Self cleaning waste oil burner
Hi all its been a wile .
I have been so busy that I hadn't had any time to tinker or post much in a long time.
Last summer I put up a new shop Area 52.1. An this winter I had some time to tinker keeping it warm.
Here what I got so far.
The stove its self is a cast iron box wood stove.
I removed the top cover plate and replaced it with a steel plate with a hole for air and fuel .
The pipe is two inch black iron. And the blower was from an old propane furnace .
The foil you see was a attempt to cut down the air flow . This blower is way over kill and I ended up using a light dimmer to slow it down . I found that good air control is critical in getting a clean smoke free burn. This basically a force draft version of the Mother Earth News stove
The oil is gravity fed at a rate of about ½ gallon and hour this puts this at roughly 70000 BTU an hour input. Lighting is easy I put two paper towels in the burner turn on the oil drip wait a bit light it turn on the blower .
The only thing new here is the fire pot . All the ones I read about used heavy steel plate or pipe for the burner.
And are all plagued to one degree or another with a build up soft soot or rock hard crud that has to be cleaned out quite often .
Here is where I took a different track. What I am using is a cheap 8 quart stainless steel stock pot with a stainless steel bowl inverted in side it. The bowl works as preheat surface for the oil .
Set me back a whole 8 bucks at a Odd Lot store .
My reasoning was to have a burner that would heat up fast to maintain combustion and be easy to clean.
As it turns out after about 40 gallons of oil there is nothing much to clean out .
Now if you set the air flow to low you can get a heavy coating of soft soot but up the air flow and it will burn out .
I have been burning any kind of oil I could get my hands on with no problems. Even some WVO.
One thing I want to try is to increase the air inlet to three or four inch pipe to see if I can use natural draft
And do away with the blower. As of now I have no problems at all keeping the shop warm with it.
And it looks like I will get another heating season or two out of the pot and bowl.
Having so much fun it should be illegal
Old F