I have often thought about building one, but just never got around to doing it. Keeping the oil tank outside is smart. Thanks for the videos. Your ingenuity is awesome and I love the little details you throw in.
Your exactly right about the oil heating up and expanding. These heaters radiate a lot of heat. I've watched several videos as well. Many different examples and they all pretty much work similar. I'm sure some designs are better than others. I really like how you designed yours.
Too many holes in your up pipe. You only want holes around the top of the brake or half inch plate in your setup. That way the air will suck through the system with a lot more power and a lot more flow if you eliminated those holes in the up pipe.
I've been heating with wood for over 40 years, I've got an endless supply because every winter several trees come down and I got to cut them up anyway. With that said I also have to dispose of crankcase oil every so often and I guess it's a good idea to just burn it. What I would like to know is how many gallons per hour is your consumption. I love you channel and this was a great episode 👍☮️
Usage varies depending on how cold it gets, obviously, but once shop is warm and all I am doing is maintaining temp, it is no more than a gallon an hour.
Dude, thank you so much. It means a lot to me that you made this video. I was anticipating a 5 minute video lol, the fact you made a long video with great detail is amazing. Fantastic video
To reduce or stop the smoking put another row of holes around the very bottom of your riser and cover up all of the holes on your cover plate except the filler hole. I think you will find that works pretty well. There are 2 burns taking place. the first burn in the pot vaporises the oil and can smoke all it wants but you want plenty of oxygen in the riser to get a hot clean burn there, thats where you get rid of the smoke, my riser was a smaller diameter but still got to 750 deg f. The extra row of holes at the bottom of the riser will supply oxygen to the burn pot too.
@@misfittoys8883 If it still smokes try a smaller diameter riser so the air can get into the centre of the riser and burn the smoky vapour there. the holes at the bottom of the riser are far more important than the holes higher up, you want more holes at the bottom than the top.
Hi from uk 👋👍 great things to have around and if you did have power cut and stayed in shop for bit imagine the stuff you could get done👌 and as for the light bit you could drop mirrors around to reflect the light coming of the burner thanks for this one and thanks for your time be safe and see you soon👍👋
So if you fit a 6 inch pipe inside the gas bottle that made up the stove body, you create a doble wall tank. if you fill the space around the center pipe with dry quarz sand you get a nice heat buffer. the heat would rise a little slower in the shop, but the stove would radiate heat for longer when you kill the oil flow
Hello my friend, greetings from Greece. I have made the same design as yours and it runs completely clean. Yoy have to change the primary to secondary air ratio.. Primary is the air from the holes on the pot and secondary the holes on the six inch pipe. Close the holes on the pot one by one, especially the two large openings on the side, and each time you will see less smoke. You have to increase the air flow from the holes on the pipe , and lower the flow from the holes on the pot. Good luck Tasos
Consider a two parallel valve system inside the shop in addition to the main shutoff(#1).. One parallel valve could be your "cruise" setting (#2).. Never moves.. And the other lets you dump a lot of oil to get things started, but then you shut off valve (#3)
Well this beings back memories of he "Orchard Heater" my Grandpas shop had one of these heaters, we ran it with diesel no vent to the out side smoke went up into the overhead attic area soot'ed everything up for sure. We had a hand full of accidents ... LOL we washed part with gas. This was a great reveal and well worth the build if I had a garage.
The holes on the pipe at the bottom are a lot higher than mine. Also I have my flu pipe coming of the back of my tank just above half way up. As yours will be sending too much heat out the exhaust mine glows read after 20 mins run time .been working great for over 4 years.keep up the good work
I would add a 2nd ball valve inside the shop. Then you could just leave the one outside open all the way and adjust the flow inside where it is warm. Less residual dripping when you shut it off also
you need more hole at the bottom where you shove in paper towel that's where it needs more oxygen intake for a better burns, that's is what will make it a clean burn.
great work on the burner. I run a blower on mine for a different purpose but I like the stand alone operation of yours. as a suggestion and I am no expert, just a guy with an idea, about the smoke output. Your burner appears to have too much fire in the transfer tube (the pipe with all the holes) rather in the tank area. having the fire down lower with all the holes around, your draft weakens, if the point of maximum burn is shifted up into the tank you would improve the burn and possibly have a cleaner. burn. you can move the burn point up further by narrowing off the transfer tube and have less holes in it. the logic is to have the main fire occurring in the tank, it will draw better with a stronger draft. not sure if this would work but I think the concept is on the right track. I have a furnace is it runs very clean when all the oil is buirning in the chamber .
Great video. Good info. I’ve experimented quite a bit with drip feed. I have a simple suggestion for more air. A 5”or 6” long piece of 1-1/4” pipe with a 90 elbow. Notch out the existing notch in your dutch oven enough to allow the pipe to pass through and have the elbow turned up to bring fresh air in to the center of the flame. The fire around the outside of the burn tube is able to get air but the center may not be getting enough for complete combustion. I eventually went with a siphon nozzle running a pressure vessel for the oil, far more stable, very little ash and crud, more heat using less oil. I avoided a siphon nozzle because of it requiring air and didn’t want my compressor running all the time, but honestly it really doesn’t use that much air. I’ve got a few videos on my channel of it with some upgrades over the years. The best upgrade i did was a PID controller that i added a few years ago. More upgrades and videos coming soon
@@misfittoys8883 i was thinking about your setup a bit more. Probably the more important thing I’ve learned about burning waste oil is preheating the oil before it enters the fire. I run my oil through a coffee maker element to bring the oil temp up to around 200°F. You could try experimenting with a loop of line going around the base of your fire tube for a wrap or two before it dumps into your dutch oven. It doesn’t need to be tight against the tube. Just close enough to absorb some heat to raise the oil temperature. The cold oil coming it lowers the temperature of the combustion. Raising the oil temperature just before it enters the fire will raise the combustion temperature for a more complete burn without affecting your incoming flow rate.
Introduce fresh air via tube full of holes going through the upper section, adjusted with another ball valve. It'll act like a secondary burn chamber a lot like the new wood stoves.
I think if you drill a small hole say 1/16" at your "That's Way Too Much Oil" line it would give you a tell of max oil. As long as you have a catch pan under it. Maybe a small tube you could angle down to keep fire from following the oil out the hole.
You need a small blower to give you more air. You don't need a "pressurized air flow" you need more volume of air. Of course if you can get it to burn CLEAN without a blower, then that is a good thing, simpler is better most of the time with anything. Being able to run it in a power outage is a good thing. Your design reminds me of the old "Salamanders" heaters that people used Diesel in years ago when Diesel was cheap.
As far as why it's not as clean burning as you want, it's because you pot is too deep relative to where the ambient air inlet holes are. When you have a pool (no matter how shallow) of oil being heated by the radiant heat of continuous combustion above it, you end up with a layer of oil vapor sitting on top of that pool that is hot enough and fuel rich enough for efficient combustion. The problem is, there is practically not O2 there to facilitate combustion. You have a lot of air holes cut into the setup, but if you look at it, must of the air being drawn into those holes is being immediately forced up by the convective forces of the hot gases in there and not going down to the vapor layer where the fresh air can make for a cleaner burn. A lot of the fresh air is going right up the chimney without aiding in combustion. To clean up your burn, you need to force fresh air down closer to the vapor layer. You can do that without a hair dryer if you just put some short pieces of pipe in the holes in the top plate of the pot that will force some air down closer to the pool surface / vapor layer to initiate combustion lower. You maybe could then blank off some of the upper holes below the big chamber so that you get more air flow lower in the combustion area and less wasted fresh air being convected out of the shop.
Interesting I do have a cast iron skillet of the same diameter as the dutch oven I am using. If I can manage to find it, I will give it a try. Should bring the oil up a good 2 inches or so
@@misfittoys8883 That should definitely help. Just think of the Fire Triangle - Fuel, Heat, and Oxygen. The quicker you can get those three guys together, the cleaner and more efficient your fire will be.
I chose the larger dutch oven to have more leeway before overflowing it. Once the shop is warm and oil flow is throttled back, that is not even a remote issue
I have seen people crimp the the feed line to slow the flow and they ran the feed line around the exhaust to preheat it and also to create some pressure which makes it spray a mist into the burner area.
You need to cut the tank open and put you some baffles in there that will heat up and help burn the smoke and you will need holes in the bottom of the heater to allow oxygen in to get in there to help burn the black smoke . Most likely f your heat is going straight up the chimney, not allow in time for it to burn the smoke in the heat container itself and if you burn less oil and getting more heat that will create less smoke .
It’s nice that it works without electricity but it would be nice to have it set up to use a small blower for combustion air too for when you do have power. Make it so you could swap out the 120 volt blower for a 12 volt one . An automotive 12 volt battery would run a small blower for a long time till the power came back on. Great build that could work with or without electricity. 👍👍👍
What a great burner! I think if you could get some more air in there it would burn so much better, I've seen some of these type of stoves with a blue flame, which means almost zero smoke. Wish I had the math to tell you more lol
Glorious video - Thank you so much. I think maybe the tank part of your chimney is screwing up your air flow / air speed. Might be better to have one diameter, or a very gradual taper.
Informative concise. Thanks for heads up on it. Hmmm. Rumages in garage.. brake flange, ha Dutch oven.. 1/2 tube. Smoke stack, torch sounds....la da de hmmm haha. Mac
add steam which instantly turns into hydrogen inside the burn chamber, super simple, makes your waste oil last much longer and gives MUCH MUCH more heat
No gasoline for me. Too dangerous. Dirty towels and rags work good. I also filter old oil and wast veggie oil after it has settled out the sludge. That makes it a lot easier to regulate the flow over a longer period of time. I like to control the flow with a needle value and watch the drips or stream. Good luck 👍
Instead of keeping my supply tank outside, I made sure my overflow tub under my pot will hold more than the supply tank in case of overflow or I get distracted.
Good idea regardless of where the supply tank is. I should cut up a steel drum/barrel so the bottow will just slip under the burn pot for more disaster capacity than the pan I have now
You're not a hippie, but you're a tinkerer. Seems to me there's an obvious solution to your smoke problem. In fact, it's designed exactly for this purpose. And free. I think you oughta try putting a catalytic converter off of one of the junk cars onto your stove. and see if it doesn't both add more heat (they're designed to re-burn smoke at a high temp) and solve your smoke issue at the same time. Done. I'd love to see it in a future video.
Just a wonder, Would a piston pump work like an eberspacher? An electric pulse generator could be a very controllable fuel pump and heat control. Would a peristaltic pump work a totally controllable pump rate without pulses.
Mmm, seems you get some oil fumes coming out the holes that is meant for air intake, and that is a health hazard.😵 Now as you are having a problem getting enough air into your burner, have you considered having your oil pot changed out so you can have a fat pipe coming up through the bottom of the pot like in a cakeform, it would obviously need to be welded on, difficult with a cast iron pot... But doing that would help the airflow, and potentially facilitating better combustion etc, but it may also necessitate modifications to the air intake holes under the tank! 🙄 Stay safe, regards Niels...
I would imagine if you got the drip tube too close, the oil could potentially ignite. The big tank was not neccesary, just what I had handy. There are lots of other vids out there whete people use other random things for the burn chamber
Very nice! It's amazing how much thermal energy there is in waste oil! Do you use synthetic oil in your vehicles? I run an asphalt plant and it uses waste motor oil to feed the main burner. Our storage tank holds 15000 gallons and on busy days of steady running I burn through a 6800 gallon semi tanker load every other day. The main burner is rated at 110 million BTU, it has a 100hp main blower motor and uses about 75-80 psi compressed air as well. We light it with a propane pilot flame. We also have a tank agitator set up to stir the oil so any water or moisture doesn't settle down to the bottom. Getting back to synthetic oil, if I get a load with a lot of synthetic in it it's more difficult to light off but throws out much more heat. Oh, we also use an electric oil preheater to warm up the oil before it leaves for the burner. The ideal temp is around 175 degrees. Sounds like your heater might be getting a break soon, going to be in the 60's or better! Of course, it's Iowa. Will likely be 30 again in a few days!
I run straight synthetic in my Mustang, and a semi synthetic blend in everything else. Of course, I have no idea what is in the oil I get to supplement my own supply. I do avoid putting used gear oil in my supply though. Thay gets used for dust control on the dirt floor in shed
@@misfittoys8883 only as we get close to the end of road construction season. Our supplier is Valley Environmental. They have storage facilities in Newton and Burlington, Iowa and can hold around half a million gallons of used oil. They pick up waste oil from dealerships, quick lube stores and industrial maintenance facilities, screen and blend it and test for sulfur content. They collect and store the oil all year. As we get ready to start our season we'll start taking oil from them around the middle of April. If the weather cooperates we can pave through November into December. By that time, the Valley guys are pretty well depleted, but they've never let us run out! We did the paving in Osceola over the past summer on 34 and 65 going north through town. Was quite a project!
I stayed out of Osceola with my Mustang while you guys were repaving. Was afraid a moments lapse in attention would result in one of those manhole covers that were sticking up wiping out something under my Mustang.
Do you have pitch wood on your property? In case you're not familiar, pitch wood as it's called here is nature's torch. You can light it and it will keep burning. Might work? I'm not really sure but it's an idea and it's free.
I wouldnt go back to heating with wood even if someone brought it to me for free and stacked it for me. If someone enjoyed cutting and handling firewood thats great, but I dont. Got my fill of that when I was younger and had to help my dad with firewood constantly to heat the house.
So I made one similar to yours with a smudge pot has the bottom like what you've got and I noticed as it was choo-choo train it would Puff Smoke out of the vents have you experienced this
i know wood burning stoves have a re burn method to burn smoke such as using a Catalytic converter fore re burn preventing so much smoke, would you happen to know where to look fore some designs like that with a waste oil burner?
When it is going full tilt to get shop up to a comfortable temp, it is maybe a bit over a gallon an hour. After shop is up to temp, I throttle it back to where it is only a fast drip
In the nicest way possible if you don't want it to require electricity by blowing air into it but your running a fan to blow the heat around which requires electricity why not just face the fan towards the burner?
@@misfittoys8883 I could but that’s a process I really don’t want to do at all. I don’t mind a little popping going on but without popping the oil out and making a mess.
Where do you get free from time equals money material equal money how many oil changes are you doing do you have drive to get used oil that equates to time and money no such thing as free pal
Mine is very long and only has one hole. And I only play with it in my shop when its real warm! I love to play with it! Everybody's is different and different strokes for different folks! Yeah screw those dirty hippies!! 😂😅
@@misfittoys8883 Is not the volume, It's the echo. Sounds bounce off rigid walls making it so very difficult to make out what you're saying. A wireless lapel mic would eliminate some of it.
So there's a pot The pipe with holes that connects to the tank. You drill a hole underneath the tank where the pipe Connects. ? So the tank collects heat?
If I am understanding your question correctly, yes. Where the pipe with holes in it meets the old propane tank, there is a hole of same size as pipe cut through the propane tank
Try a little bit longer air inlet tube, maybe 1 or 2 more rows of holes. Also, if you live in Saskatchewan, don't put your tank outside. The oil won't flow at all.
No experience with these, but I'd have to think that some way to transfer more heat to the Dutch oven to better vaporize the oil would be beneficial. Maybe even some random bolts thrown in or some coarse steel wool under the drip.
@@misfittoys8883 looking back at when I commented this, I was watching this with my wife and we were at the part where you explained why the oil was in the cold part of the shop and I thought of what I thought was a funny joke that an internet troll with half a brain might ask ... so you said I keep the oil supply in the cold part of my shop to maintain viscosity so I don’t have to diddle with it while the room is heating” so the whole stupid question would have been “but what about when it’s hot outside and that room is no longer cold?” Doesn’t read very well either but now you have me picturing you having an a/c unit on full blast to keep your oil cool so it will heat the already boiling room a true sweat shop.... 😂 idk, still is giving me a giggle because we all know there is some one out there in the www who probably asked this question genuinely... anyway thanks for sharing, I’m in the design phase of one of these and you are the first person I’ve watched that had the common sense to keep the oil cool so you wouldn’t have to keep messing with your flow rate as the temp raises in the shop...
Thanks for sharing this. I’ve noticed this thing in the background while watching your videos and I’ve wondered what in the world is this thing. I’ve never seen one before. Makes great sense! Burning waste oil. Most people see waste oil as a pain in the ass to deal with. Great idea !!
How many square feet shop are you heating? I have a 1800 SF shop I have been heating With a wood stove. It work ok but I have been thinking about a wast oil burner as yours.
I have never measured my shop space but I would guess it is maybe 800-1000 square ft at the most. My heater is definitelyable to heat more area than what I have. Once my shop is up to a comfortable temp I throttle back the flow to a tiny stream.
Yeah from what I’ve seen you won’t get enough airflow just with the burn alone to clean burn the oil. Not sure how it affects the cleanliness but I know a lot of videos show a steam- siphon added on to increase airflow by just adding water to a boiler. I hear it cools it down slightly but that’s only compared to an added blower/ compressor so I imagine it would be comparable if not hotter than your current build. Of course you could just turn down the oil if things get too hot
