to grab something or do a quick task, an infrared heater in an uninsulated space can work acceptably well.

The problem comes when you want to actually work in the garage for extended periods during an Ottawa winter. When it's -25°C outside and your walls are bare studs with no insulation, the heat loss through those walls, the ceiling, and especially the garage door is enormous. An infrared heater will keep the area directly in front of it tolerable, but the rest of the garage — including your feet on the concrete slab — will remain brutally cold. The slab itself acts as a massive heat sink, drawing warmth out of the space continuously.

The honest math on this: An uninsulated two-car garage in Ottawa can lose heat so rapidly that even a 10,000-watt electric infrared heater struggles to maintain a working temperature on the coldest days. You'll be running the heater at full capacity constantly, and your hydro bill will climb accordingly. Electric heating in an uninsulated Ottawa garage is genuinely expensive over a full winter season.

If you want a garage that's actually comfortable to work in — say, a consistent 15 to 18°C while you're in there — you need at minimum R-20 walls, R-32 ceiling insulation, and an insulated garage door with at least R-16. With proper insulation in place, a natural gas unit heater becomes the most economical heating choice in Ottawa, typically running $1,500 to $3,500 installed, and it will heat the space quickly and hold temperature efficiently even at -30°C.

If insulating the whole garage isn't in the budget right now, the single highest-impact improvement you can make before adding heat is insulating the garage door. The door is the largest opening in the garage and the biggest thermal weak point — an uninsulated steel door essentially acts as a giant radiator pushing your heat outside. Upgrading to an insulated door (R-16 to R-20) is a relatively modest investment that makes an immediate, noticeable difference.

For a permanent heated workspace, the right sequence is: insulate first, then choose your heating system. Heating an uninsulated garage in Ottawa is genuinely like burning money — the energy costs over even two or three winters will exceed what proper insulation would have cost upfront.