Project El-Cheepo Shop Heat

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falconvan

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 27, 2007
Messages
1,287
Location
Festus, Missouri
After several years of heating the shop with a torpedo heater and $4+/gal kerosene, I decided to build a waste oil heater for this winter. Our hot water heater lost an element so this seemed like a perfect time to break out the plans I've been holding onto for a few years. This is made using a tank from a 40 gallon water heater and a fairly simple gravity fed burner assembly. Here's the link if anyone is interested: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/ethanol_motherearth/me4.html#mwoh
 

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I seen a man do this and he drilled holes in the tank 2" i think and welded a bunch of piped threw the tank on top then put a box fan behind it to blow threw the holes he said most time he had to shut the fan off it got to warm for his shop .
 
This looks like a great idea. We drive so little anymore I would have enough used oil for the whole winter. I suppose I could get from other sources though. I'm interested in how your's turns out, keep us updated with plenty of pics [;)
 
Will do; I'm getting some advice from another guy that built the same heater but modified the burner for forced air and got a lot better burn results.
 
Pat I've been looking into this myself and many of the new synthetic oils you have to get up over 1100 f to get them to burn clean. Only way to do this is with a forced air unit and a siphon nozzle. I've been straining the oil into a 55 gallon drum with a cheese cloth. Next filtering will be when I pump it out it will go through an automotive filter (S10 4WD unit is remote and can be had cheap) then it will be filtered again on it's way to the nozzle. They say keeping the oil pre heated works best to. I think they said 120f. There's a whole write up on how to use the water heater element to do this. Basically you tap in 10psi of shop air or similar, add a squirrel fan blower and whala! 1100f heat![cl
Guys will heat a holding tank of water with it, use it to melt of heat metal for forging stuff etc.
 
You're right about using forced air, John. There's a guy over on the club hot rod site that modified his with forced air and it made a huge difference. He also starts his on diesel fuel, gets the burner hot, then switches over to oil. He's had pretty good luck with it.
 
Back in the 50's, I remember my dad had an old cast iron pot belly stove in his shop. He put a 5 gal bucket of old engine oil up on a high shelf and ran a small copper line down to the top of the stove with a little valve on it. When he got a fire started in it he would crack the valve and let old the drip slowly onto a couple of bricks in the stove. After a few minutes, the stove was glowing. It put out a lot of heat, but probably not up to today's 'safety' standards. Those were the 'good old days'.
 

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