Ok guys I found this which seems to be the most no BS heater
my only thought to heat a larger area is 2 2-3 inch ID tubes running through the bottom and top "T'd" together at the bottom with an air blower that would heat air and circulate it some what BUT im wondering would the expansion of the tank and tubes tend to crack stuff inside?
I have an 80 gal air tank from an old compressor I have steel pipe for the flue adapter and the input air side I have tanks for the oil storage
so has anyone here built one of these?
I know a guy that had an oil drip into his wood burning stove and it fully rocked BUT you had to have wood and a wood burning stove
with the above its a simple ignition simple cleanup simple build....
cool... My only concern would be: does the burning oil give off any toxic fumes? Asside from the possible enviormental issue, if the burner didn't give off any toxic gasses, it would be pretty cool.
Of course it does. Just like any other fuel burning heater (ie. natural gas, propane, fuel oil) you need to vent it. You can see the vent pipe going up to the ceiling in the pics.
how does the heat get into the room and not just up the vent tube and out of the shop? Are you relying strictly the heat inside the container to heat up the metal case and radiate into the room?
If so, it seems like you could make it a lot better by cutting some holes in the case and welding tubes through it, and then putting a fan on one side to blow air through the tubes and into the room
plus, do you think local garages will just give you the oil?
how does the heat get into the room and not just up the vent tube and out of the shop? Are you relying strictly the heat inside the container to heat up the metal case and radiate into the room?
The trick we have been working on for the wood burning stoves as well as the oil burning stove in the farm shop is to build a draft pipe to bring cold outside air into the stove rather than the warm air from the house/shop to feed the fire. This reverses the draft that also accumlates a significant amount of dust in our houses. If you could find the way to do this, you would always have "cold" air coming into the fire rather than already warmed air. In theory, this should help increase the overall efficiency of the burner.
I haven't built the stove for my shop yet, but I plan on running a valved pipe through the outside wall to serve as the air flow damper. I didn't see what the MEN stove used for airflow, but I imagine he did something similar.
Because as something burns, it will pull air into the combustion chamber from wherever it can. With the air intake being much shorter and closer to the flame then the flue, the fresh incomming air is going to take the path of least resistance and come down the intake pipe. W/ the way the air intake is situated, the air that rushes in will force the flame to radiate out heating the sides of the burner box, which in turn will radiate heat out into your shop. What you suggested with cutting holes in it would not work, it would either blow the flame out, or cause it to flare up and exhaust its fuel and go out, plus it would do very little to move heat. On the other hand, you could build a burner enclouser w/ an air gap between two walls, a forced air fan on some type of thermostat control based on the temp of the inner wall, and it would work marginally better than radiant. There are several wood stoves for shops that are set up similar to what I am explaining. With how hot this thing could potentialy get though, I would think radiant heat would be quite sufficient, and if you had a huge shop, you could build several.
I know you can blow into the case, what I meant was do it like a heat exchanger or radiator. Weld tube going through it from one side to the other. The tubes add a lot of surface area, and you can blow air though the tubes to get air flow over the surface
I missed that in your first post, I would say that it would probably help, after all what you are describing is basically how any natural gas furnace works. I really dont think it is nessecary though, I really think you could get a shit load of heat out of this thing radiantly. I think it is a pretty cool idea, and I wouldn't hesitate to try it in my shop since I spend about $80 a month heating it in the winter, the biggest problem for me would be the space it takes up. I have an overhead natural gas furnace currently, and loke not haveing the SOB on the floor.
I have built a few waste oil heaters before. That design looks like a decent one. Don't worry about not having enough heat. With the oil turned up enough you could probably get that stove glowing cherry red.
If you want even more heat you can get one of these I have one in my garage on my wood burner when just burning wood it was like 60 degrees when burning but now that I have that on there you have to open the garage door halfway after awhile or you will burn to death you get them from Northern Tool
yea magic heats are great for the extra heat in whatever heating device you are using but kinda pricey. I ended up making one of of stainless from some metal i had at work.
I need to make a shroud around the fan so it forces all air to blow over the tubes in the middle to work a little better. Also if you get one make sure to use the little carbon cleaner slider thingy. If you don't use it often it won't move or get stuck somewhere in the fully out position so you end up crackin your head on it.
Ok so it turns out the guy who wrote the article about the no bs waste oil heater lives like 30 min away from me
I went up to see his heater work today
he had left it from the day before, to start it like he normally would
he took out the alu disc scraped off the soot, put it pack into the heater filled it with kerosene (about 1 inch deep in the center), lit it with a map gas torch, closed the door, then turned on the oil drip
within 20 min it was up to 400* and climbing, it got up to 700* and he turned it down
the room had raised about 10deg
then he showed me how he cleans the flue of soot, he got his shop vac hooked up the hose to blow put the hose in the heater intake and turned the vac on for 10 seconds which blew the soot out (some fell into the bottom of the tank) and also blew out the flame so he opened the door and re lit the oil with the map gas torch
the only down side was you had to adjust the oil flow often to adjust heat output
he did say IF you let it get to hot (flame to big) it uses all the oxygen in the tank body which chokes the air flow out the flue down and it backs up to puff out the intake he said it usually happens over 1K deg though when your using a bunch of oil
the cool part is the guy sells the discs and valves every thing else is almost free
I have been researching this idea as well and am having a local machinist friend make the funnel piece that Roger describes in his article. It is definitely the simplest WO Heater that I have seen. May be interested to see what he is asking for the discs and make another stove to compare the two side by side. I am putting the valves together from miscellaneous hydraulic parts and fittings, but I am still missing a few things. I have read people running these up to several hundred degrees and heating a small shop with very little fuel, so they seem to be very efficient and produce no smoke or toxins..
FWIW I got a valve from surplus center for oil flow control and its not as fine as the one Roger builds (not trying to be all on the guys nuts but..) his valve has a finer needle adjustment
he gets 50$ for the disc and 50$ for the valve
and by fine on his valve its like 1/4 turn between a few drops per second and a steady flow
while I was there his heater got up to 800* easy...... so it doesent take much...
I plan on running tubes through the tank of mine (80 gal air tank) then pumping air through the tubes like a getto version of the heat exchanger above
the flue pipe was quite a bit cooler than the body was as the flames come off the burner in a big halo type flame almost touching the body of the tank
it did look to be touchy adjustment wise he had a wood stove temp probe bolted to the tank and it moved from 300-400 at idle to 700-800 at moderate/ high
it was quite a bit hotter right around the tank (6" radius) on high there was a chair I was using to look at the burner and flame which sat there for 10-20 min while it was heating up when I came back it had a hot spot on one side facing the heater
I think with the help of hot air circulation it would warm a bigger room easy
I saw this post a few weeks ago, did a bit of research using the link you posted and happened to have a junk 50 gal water heater looking for a place to go. In about 4 hours I whipped up a rough version just to see if it would work and as a way to get rid of all the waste oil my shop generates. I used a valve off a HF drill press cooant tank ( you know the cheap worthless ones they send with the big model) for the oil control, a couple stove pipes I had laying around, a piece of brake line and a lawn tractor fuel tank up on a shelf for the oil tank. I was really sceptical at first and fired that thing up outside ecxpecting one of the neighbors to call 911 when they saw all the smoke. Well that thing worked GREAT. In an hour on less than 2 gallons of junk oil I had a 30 foot raduis warmed to t shirt temps. Granted I am in SoCal and we never get that cold, lows in the 30s highs in the 50s but I do run a propane space heater for the 3 or 4 weeks it is cold enough to need it at night. It worked well enough that I decided to use it, I put steel wheels on it so I could roll it out of the way in the summer and made the flue an easy disconnect.
So the family and I went on a vacation in mid january and SoCal had record lows. Nothing compared to you guys normal winter but enough to kill my majestic palms which were 25 years old, and make life miserable for us fair weather folks. ( I was on a ship in 80* Hawaii so I did not care) When I came back I went in the shop and found my heater missing. I went across the street to a good freinds shop (he mechanics out of his shop 60 hours a week) and found my waste oil heater happily burning away and making it possible for my buddy to work. He was a MX racer and the cold really makes it hard for him to move due to a long list of injuries. It had warmed up enough to not need it so I left it there and will build another one. As a trade I can get all the oil change oil I need from him and his recycle guy will even drop off oil for us when he comes to do his normal rounds of oil collection and antifreeze exchange.
It takes some tinkering to get it to run right and it does put off a concentrated heat close to it like a wood stove does but with a simple 20" fan blowing from behind it I could heat a 60' X 40' uninsulated steel building from the high 40s to the mid 60s easily in an hour and in my buddy's
40' X 105' insulated building it does even better but need more fans to move the warmed air.
Thanks for posting this and go get your's built, sounds like you east coasters could use the heat right now.
I converted a old wood burning stove to a oil burner using the article above along with several outhers I found. I set it up last year. It works pretty good for the most part the square shape isn't the greatest but It works. My wood burner had forced air on it already so that helped get the heat out into the shop. I drip the oil down onto a dana44 diff cover and have a broiler pan out of old oven in the bottom to hold the fire. its really easy to start ussually 2 to 3 pages of newspaper will get it going. It is a pain to regulate the temp as the shop warms and the oil warms you have to keep turning the flow down. I started with a 1/4 turn 1/2 pipe valve and just couldn't get it right. Now I have a gate valve thats 4 turns open to closed and I ussually run it 1/2 to 3/4 turn open. For the last couple weeks we have had 0 degree weather and the oil just gets to thick to flow well so I have to use the torpedo heater for a hour or so while the oil burner gets going. I am heating a 30X40X14 unsulated metal building.
My dad and I are going to be putting a "hydronic" heater in his shop sometime this week or weekend.
Basically it will be a relatively new water heater that we took out of my grandparents house before it was tore down that has a water pump hooked up that runs to an old car radiator. The radiator will have a box built around it which will fit a box fan to push air through the radiator. There are a few other parts to add, but that is the basics.
here is a link with some pictures and the basic idea for the heater.
I know it isn't a waste oil heater, but from the magazine that we first found the article in they guy who built it said it kept his shop heated for like $30-$40 a month. The guy was from Oregon I believe so he may have milder winters, but hell if it works we won't have much into it.
Any reports on how this worked for you? I am thinking of building one, but space is my only problem.
The way I am understanding it is that the tank heats up, then you just blow air around it? I occasionally have kids and a dog in my shop so that may be a drawback.
Mine was quirky it would work but my oil supply wasn't enough for 4-500*sustained heat which is what I needed for the heat loss in my unfinished shop I had to give it a shot or two now and then out of a quart bottle
also I talked with this guy http://www.murphysmachines.com/ and his design seems good but I will be working on some thing else soon and it it works I will sell the lanair.....
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Related Threads
?
?
?
?
?
Pirate 4x4
18.7M posts
366.4K members
Since 2000
A forum community dedicated to custom off-road vehicle owners and enthusiasts. Come join the discussion about trail reports, builds, performance, modifications, classifieds, troubleshooting, fabrication, drivetrain, and more!