My heater is an old pot burner, there is no adjustments! if it had a removable ash bowl I'd certainly do that, I may make a modified one!
I made some pot burners that had adjustments for heat output if not mixture. ( which they didn't require) Just have control over the primary air and they will go from simmer to furnace. Ran them on veg and WMO and they woked a treat. I'd be out playing with them at night and the mrs would brong coffee and sit there with me in the cold dark night. It was very nice actually although we often went inside and found we were then cold! :0)
For a fixed flue setup, I made the pot removeable but putting an old car scissor jack under the thing. Flue was fixed but the pot went up to it. To clean you just lowered the jack and slipped the pot out. Mine was literally an old pot with the flue welded to the lid and the primary air holes in it. The first part of the flue wasn't Drilled with secondary air holes, it was expanded steel mesh. It burnt really clean ( and Hot!) and this is what I put it down to, unlimited secondary air. It still pulled a god draft on the primary air which did surprise me but it worked well. That was about my 3rd incarnation.
The pot burners DO get a lot of ash though. My favourite burners by far are forced air swirl type. Have a load of Vids of them on my YT channel doing stupid power outputs and would easily burn 1L of oil a MINUTE but all the ash is ( I take it) blown out and the things never clag and are always perfectly clean at the end of a burn. I did one little burner that used a small 12V Blower for a bot bilge and that would put out plenty of heat for a home.
For fuel control which is the critical part especially on the small burners I have been playing with the little dosing pumps for fist tanks and the like off fleabay. With a PWM controller you can get a lot of control. I was also thinking of linking the PWM to the air blower so they were scaleable. Thing is though, the latitude of the air fuel ratio is so wide you don't need much control on the air although it might save some watts and if you werent' extracting heat from the flue. ( many people duct it out a wall asap which to me wastes heat) would be better to just have enough air for a clean burn.
I want to find an old wood burner and set up a small forced air burner in that. Seen lots with the draft burners but cleaning the crust out every day would annoy me when I knew they could run clean and burn cleaner still not clagging up the chimney.
is in the works a couple solar thermal collectors feeding a couple water buffer tanks for a boiler system with some DC heating elements as the dump load, or I'll use the ac side, either case I plan to save every watt as a watt or btu from all systems.
I forgot about that. I saw some of those glass tube heaters on fleabay last night. With the efficiency you get from PV panels, I bet they would work a treat where you are. Being so insulated, It would seem the cold wouldn't make much difference to them. Mate has a water heater with those, don't know how many tubes but he has a 400L hot water system and it will boil that by 10 am on a good day even if it were lukewarm the night before after all the kids were done.
They are pretty cheap now and I think you would get loads more heat out of them in your situation than the flat panel type. Again, heat the water through the day and circulate through heat ex changer ( car radiator) at night. Friend say's he gets heat out the things even on cloudy days which you don't with flat panels.
I'd really love to get an old place somewhere as a holiday house and do all this stuff. Hard here as the place is in an upmarket estate and it's all about appearances. Doing this DIY I love would upset the neighbors, bring the council sniffing round and take $250K off the value of the place. I'm lucky that on one side where the sun comes and the shed is located the neighbour is really good and we get on well. He thinks what I do in my place is my business and he makes plenty of noise in his shed so I won't have a problem running the lister or other engines and that's the side all the panels will face which he thinks is great to make your own power.
Ideally I'd have somewhere I could do Micro Hydro because I'd really like to put something with that together.
Slow and steady as they say, the most critical fix is the poor insulation and air sealage of the house!
I understand that.... now.
New house is obviously so much better insulated than the old 100 yo one.
Come in on a winters night and it's so much warmer. Come in in the evening after a hot day and it's so much cooler.
What remains to be seen however is how it goes after a string of really hot days as we get here. Building has to heat up eventually and when it does, i'm thinking it's going to hold that heat well. That's why I want to put an obscene amount of panels up so I can run the AC to my hearts content and not go broke in the process.
I did notice that all the doors did have foam sealing. I can see why. Now it's all gone away and perished, when it's windy the crack around the whole door has a breeze coming in around it. Major thermal leaks there and the place has 6 doors, 4 of them doubles. Might just tape some of them shut! :0)
Definately going to have to replace the foam.... once I clean the old crap off and repaint.
Old house had MUCH better fitting doors and 2 of which were sliders so quite well sealed. Just had air under the swing doors which was easily sealed by a draft stopper sausage thing. These doors leak like sieves all round.
That foam stuff may be a good place to start with your place too?