Updated Waste Oil Heater Drip Feed Ver.2.2 Detailed January 19, 2018 

If you choose to build one of these heaters just know that you need to be very careful and I will not assume any responsibility for anything bad that happens.

Anything that undermines government/utility companies screwing us as hard as they can, gets a thumbs-up from me.

While in the Marine Corps we used a heater similar to yours but much smaller if you use copper instead of pex you could get rid of the shield protecting the pex, by doing that the heat would warm the oil giving a smoother more controllable even flow through the drip system. Just an idea but if it's not broken don't fix it. I'm glad you include your son in these projects, he will always remember those projects with his dad.

I love that you had so much success without a forced draft fan. This is truly incredible!

Pretty cool kinda brings back memories from the early 1960's my dad built something similar but dad built a sand pot that sat in the bottom and his copper line with the fittings he made was feeding fuel oil from one of them big 500gal. Fuel oil tanks and where the line went into the side of the homemade heater he had it setup to drip the fuel oil into the center of the sand pot and you could adjust the amount of fuel oil drip to make the flame larger or smaller. Of course there were different types of valves and fittings. I guess i had to be around 7 or 8 yrs. Old then i don't remember the whole setup to a tee but thats what heated are cabin back in them days and i remember it was very warm in the winter. Skipping thru some videos and seeing what you built sorta brought back some memories.. That one you built is pretty cool nice job..

The most important part of it all. You and your son built it together. Create, learn, bond. :)

Awesome video. Great that you had your son helping you. Skills like that are much more valuable than any he'll learn in college and the memories of doing it with his dad are priceless.

Thanks for making this video. A former coworker and good friend had talked about a oil drip heater that he used while working in an old city workshop. thanks for the details, I plan on trying this out in the near future.

Thanks Randy. Between you and Gerry's DIY, iv built one myself. Had it burning on the weekend. Just adding some finishing touches and I'll be posting a video. I love RU-vid, learning is life!

Your son is getting a great education. Love it when i see a father and son working together. 👍

twenty years ago my 6 inch pipe plugged with ash, cinders and creosote, coming out of my wood furnace. It came out of the stove, did a 90, then another up to the chimney hole, then a third 90 at the chimney. I revamped it using two 45's instead. Hasn't plugged since. nice access to your stove's internals, and nice h eat capture. getting ideas to put oil to a different wood stove than the furnace mentioned

After checking out several designs, I like your burner design the best, especially the safety feature, makes total sense. Thanks for posting.

I really like how simple you kept it and the fact that a girl with some metal shop skills could make. Gives the DYL a whole new meaning as the heat will draw any oil fumes a way out and not in the building. I made a wood burner on a similar style way and the wood loaded from the side but up near the top of a oil line pipe pig which is quarter inch thick steel and stood four feet tall so real long branches or rounds could fit in it. shut down tight with the box full would hold a fire twenty plus hours. My air intake was at near the bottom above the ash and a clamming shovel would slide in to clean the trash. My shop was forty by sixty and some side rooms and it would be minus thirty outside (alaska) and in my shop was all cement so no burnables. I watched it like a hawk for about three or more months but by opening the flew up and setting the well casing chimney afire and the flames would go way up in the air if I didn't keep a eye on the creosote cause most my wood was sopping wet and that makes creosote bad but totally safe! I put wood in it in the morning and then left it alone and if I had the big maid door you drove rigs in was open for a good deal of time then I would have to fill it again at night but it burnt cottonwood and birch mix or some spruce green trees as I never had much to work with that first winter. The next year I bought five cords and used most of it every year but it was dryer and held better. Where the draft was I would smear some dirty grease rag with diesel and stick it in the draft and then use the torch or some propane heater torch and it would start that wood without kindling in minutes cause the draft was good and my chimney was twenty one foot stick (used one whole piece) I built it about close to twenty years ago and it is still working and still the same pieces

I love to watch TALENT. You and your son can be both proud and 'warm'! Sonny (CT)

Add a heatilator to the chimney pipe, it will reduce your chimney temp and scavange the heat out of the chimney to blow in to the shop, also allowing you to reduce your fuel usage

Hi. Building my own waste oil burner from a small stove. Im definitely going for the pan setup u have. Great ideas keep them coming

Very nice,,I used a old file cabinet over my flue pipe with a squirrel cage fan at the top blowing heated air down, works great, good to see men using their brains like this.

Nice and simple design. Thanks for the idea. I may try to make something similar which includes water heating.

Winter is getting colder. I need to make one of these. About time to use my everlast welder to make one.

I love the video..very well explained..unlike others that are showing us 2 hours of welding and then you have to figure out how it's built yourself..again thanks for a great video..

Thank you and all these commenters for the great information

First time I have seen your video and have to say that was very nice and easy set up. Good job on the video no b.s. just straight to the point

Just needs some BBQ black spray paint, and good to go. Thanks for sharing!

Just found this build and it’s excellent, thanks for sharing I have a 100 gallon propane tank and this build is now starting tomorrow! Of course I wait until winter lol thanks again!

I burn firewood and have as much as I need, but every winter I come to videos like this and consider making one for the shop. Mountain folks all know that used motor oil has twice as many uses as duct tape, and so folks spill a bit on their dry kindling to make a fire starter that will light with one match and burn better and longer than Duraflame. I love the ingenuity of your rig! We all burn oil every time we drive, and personally I think keeping warm is an even more important use than driving. Cheers bud!

A father teaching avson to think! Experiment, prototype, real life learning - words unknown to so many :( Great job man, and not just on the heater!

Love the Rush in the background

Watching from the UK 🇬🇧. Good job.

Looks like a great stove . Free heat !

If you leave the gate valve set, and turn the oil of with the ball valve, you probably won't need to change it all that often. For quicker shut off, place a ball valve above the gate valve and that will help to simplify things.

I do used oil burning for my boilers but with a way more advanced method and system. I use modified fuel oil burners plus digital logic control to get a hot clean burn. The trick is to modify the oil burner to have a preheater device just ahead of the nozzle to preheat the oil to ~ 300 350F to get its viscosity thin enough to spray like fuel oil/diesel fuel. The rest is just using a PID controller and a Teco PLR unit to keep that heater temp stable and to monitor everything so that things function as needed when needed when there is call for heat. The logic steps are simple. 1: Call for heat via a high/low input initiates the process. 2: PLR unit send power to PID units power circuit to get the preheater to warm up. 3: PID tells PLR that heater is below operating temp. 4: PLR waits until PID says it is hot enough, ~ 15 - 25F below PID set temp, via PID secondary "Low Limit Alarm" output function. 5: PID says heater us up to temp. (Low Limit Alarm off) 6: PLR turns burner motor on thus igniting burner. 7: PLR watches flame detect CAD cell voltage to make sure it lit and stays lit and is burning properly. 8: PLR also monitors burner feed line pressure to make sure filter is not clogged. 9: PID keeps oil at operating temp until burn cycle is done or preheater drops below 'Alarm setting'. When working properly the oil is fully pyrolyzed to make a hot clean flame that has no smoke and only leaves behind a light grey/white ash that amounts ot maybe 1 - 2 gallons of talcum powder like dust per ~ 1000 gallons of oil burnt. After a bit of refining to get the PID/PLR and overall logic functions pinned down the first year I have ran several of these setup now for going on 7 years and ~ 16,000 gallons of used oil burnt to run the boilers that heat my house and workshop and now brothers whole place to!

That's good. My dad was a cook in the army. Their field camp even ran on s deisel drip he told me. Said it was so hot.. I never really understood it...I do now! Thx

Thanks for the amount of info you gave us. Good to know that the heat exchanges work and the size of the shop was helpful also.

That's a really good design. I really like the idea of the 90 degree corners to create a vortex, and the safety of the flame self-extinguishing in case of a problem with the oil feed. The heat exchangers are a top idea. I'm sure you could use this to heat water and other uses as well. If you welded an 'edge' around the tank door and maybe some heatproof tape it would probably seal a little better and improve the draw as well.

Great work! For the door warping issue, put some flat bar along the perimeter of the door to give it more rigidity...and it will ensure you don’t vent too much air in from there...it may impede your vortex with turbulence, reducing its efficiency... I am a professional welder and build wood stoves on the side. Small ones, larger ones...some out of raw steel fabricated by scratch and also out of propane tanks too. I’ve never built a oil heater before, but I really like this design...i think for me, instead of the water heater I’m going to build it out of a a 3/16 wall pipe, 60” tall. Probably 15” pipe, and I’ll cap off the top and bottom. Thanks for the idea 👍🏻 I subscribed to your channel.

Any form to burn waste oil is brilliant. Great video thanks GREETINGS from Dublin Ireland bless you both.

Got a similar project on the go for a workshop heater, 30lb propane tank, with choke and throttle handles, 4" exhaust, and 5x 3" exchanger pipes pointing in a downward fan out pattern. Keep the heat flowing to the floor. Ill post a video once its got a tempgun on it but I have you to thank for alot of the ideas around using waste oil!

I really enjoyed your old Ned Shned, prank calls.

Great work, I feel if you put a fire rope seal on the burn door , it would increase the draft through the bottom, and not try to suck air in via the gap in the burn door,

Excellent ideas. I need to use my everlast welder to make a heater. Its getting pretty cold this year.

We had built one similar but used a 75 lb propane tank that worked great. My heat exchangers went in muti directions so not to heat in one area. I like the air hat ! I will use that in my next shop.

I like your used oil heater. Great video. Thank you for sharing this with us. Also, turn your radio off in the shop when making videos. Not only will RU-vid give you a channel strike for copyright violation, but the owner of the music can make life miserable.

That's awesome!! This is great inspiration for me to build one of these!

It's a real design I like that the burn air is naturally aspirated instead of fan forced. I'm making one for hot water heating included.

I think this design is great. I appreciate how you were clever and made most of it from what looks like a gas fired water heater. I know you said it was a water heater, but it looks like you used the center flue pipe from the original water heater for your heat exchanger, and maybe for part of your burner assembly too. And it looks like the bottom part of your burner assembly is the bottom pan for the gas burner in the original WH. Pretty cool. Doesn't cost thousands of dollars, and doesn't require any electricity or compressed air. Thanks for sharing, very cool stuff.

Great build. Only suggestion would be seal up the door leaks and bring in outside air so that you retain your conditioned inside air. Good choice in tunes as well!

Another quick question, in theory wouldn't it be more effective to place the heat exchanges closer to the air hat/burn chamber due to that areas reading higher on the thermometer? For example, on your first unit you built, you'd place the heat exchange through the pipe between the brake disc and propane tank.

First time seeing sometn' like this...very impressive my friend..& yes you're son will always remember this with you...thanks for sharing God Bless!!🙂🙂👍

Great stove! Thanks for the information. A 420 lb. upright propane tank would work awesome for this type of stove. I may have to look into that!

nice work clint!(and helper)

Reminds me of the heaters we used in the Army in Korea, early 70's. Basically a 55 gallon barrel with a drip carb at the base, just hung a jerry can of diesel on the side ,primed it , set the drip, open door drop in lit piece of paper. Couple of drawbacks though (as personally done), if the carb sticks fuel will pool in the bottom, which I unfortunately noticed as I tossed in the lit paper, oops, got cherry red almost burnt the shop down. The other is, if the heater is still hot DO NOT LIGHT until it cools down. Mine ran out of fuel so I put on another jerry can primed it and opened the door and lit, the fuel started smoking as I tossed in the lit paper....BOOM ! blew black soot all over my face and blew off smokestack...surprise. Funny, I can find no images of these heaters online.

Nice video Thanks. Another thumbs up for Rush Freewill playing the background.

perfect to use old fish and chip shop oil or old deep fry oil from local resturants randy, my ol mate here in australia uses it to make bio diesel so i cant see why it wouldnt work and the smell of it would make you hungry cheers mate

Great idea Invest in a co detector. Unless you have an open window.

A change that maybe worthwhile, would be having more smaller heat exchanger pipes - say 10x 2". Also, try running the heat exchanger pipes at 45° through the tank, so that the heated air within 'pumps' air through the tubes - you can avoid the need for the fan noise/electricity then.

Thankyou I'm making one for the next winter!

I had one of these years ago that i built. One thing i ended up doing was running a double feed line. One line dripped the bare minimum to keep it burning, the other had a solenoid valve hooked to a thermostat and would open on demand for heat. When the second line opened up it would be higher flow to raise the temps in the room, once the temp got where it needed to be, the solenoid would close and go back to the first line dripping only enough to keep it going. Loads of next to free easy heat. Btw i had the same exact blower fan on my setup. I eventually built a major upgrade with an old fuel oil furnace so i could run it 24/7 automatically and keep the garage at 40 degrees until i went in the garage and turned up the thermoatat. Be aware that for that setup you need a serious supply of clean used motor oil, vegetable oil, etc.

Great idea. Looks like it works well for you. The air quench I don't will work. Burner door would provide a tone of air.

Thanks, gave me ideas fir my own wood stove that is kick ass and now will add a oil drip option. The best thing for me is that I have been looking for a thick pipe for my flue and never found so jury rigged stove piping ...now I have the solution "fire extinguisher. ..brilliant and I have a few around Blessings Ps, please replace the plastic with copper!! And you may consider putting the pips at an angle (15 to 30 degrees works best) for natural convection so no need for fan (energy) and you can still use a fan.. also you're loosing lots of heat which could be captured off the exhaust pipe. I'm working on a spiral three smaller piping into one at the end at a 15 degree angle ... Had a huge shop in Oklahoma and I ran 30 ft of exhaust at 20 degrees away from the wall before going into ceramic flue to existing chimney and wow huge difference. I'm going to experiment with different "jets" to get hotter flair (lass pollution, cleaner burn and get back to ya Again thanks and Blessings

I like your set up! Nice burner design! I also ran a 40 gallon water heater tank with a through pipe to help heat shop air!

Nice work Randy

My wood stove has 3 -3" pipes running through it like yours. Difference between mine and yours is I have my blower connected to a pipe directly to my heat exchanger pipes - much more efficient. so all air from blower goes directly through the tubes unlike yours where you have the blower a couple of feet away. without my blower going, the tubes get red hot. With blower on brings so much more heat from the stove into the room.

Nice design. One suggestion to provide an overflow shutoff, you could bring a tube out of the bottom pan into an external vertical tube with a float switch connected to an electronic shutoff valve at the tank outlet. If the fire goes out, it would overflow the burn pan, and fill the vertical tube with the float switch, which would close the electronic shutoff valve. Might have to think about how to make it work during a power outage. This could also be done completely mechanically, which would solve the power outage problem, but might be a little more finicky.

I'm a former railroad worker,.I remember when the railroad change the heaters in the caboose from coal to oil/diesel. We used a drip feed! Approx, every 15 seconds one drop of oil would drip into the burner pan. You can slow that flow down.

That is soooo awesome. If the pex line were replaced with a copper tube it would pre-heat the oil before it enters the burn chamber increasing the burn efficiency. More heat using less fuel and cleaner emissions. Likewise the squirrel fan distance from the air intake.

You could harness a lot of heat by running the exhaust pipe inside a larger pipe and capturing the heat and venting it out like a central heat system.

I think I would use a 45 and move the line away from the heater, and replace the Plex with copper. Great heater. Thinking of building one for my shop

Excellent stove... will be building something similar soon to keep warm in my shop

Wom bud thats a really impressive and cheap set up bud. Well done sir. I would like to use that set up in a shed far away from my house and run glycol lines and a 2 heat exchangers and a water pump to safely heat the house lol

Weld a piece of 1/4 inch round stock to your door all the way around and a piece to the edge of the door jam on the tank. That should make it more stable

Our barracks (Army) used 2 drip heaters fed from 55 gal drums turned on their sides and mounted on wood stands outside. The barracks itself was merely canvas roof with screen sides which we covered with plastic sheeting during the winter. They'd glow orange at night while we were laying in our cots but kept us warm, at least when the Army saw fit to keep the tanks full. There was just a small pot at the bottom of each with a mere sheet metal box that had the flue coming out of it. Very simple. The valve was very small and only allowed for a drip (no stream) even though on cold nights we wished we could turn it up. The Army used copper tubing running across the floor to the middle aisle of the barracks. I estimate there were probably 50 of us in each barracks so I'd say they were about 100 foot long by maybe 18 or 20 feet wide. Design was so simple I was always amazed how easy it would be to duplicate. And I believe the fuel was diesel. We lived in those for 2 years out in the desert where it got quite cold after sun-down.

Looks great! Also, to the people commenting about CO: his exhaust is going outside. Very little exhaust fumes will be getting past the burner door. That heater will pull fresh air from the shop, and of course he'll have to crack a window for inlet air, but it wouldn't need much. No building is air tight. It'll be just fine.

That heat shield reminds me of a phrase "there's nothing more permanent than a temporary solution that works"

Hello Randy .... I can count on your help to make a burner like yours, the latest version, I find it spectacular, you can make a drawing of the burner with all its measurements, of the materials necessary to carry out the project, I am a old man who lives far away, end of the planet, a small country, named Chile.my heating system is wood, very basic ,,, but I have access to hundreds of liters of used oil ,, which I can recycle by manufacturing his invention ,,,, very grateful if I could do it ,,,, excuse my writing mistakes of your dioma ,,, I did it with the help of google translate ,,, a big hug friend ,,, if someday you travel to my country count on me

I made one years ago, there is a major problem if you keep the oil tank in the same room and especially above in the heat flow.. the oil will heat up and thin so more will pass through the gate valve so if you don't continually monitor the flow it will over-run. OK so you've built in a method so it 'drowns' itself and cuts off the air but what a mess, been there and done that. So, I'd advise moving your oil tank somewhere it will not be affected by large increases in temperature and use a metal one, not plastic, also use metal delivery pipes from the tank to the burner. I put a copper coil inside mine at the top that easily powered 6 room radiators. With your unit you could feed hot water from it into a fan assisted wall mounted shop heater making it far more efficient.

Great video. And very informative

I was just thinking .... where did that little critter come from ? Lol CLINT (my son). Great father son project. Good job you guys !!!!

That's a great job and a great project to do with your son! I'm sure that will stay with him for life and is worth more than you can imagine. I have a couple questions and suggestions if you are planning on making another one. I'm wondering if you could use an old water pressure/bladder tank that people use for well pressure. I cut one up and it seems fairly thick, maybe a little thicker than a water heater, though IDK. Another suggestion is maybe instead of mounting he heat exchanger pipes flat, what about installing them at a 20-45 degree angle, so they would act like a chimney, pulling air in from the lower point and the heated air would exit the higher point - natural convection cycle. You could also install pipe down to the floor and then connect it to the heat exchanger pipes with your current setup, and that would increase air flow a lot and would heat the colder air at the floor faster. Same could be done if you installed them at an angle as well. You could eliminate the fan once room gets up to temp. As for the drip mechanism would it work better if the oil was dripping at more points around the tray, like 4 or 8 spots instead of the single point? How well does it spread out now? I'm wondering how much that would improve efficiency if it would at all, and how much work it would be to introduce more drip points for the oil. Have you ever considered preheating the air that comes into the burn chamber? I'd be interested to know how that effects the setup and you could do it very easily by piping one of the exchanger tubes into the bottom air intake - or run a new one through it. Maybe run a vertical pipe through the burning area of the stove (or 2 - one for intake, one for heat exchanger) and exit right above the fire. One could draw air in from the top, down the pipe and into the burn box for pre-heated air, and another would flow the opposite way, drawing air in (lower the better) and flow up through the stove, exiting at the top. IDK, it's just a thought. I wonder how much heat is lost up the chimney - do you take temp readings on it. That would be interesting to see. If the temps are high enough, you could get a larger chimney pipe and do a heat exchanger the length of the vertical run and extract some extra heat if there is a lot being lost. Either way, good job, it's fun to think about these things even if some of the ideas aren't always the most practical, in some cases they may be useful, like if fuel is limited or a very large space needs heated. Here is a video you might find interesting and it's "technology" can be implemented in stoves as well. It's a tent heater made from a burning log outside the tent. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-QeHGDr81XwM.html

Nice work. If you manifold your exhaust to exit lower in your stove it will increase the heat captured. Create an unnatural exit. Right now your heat rises, and leaves.

Looks great 👍 even looks easy to build also Thank You

Nice simple design 👌. You will improve the burn chamber by putting some old heavy chain around the bottom of the pot to help vaporise the oil. A good source for a similar sized tank is from an old freon refrigeration system receiver vessel , the steel is much thicker .

Place the heat exchanger tube at an angle, heat rinses this will increase the efficiency.

---IT IS A GOOD BOULD... but if you change your heat x pipes to a 45 deg. the air will flow by itself. Heat flows upwards. Then you will not need the van.

very good job i am doing the same thing out of wood stove 1/4 steel got some ideas from you thanks

good tunes and warmth...

Also adding more heat exchanger tubes will reduce chimney temps and help scavenge even more heat

A like your taste in music too! No one commented about "Free Will" playing in the background?

I really like the drip tee where you see the drip.

thanks for the share!!!! great video

Why cut the x pipes going through middle extend them 5 6 inch for more x change. Good work I'm building one

Nice 👍

When I lived in Hamtramck (Michigan) early 70'sthe houses that I lived in had a fuel oil drip tank heater these heaters were commercial made. Needless to say it had to be pretty much in the center of the house. I had some low velocity fans to move the air around the house. I made sure my bedroom wan not far from the heater. Those heaters worked great of course you did have to be vigilant. The commercial units had a carburetor which worked great but like any carburetor you did have to clean it out once a year. As you had to do the initial heat up the air vent & pot tank open to hurry it up a bit but (you know it had to have a but), if you let it go to long with the doors open then shut the inner tank door closed it would sound like a jet airplane. She would have the whining and really shuttered until it evened its self out with the correct amount of air. I loved those things so much I put one in the garage to work out there in the winter, I made a metal shelf on top of it which I put my wrenches on to let them warm up. I definitely would not mind putting one in the barn now. From an old hippie. Spirit

I like that vortex air design .

First off I’m not a eco nut. We have a clean burn waste oil furnace in our shop. I’m wondering how much black smoke is coming out of the chimney? If it is very hot at the burning point with lots of oxygen it’s very efficient. I like the design. I love the will do it attitude. Most people who comment have never built anything much less even a peanut butter sandwich!!!!

Keep yourself warm there bro; sound like you have a cold.

Nice design and well built. I have a temperature control drip rate self regulation suggestion for you, as I built a dripper years ago, with this feature. If your oil receiver bowl has a funnel or concave shaped bottom, a high drip rate creates larger surface area which burns away faster to avoid overflow, while a slow drip rate results in smaller surface for slower burn. This gives you temperature regulation and some insurance against overflow, up to a certain drip rate.

Nice heater! I like the heat exchanger tubes. Would make a great improvement to Overall efficiency.

Greetings Randy,I got thinking about the way you placed the heat exchangers in your waste oil heater.You may be able to get convection out of them if you weld them in at a 45 degree angle pointing towards the ceiling.Then you would not have to place an electric fan behind the exchangers.The heat would pull the cool air from the floor and circulate it towards the ceiling.Does this sound logical to you?

Would like to see gen3 version with the top half set up like a rocket stove with a interior chimney coming off a cone going up through a 8 inch steel pipe insulated inside a 10inch pipe feeding up and then downwards inside the drum/tank then out about midways down from the top of the whole setup with the 6inch chimney. I hope you get what I mean by that. Basically half oil burner bottom with the rocket stove designed top half. This will get you some more BTU's into the shop with less outgoing chimney temps. Your running about 400F out the chimney when you may only need 250-300F to have a solid/safe draft. Compressing into the 8inch as described above then opening that to the barrel diameter and downward will release a lot of Btu's upward to the top of the tank/drum. I also would like to see version 3 have more structural doors for air and fire doors maybe even gasketed. I would keep the heat exchangers and add 2 more for a 5 dot pattern (maybe even build a intake manifold so you can push through the tubes) so you get some S pathing before going up into the conical area into the 8inch internal flue. The build idea is sound as is the execution, but leaves much to desire. Altogether great job on Version 2 you earned a sub from me cannot wait to see the mods on V2 leading into V3. If you integrate the idea's I gave I suppose you could build between the sizes of V1 and V2 for V3 and get better efficiency with the same Btu's output thus saving some fuel consumption and space used up by the system. Also please change the Pex out for metal if you can and use Kerosene mixed instead of gasoline for starting its safer and doesn't evap on you.

Awesome video, lay it down on its side, and then feel the heat