When your ready to replace the top drum, try installing a horizontal baffle in the half way point in the drum. pressing against the back / Bottom wall of the drum. leaving a space of aprox 6" in the front under your removable lid installing you stack on the bottom of the drum. this will create a 2 pass forcing you flue gas to pass twice through your top drum.
I made one of those baffles inside my single barrel stove to burn up the smoke before it exits. I have no smoke and more heat with less creosote buildup.
Bobby, I'm planning my GH as a winter project, so I came back & re-watched this and your other GH videos a couple of times. I realized that your VERY FIRST video was the original GH video done in Dec 2010. Man, you have come a LONG way in less than a year! You're a YT star! Someday I hope to be as successful and informative as you are. Had a little setback this summer with the rental prop, but I'll be doing more vids this winter & next spring. Thanks for your inspiration AND information. Karl
I've learn more watching your videos than any others. You have saved me a lot of time and trouble thinking through the problems. Thank you for your videos. Don
The cost factor is what got my attention. There's no way that I could afford to heat 2 greenhouses with oil or gas. Something simple, yet effective, was what I needed. The barrel stoves fit the bill. The idea of burying the lower barrel, or incasing it in concrete or rocks is interesting. Thanks.
Thank you sir. I learned a lot from this first setup. When I built the second greenhouse, I used what I had learned and did a much better job on the stove. Its a much bigger greenhouse, so I needed to be as efficient as possible.
Uh oh...you gone and done it now. You said something about welding. I am terrible at welding thin sheet metal. 1/4 steel is no problem, but the lightweight stuff gives me a fit.
Great heater. I built one with plastic barrels, built a form, poured concrete, melted the barrels, leaving concrete cavities. The thermal mass of the concrete heats the green house for two days. Can’t clean out the upper chamber like you can though
This is awesome! I appreciate your video more than I can say. I am definitely going to do this. I have spent days watching videos and jotting down ideas about how to heat my greenhouse but yours is THE BEST so far.I am still in the planing stages for my greenhouse but when it is up and going I'll give more feedback (probably next winter as I am going to try to have the greenhouse completed this summer).
Nice setup, thanks for sharing and keep up the good work. I wanted to mention to anyone who might do this... DO NOT FOR ANY REASON burn so much as one stick of CCA pressure treated lumber in this or any other wood stove. It is tempting to burn the scraps but the ash that remains (and escapes through small cracks into the inside of the greenhouse) is EXTREMLY poisonous! No Joke here.
I don't know how much per week, since it varies greatly depending on the outside conditions. But I went thru 8+ cords of wood this past winter in the 2 greenhouses. For the upcoming season, my plan is to shut down for 6-8 weeks when the weather is coldest to cut back on wood usage, and to give me a break. Of course, I had the same plan last winter, and kept it going straight thru. So we'll see how it turns out.
I actually considered something like that, with one end outside so I could load the barrel without going into the greenhouse. I ended up building a room on the end of the new greenhouse for a new stove setup and to store a decent supply of wood. It has worked out great.
@TheDarkowen Thanks! Its great to hear from you. You were one of my first subscribers, back before I knew what one was ! Thx for sticking with me ! I really appreciate it !
These are simply metal barrels with removeable lids. The metal circle is called a locking band. It makes it easy to get inside and clean things out. I bought these from a lady online for 10 dollars each.
It was just a local site that has odd things for sell. The lady had gotten some barrels from where she worked and was selling them to make some extra money. If you have a site over there that has classified ads, that would be a good place to start. Just search for "55 gallon drum" and you might run across something.
Excellent. I want one for inside my house and my small wooden garage, where i will be converting it into a small house, off-grid. Keep up the great work.
Add some mass such as fire bricks or some other ceramic material to the top barrel. It will absorb heat and release it over time so if the fire dies down it will still give off heat.
If you add a third barrel, and take even more heat out of the stove, it'll probably reduce the exhaust temps to the point that creosote becomes a constant problem.
i really enjoy to watch your videos .. for some reason not only in the greenhouse but also at the field you teach people 100% the way that you are suppost to learn ......keep up the good work because you are the best
Sounds like a lot of hot air to me! lol Thanks for the vid!!! Daniel and I are hoping to put something together in our greenhouse for the winter. We picked up one barrel from Memphis twine when I bought my crop netting and they are supposed to call me when they empty another one! I think that I'm going to dig out about 2 feet deep and set the stove in it to give me some room for extra dissipation. My greenhouse is only 7 1/2 feet tall!
Great video!! i have been using a single barrel heater for the last several years around the camp, and at my cook shack, as far as heat goes it has worked fairly well , My biggest problem seems it dont draft like i think it should and aint getting enough air, if the door is cracked open ,it does great . i just done another one and it seems to smoke out the door better than up the smoke stack which goes straight up thru the roof , my next attempt will be use pipe & a fan to get it air like you have done . i have drilled air holes but still works better with door open or cracked open .
Bobby, I have a double barrel stove but have never used it. I have natural gas for my greenhouse but I thought of using the barrel stove and the gas would be backup. My thought was to use an addon shed as you have thought of and using a fan to blow the hot air into and circulate through the green house. I also wondered about running water lines through the top barrel and using hot water heat. I'm not ambitious enough to get it done but maybe you are. Love your videos, keep them coming. Phil
On the galvanized silver pipe have you tried sloping it more so that any condensation on the inside will go back to the wood burner. that way the condensation doesn't just sit in the pipe and will go back to the heat and dry it out
Put 2 or 3 secondary air tubes near the ceiling of the bottom barrel like the modern EPA stoves have and you'll burn a lot less wood and have hardly any smoke coming out the chimney.
I’ve watched a lot of ur videos cuz I’m marking a green house that’s never been done before & lot of the things u do are pretty good & simple keep it up
I made a grate out of old plow shares I just put a inch gap between them. they usually have 3 to 4 holes in them so you can bolt them to a couple flat irons that run the length of the stove. This is perfect since you can take one end of your barrel off to get it in.
The plastic is plenty far away. Heat dissipates rather quickly moving thru air. Thats why it takes several hundred degrees to be able to maintain an average temp of about 60.
I basically set it up per the manufacturers drawings. One of the problems with trying to capture all of the heat is that you end up with low stove pipe temps. There is a lot of heat dissipated in the second barrel. If the exhaust temps are too low, then creosote becomes a serious problem. And that's not good. Its a tricky deal trying to get as much heat as possible, while not being too greedy.
@cfenster If you can get some 35 gal barrels, or whatever the smaller ones are, that might be better. There is a tremendous amount of heat being generated in the 55's...might be a bit overkill. And the hardware bkts support both size barrels.
Very good video friend. Thumbs up! Heres some more tips. Paint your 'fan box' and pipe black, and put it in a southern exposure if possible. Additionally, if you can run your air intake, through or around the stove, before running it outside, this would also help pre-heat the intake air. Making your stove even more efficient.
@imstillworkin I've got to come up with something. The grate really helped. I saw they had the stove pipe, I'll be going with that the next go round. It was an awesome winter. Snowed several times in December. I had to shovel a path to the GH ! And it was like another world inside, a really cool experience ! Now, its just down right HOT !
@MelodeeRose Thats the thing that made the most difference. It makes starting a fire a piece of cake. Like a car going 0 to 60 in 4 seconds... it gets a fire going in a hurry.
@dahistoryman That is something that I've thought about quite a bit. Right now, its about cost..copper is too expensive for me to be experimenting with. 2 options I've considered...wrapping the outside of the top barrel with copper, maybe 3/8, and pumping it thru an A-coil or other heat exchanger and using a blower...or just pumping it thru a long grow bed using pex. After I get the new one setup, I may try this.
I think I would weld 2 barrels end to end as the bottom, first one outside the house, take what you have now and weld another one to the front, finished, need a large fan to distibute the heat and things will be better.
hi... nice video. i wanted to comment about the bricks. i am speaking from theory, and from what others have done... i have not done it myself (yet). i saw one guy that used vermiculite. he built an inner chamber in the top and bottom barrel, and in the outer chamber, he filled it with verm. its light, cheap, and is a mineral so won't burn but will help retain the heat and make the burn more efficient. hope that helps. thanks for sharing your experience
@atzerath No, not a dumb question at all... I tried some firebrick in the top barrel, and it was just too heavy. Those barrels have fairly thin metal, and I wasn't comfortable with the additional weight on top like that.
I lined my burn barrel with fire brick half way up. I also baffled the upper barrel that routed the wood gas to the front of the barrel then attached the stove pipe flange at the back if the barrel directly above the burn barrel pipe. I welded up my log grate from 5/8" rebar. My stove runs at 750-800 degrees at maximum fire. Using a fire brick liner allows banking coals and makes the barrel last much longer. I did forget to mention building an angle iron frame that fits inside the burn barrel to hold the fire bricks in place. My stove heats a 5000 sq ft. 2 story barn that was converted to a home. My next barrel stove will use 30 gallon barrels. I agree with you about using barrels with removable lids. Currently I am fabricating a wood stove using a 100 gallon propane bottle. Thicker steel means a longer lasting heater. If I wasn't living in a mobile home I would be heating with a rocket mass heater.
Yes sir, double poly is a good idea. Since this video was made, I did add the second layer. And the new greenhouse that I built also has double layers and the inflation blower. I haven't used any type of bubble wrap.
These things are real popular in off grid cabins in Alaska. They put out shit tons of radiant heat and are quite efficient for the price. Sure, I'd love to have an 80% efficient EPA stove, but those cost $1000+. A barrel stove can be built for about $40 and is about 65% efficient. I use it to heat my garage and even at -60*F, it heats my garage up to +70*F in about an hour or two. Another thing that I've seen people do is bury these in rocks or concrete to store the heat.
Unfortunately, waited to late in life to get wisdom regarding unplugging, living off-grid and going green. It costs money to go green, and a lot of it. However, in small ways i make changes that doesn't cost much at all. Take care and continue ur great journey.
Your ultimate solution will be to make your own outdoor furnace. To go the cheapest route, use your barrel stove wrapped with soft copper line just outside the greenhouse. Run underground lines for glycol hot water inside the perimeter of your greenhouse, using thermostatic control over the draft to your stove. You will need to enclose your stove in a structure of course, and I would suggest using sand as the thermal mass and for fire isolation. You may need to use 4x4 framing to hold the sand.
@grandaddyc I'm not familiar with that stuff. I was thinking of just using a rope gasket around the lid, and then using the high heat caulk stuff around the access door. That lower barrel has temps around 1K degrees at times, so its gonna take something that can withstand those kind of temps. I really would like to get it airtight, so the stove would work at an optimum level.
@mediamaker2000 I have watched several videos about them, but I don't fully understand the process or how to apply it to what I'm doing. After I saw how well the barrels worked, I just concentrated on ways to improve them. I'm sure theres a simple method for the rocket stove, I just haven't researched it very much.
@dianemummvideos Hmmm... I'm kinda booked up the next couple of months ! And I'm sure there's some travel involved as well. ... They are really simple. If you decide to go this right, I'll be glad to help you. Its 18 x 40, really not very big. That stove would easily heat twice that size if I did a better job of insulating, and added the second layer of plastic and blower.
@thinkyourright Rebar is too soft. I just put a stainless steel grate in it, (as noted by the VR) and should have no problems. True on the pipe..much of todays metal is recycled junk. When making a video on a topic, you don't know if the viewer has seen 50 more like it, or if its the first one. I try to explain everything as best I can. I'm sure you've seen plenty that provided few details and left you wondering. Merry Christmas ! ;-)
@SidneyBou Thx. Around here, I dont think anyone uses coal, at least I haven't heard of it. Theres a lot of outside wood boilers though, something I'd like to have.
Listen.. if you can make longer extention tubes between both stoves and a longer exhaust stack. You will keep most of the heat inside and warm things up better and longer. Don't put the stoves rigth on top of each other. Also try to set them up side by side at an angle more desipation. So you won't be loosing most of the heat out the stack. But thats up to you to make and design. You seem to know a lot about your greenhouse and weather conditions.
@anyusmoon1 Yea, a small panel would run a fan no problem. I'm gonna do a lot of things different next winter, I just haven't figured out what they are !
@djs6576 Thx, I looked them up, not a bad deal. I'm gonna try to seal the one I have and see how it goes. If it fails...I'll be ordering the deluxe version.
@40markava Yep, I stopped by Tractor Supply this morning to see what they had. Gotta do some measuring, see how many I need. I'll be getting it setup shortly, forecast is for 40's this weekend. :-(
@breckandy I do have a box fan above it now...as its situated on the opposite end of the GH. 2 more fans provide good air movement and uniform temps throughout. The plastic is 6 mil GH poly, and the hoops are EMT...electrical conduit. I did a video on the grate and new setup recently and listed it as a VR below. This thing is working like a charm, very much like a typical furnace. End of the world? I dunno....but it aint gonna be pretty !
@mrbr549 Sounds like some of the ideas we tossed around. I've got a couple of buddys who are great HVAC guys, and wrapping in copper was suggested, as well as pipes in the barrels, and even a large heat exchanger. There are 2 things I need....function and simplicity. It has to heat very well, a lot of BTU output. And it also has to be able to operate without electricty. Trying to picture what you're suggesting... let me think on it a bit ;-)
Of what I know(and you have the best !!!) what, these are great stoves, hands down. this is how you do it !!! you can use bed frames for a coal bed.(grid), the fan starts the fire in a hurry , but you can use a air injector to assist the exhaust,up the pipe rater than pushing on the flame. this way any time you need to add wood to yor stoves house is is neg.pressure and it sucks hard from the outside. it's like a venturi effect so to fix that a switch to shut off the fan when refueling,, the only problem I can see is a lack of humidity. that could be solved with a large pan of water on the top of the stove, to accommodate the given plants humidity's needs. why I say this is, pulling outside air can mess with the humidity ? and most plants like it humid and warm ?. once again you have the dream double barrel set up. = crazy heat !.efficient, and GREEN and self supporting, if done right!!!. good job, nice build .! KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK.and a heads up to the idiots that have no clue.
Maybe you can build a cinder block wall around the stove to block the intense heat from the plants and to store the heat. You should have been an engineer!
I think the galvanized pipe is just too thin for this application. I switched to a heavier black pipe and it seems to be holding up fairly well. This was my first attempt and I had a lot of learning to do.
@MrHoneybee1234 With the current setup using a thermostatically controlled fan, I'm getting about 4 1/2 to 6 hours. It hasnt gotten real cold yet, so I expect that to be cut down to about 4 to 4 1/2 hours. Thats a lot better than the 2 1/2 to 3 that I was getting at times last winter. I want to be able to go to bed, and get back up only once. A 4 hour burn will give me that.
@bigfatcahoonas Thats an idea that has been "floated", no pun inteneded ! The problem with that is trying to support the 30-40 gal weight. If the barrel was turned 90 degrees, and a support was built under it, that might would work. Welding would be another issue. I'm terrible with thin metal, so trying to weld inside a barrel, and make it water tight, would be a problem for me. It does sound like a good idea though.
If you didn't have the intake fan you would want the temp of your exhaust (at the exact point it exits the chimney) to be 200 f to ensure good draft. Could you put the stove very very close to the ground, then run the chimney pipe diagonally up to the exit point, at the far end of the greenhouse? The stove and chimney point of exit would be at opposite ends of the greenhouse. This would give you a heating element (the chimney pipe) the length of your greenhouse. Just a thought, great video!
This is pretty clever. I like the combustion air fan connected to timer and outdoor thermostat. I'm a heating contractor and you are giving me some great ideas. How about a $10 box fan pointed at the unit or hung from the ceiling to disperse heat to the end of the greenhouse, maybe connected to a snap disc thermostat. $10. What is the greenhouse made of, 6 mil plastic and pvc pipe?. Gives me an idea for end of world scenario :-)
If your stove smokes you need to improve draft by raising the height of the vertical chimney, preferably with insulated pipe outside the structure. To get more room around the stove place steel sheeting shields 18 inches from the stove allowing the heat to thermal upward and throughout the green house. I run a single drum stove in a large house with 28 ft tall vaulted ceilings at 5,000 ft altitude. The single wall vertical pipe is over 20 ft tall before it goes through the ceiling. It heats like nobody's business.
@Allen2045 Thats kinda my idea, build a small room or something for the sole purpose of putting the stove in there. Not so much a room I guess as just a place to house the stove. It would have to be fireproofed, specially constructed. I've also considered one of those old cook stoves, like a Mealmaster...cheapest I could find was about $500. It might be on my wish list for some time.
@Marlania1 Hmmm...very carefully ? lol. Kinda simple, each hoop is 3 10ft pcs of 3/4 conduit, bent on a homemade jig, secured to the ground with 3ft pcs of 1 inch conduit. 2x4 and 2x6 framing around the bottom, ends are 4x4 and2x4..windows I had on hand...framed ends to fit windows. Plastic secured by 1x2 furring strips. When I start the next one, I'll do videos of the process. Its gonna be very different.
@selfreliantboy I looked it up...not a bad setup. Just one problem..or rather 3800 problems ! For that price, I'd pay a little more and get a Taylor wood stove. If I'm gonna pay 3800 for a wood stove like that, it needs to cut and stack its own wood, and then have an auto-loader ! Did you miss the part about me being poor ? lol I'm trying to use the general idea of an outside wood stove, and configure the barrel setup similarly.
Two suggestions: Adding a layer or 3 inside the second barrel to increase the path the heat has to take. Second adding fins to the barrels to increase convection (heat transfer).
@deanznz You're gonna have to draw me a picture on that one. You went way over my head there. As for efficiency, I think thats where the second barrel comes into play. There is a lot of heat disipated by the second barrel that would otherwise have gonna up the pipe. I just added the second layer of plastic on this one, with the inflation blower...and I can tell a big difference already.
The barrel stoves are quick and easy to set up but I'm also considering building a masonry stove which would have greater thermal mass . I might even add a oven to it so I can make pizza . Ha ! And I like your idea of being able to feed the stove from the outside so you don't have to store the wood inside or be opening and closing a door.
I actually did that for awhile, but I didn't feel comfortable with the additional weight. These barrels are not very thick, so I didn't want to take any chances.
@MrMarketing4u Thank you sir ! I agree, sure would be nice to find some American made stuff once in awhile. Other than DEBT of course. We seem to make plenty of that. :-(
@mmlrc6atgmailcom The ideal situtation would be a stack straight thru the top of the GH. But I didnt want to cut a hole in the plastic. And I was afraid of falling embers, making holes. I am considering the small room with fan...but if I lose power, I could have a problem. I've got generators, but I'm thinking of a long term outage. I'm definitely using some type of black ground cover,for heat retention, and to cut down on the dust. It gets bone dry in there. Still a work in progress. Thx !!!
