Garage/games room heating and lighting

[cowprintsocks]

Help! We’re planning on using our double garage as a games room (table tennis and football table).

Any mn wisdom on lighting or heaters much appreciated!!

Heating...

I want something that doesn’t take hours to warm up (no one says ‘let’s play table tennis in 3 hours time’) but my children can’t burn themselves on now (when they’re small) or leave on forever when they’re teenage. Don’t want the cost of adding the room onto the central heating.

And for lighting...

Ceiling is concrete-going to have battens then insulation and plywood, but this will make the room height only 2.08m, so can’t have spotlights. It’s currently got horrible 70s fluorescent tubes. And it’s only got a small window of natural light.

Any bright ideas on either??? Some sort of led lighting?? Strips seem a bit ‘add-on’ rather than main source of light. And I’m stuck on heaters!!

Regarding the kids leaving things running when not in the room, a friend has recently installed sensors for her downstairs loo.

Light comes on when you go in and turns off after 10 minutes if no movement.

Assuming the kids continue moving while playing games it should stay on while they're in there and switch off when they leave.

Good luck with the rest of your search.

We built an annexe recently, with games room. We used an air source heat pump that also works in reverse so an air conditioner or a heater. It's brilliant, and warms up quickly. We put it on overnight on cheap rate electricity so that it's still warm for much of the next day (unless it's really cold). The kids lived going in there all hot and bothered from school during the heatwave to play pool and watch TV. Installation took a while so it was £2-3,000 altogether, I think. But definitely worth it.

I think you'll struggle to play table tennis with a 2.08m ceiling - I'm not particularly tall at 1.73m but i could touch that just standing, without jumping around.

Lights - I'm not in the UK but we have these ultra-low profile LEDs that are barely thicker than plasterboard (plus the transformer, still probably thinner than the batten. The room is a bit bigger than a double-garage and has 16 lights.

Heating - LPG space heater?
www.screwfix.com/p/portable-grey-lpg-space-heater-15-000w/188fh

We have this one in our double garage , which we have been using as our lockdown pub.
It's been great, although we do supplement it with a smaller fan heater on the floor too, but our garage is draughty with a roller shutter door so doesn't hold the heat well.

Some great ideas there-thank you!! I have no idea why the garage was built so low....

Just install some sort of wall lights if you don’t have the height.

I bought some Hue LED strips for my teenagers at Christmas - one length lights up my daughter's double room much brighter than her pendant light, I'm very impressed with them (and you can change the colours any time you want 😁)

www.johnlewis.com/philips-hue-white-and-colour-ambiance-smart-lighting-adjustable-colour-changing-led-lightstrip-plus-with-bluetooth-20w-2-metres/p5080995?s_share=w_dro