We're building an detached post & beam garage, 24 X 24. We have natural gas on the property, and our house is heated by a Dunkirk boiler and hot-water baseboard system that we've been told has the capacity to "heat the whole valley".
We need to run heat to the garage. We will be insulating and sheetrocking the inside of the structure. It will need to be kept at a reasonable temp all the time, perhaps 60 degrees or so. Radiant in-floor heating is out of the question because of up-front costs. We're considering either, 1) running the natural gas line from the far end of the house through the basement and out the other end to the garage, which is about 10 feet from the house, then installing some kind of gas powered heater or furnace; or 2) extending the hot water line from the house to the garage and putting the garage on its own zone.
Any suggestions? The guy who's building the shell of the garage for us said the hot water line would be very expensive because it has to have special insulation. But wouldn't running the gas line be expensive, too? Just looking for ideas on degree of difficulty vs. up-front cost of each option.