the quest for cheap heat

[big worm]

i gotta 2660 sq foot greenhouse i piddle with. i bought a wood stove kit to convert a 55 gal drum into a heater, also bought the doubler kit for a two drum stack heater. been playing with it for about a week. "the single kit only 1 drum" with 20 feet of new 6" pipe and a cap. the top is 40" above the house and 12" off the sidewall she works well......i can keep it 40-48deg f over nite when it dips into the 20's. all i really hoped for was to keep it above freezing and have done that with a poor supply of wood...and...some used motor oil. my drip tube is small so it clogs often enuff to have to enlarge it for better control... i'm on it..lol. i've seen these oil/wood rigs all over the place thru the years but, this is my first go at it...a wood stove virgin i know there are some great ideas kicken around in some of you guys heads in here for me. i got all the oil in the world right across the street. i have crammed it tight with split wood and closed the damper before bed time and it don't freeze overnite.
i feel fairly safe in a plastic house burning wood, i worryed about the heat melting the film.....so far its ok..does the second barrel make that much more heat than a single unit? i would like warmer than above freezing but not so hot as to melt the house down. think a double stack would be to much?

[Tater]

ran across this a while back hope it might be of some help -- http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_lib ... h/me4.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

[big worm]

thanks tater..yea i had seen that one, thats where i got the idea to burn the motor oil for fuel a good while back. i did steal from it a bit tho. after i has some killer coals burning, i placed an old 6" cast iron dutch oven directly under the dripper an once she got real hot i started oil burning inside it....works like a charm..so far. i just wish i knew how hot the top drum really gits. if it got as hot or hotter than the bottom one does it jest might be to much

[Tater]

If ya have power there ya could all ways put a exhaust fan on a thermostat as a safety.

[big worm]

oh yea i got power, i'm running two 18" circulation fans one haing near the heater blowing down one side and the other on the other end blowing to the heater from the other side. i guess i could rig a safety thermostat to one of the exaust fans if needed. i got nothing but oil burning right now and it ain't neer as hot as a wood fire is but, it dirty burning stuff crap builds up in the pot fairly quick....wonders how bad used oil will clog up the pipes or catch on fire from build up

[minime]

I saw a blacksmith forge set up a few years ago for use with used oil. Just the pump and stuff out of an old oil furnace. Those pumps are very strong!
This fellow would get all kinds of used oil and just let it settle out in 45 gallon drums 'till it was fairly clear then put it in his tank to burn. Used motor oil burns much hotter than regular furnace oil does. Worked like a charm. Don't think it would pass an EPA inspection though it wasn't at all smoky. The highly atomized oil burned very clean.

[big worm]

i seen a set up in a junk yard that used the"gun" or sprayer from a furnace it was bad assed...wish i would have payed closer attention to it is there a limit to how far you can run stove pipe?

[Tater]

They make a junk oil burner that's gun fired.-- http://www.plansandprojects.com/My%20Ma ... undry.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

[Hack]

The thing about a wood stove is you actually lose most of the fire's heat up the chimney. My guess is that the second barrel helps capture some of that.

I'm a big fan of the russian/finnish masonry stove where you make a stove with a masonry chimney that folds back and forth. The masonry absorbs the heat and slowly reradiates the heat back into the room. Supposedly you can heat a 2,000 sq foot house with an armload or two of wood a day. You build a fire and run it wide open and then get a nice even heat from it for 12 or so hours. Also because the fire burns quick and hot it actually burns very clean as well.

[trthskr4]

I would think that the second barrel would act sort of like a thumper on a still and be sort of parasitic to the bottom drum. I would doubt it gets hotter than the burning drum since it is merely capturing some of the heat loss from the chimney/stove pipe. I've seen one or 2 of these before and the bottom drums paint was completely burned off but the top drum wasn't nearly as badly damaged from the heat.

I also wonder if you could build a seperate sturdier stand for the second barrel and fill it with water to dampen the heat if it gets too hot.

On a side note, my parents recently bought a home with an outdoor wood furnace which heats the house and 90 gallons of hot water. We found that it had been used to burn pine, oil and plastics and clogged up the stove pipe which stuck out the top of the shed. I guess the tar or what ever it was would solidify on the cold pipe sticking out above the roofline as it burned. We put new a new pipe on it and filled it once in the morning and once in the evening and it kept the house warm all day and nite with some wood left over. I'm looking into getting one for my house now.

[minime]

On a side note, my parents recently bought a home with an outdoor wood furnace which heats the house and 90 gallons of hot water. We found that it had been used to burn pine, oil and plastics and clogged up the stove pipe which stuck out the top of the shed. I guess the tar or what ever it was would solidify on the cold pipe sticking out above the roofline as it burned. We put new a new pipe on it and filled it once in the morning and once in the evening and it kept the house warm all day and nite with some wood left over. I'm looking into getting one for my house now.

I've a friend that built the same type of system............heats his house and his business (a large auto body shop) and keeps his greenhouse above freezing. He had to switch to a glycol solution because water was causing too much corrosion and clogging up the system with sludge, reducing efficiency. Absolutely amazing how well tt works.
I've been trying to get him into our little hobby but he has no interest. He doesn't mind a free bottle every now and then though.LOL

[big worm]

the menonites here use the wood/water furnace for heat, you can burn 4-5' logs in them. im just trying to get some btus for as near free as can be got. i'll ask around the heat/ac places for a used furnace to scalp some parts off of. looking across the pasture i see smoke form the chimney so the oil drip burned in the pot without wood thru out the nite. the dripping system just don't put out the heat like a forced system does. i think i might just add the doubler and see what happens i agree that it just holds the heat a bit longer before it escapes the pipe

[theholymackerel]

I've been usin' woodburners for many years.

I'm gettin' older and what used to be a small chore is gettin' bigger... so this year I went in search of cheaper, less laborious, heat. I found it in the shape of a wood-pellet stove.

They've come a long ways in the past 15 years. The one I bought will burn wood-pellets as well as corn, cherry pits, crushed nutshells, and is adjustible in either direction far enough to be able to burn "future fuels".

Every day and a half or so I pour a 40lb sack of pellets into it, and my mornin' "heat the house" chore has become pushin' a button and walkin' away. It has awsome heat exchangers in it. They work so well that I can bare hand touch the stove's exhaust pipe.

I'm really happy with my new stove: It's self-lightin', has a huge hopper, and is more efficient than any woodburner I've ever used (the heat ends up in the house not up the pipe).

[big worm]

i've seen the corn stoves in magiznes and the pellet makers on ebay once or twice. the one you have sounds pretty good tho. i have a pot burning pure oil and the green house is fairly warm....no below freezing temps last night.

[smokerscully1]

I've got infloor heat from a propane fired hot water tank--a wood stove and a propane space heater. Man do I love that infloor heat--floor is always warm and that helps to heat the house a little bit. I'm in the process of hooking up a wood-fired boiler to the system. Lots of outdoor wood stoves in this country but they all seem to burn a ton of wood and they are very expensive to install. Installation nowdays is a piece of cake with Pex piping--anybody can plumb with that stuff.
I have a friend in Minnesota with a corn stove--really great set-up--but he grows his own corn. Minnesota with its wind and high humidity gets way colder than here. It was -29 here last nite.

[BW Redneck]

This site has a lot of information pertaining to wood heat in general, if you're interested.

One thing is, they really don't like outdoor wood boilers. They're not regulated by the EPA, so the manufacturers can get away with a lot of stuff that they couldn't in a normal wood stove. Most of them use a jacketed design that leeches a lot of heat that should have gone to the chimney, which pretty much kills the draft unless it being forced by a blower. Since they use thermostats to regulate the air control, it's usually on full blast or not at all. When the thermostat stops calling for heat, most designs shut the air control clear off, which makes the fire smolder and put out a huge smoke plume. When the thermo calls for heat, the fire flares up and burns all of the creosote on the inside that accumulated during the smolder cycle. This puts out a HUGE puff of smoke, and it's the inky black kind. A few of my neighbors tell me that theirs is a total wood hog, and the manufacturer's claims are a bunch of bullshit.

Wood species doesn't matter at all when it comes down to creosote accumulation, as long as it's burnt hot and fast. Pine puts out nearly none if it's burnt hot, rather than smoldered.

I've been using a forced air wood furnace in my basement for many years now, and it doesn't have so many of the problems that are associated with the boilers. The biggest issue is that it likes to back smoke into the basement when it's opened, but I think that that's a result of my abysmal chimney situation. It's not a big problem, since my basement is nowhere close to airtight.

[The Tippler]

If I may explain my sys to the to the forum, I run a slow combustion stove,perhaps better put a water heater with an oven on the side. I have tons of wood on the place,and I usually get through 7/10 ton just through winter ,burns24/7. What it does is heat a heat exchanger. The tank 300L is heated ,Water for the hot water taps through the house,passes through a coiled pipe inside that tank and as you turn on the hot tap or shower the flow of water is heated passing through that tank . Best is yet to come, I have radiators,no not car,those neat ones, some even look like wide boards around the walls and I have a small pump that circulates the water in the holding tank throughout the house. With a few blocks of wood I heat my house so much I can keep it 15/20 degrees above outside. Now that Canadian cold would test it .....Cheers..Tippler

[trthskr4]

HolyMack, do you think you could burn converted corn in that stove of yours? I ask because I've been wondering that if I got one could you dispose of the spent corn from an all grain mash and still get any btu's out of it. I have a way to dry it now but I don't know if there would be enough left to burn.

[theholymackerel]

I don't know. Good question.

It's meant to burn VERY dense fuel. So as is I doubt the spent corn would burn well (the forced air would blow it outta the combustion chamber). Maybe if ya loaded the dried spent corn into one of the pellet makin' machines and hammered it into a pellet.

[trthskr4]

The fans never occurred to me, if you had even a way to press it into a brick it might help as an add in maybe. I'll give it some more thought and see what I can think of. I'll let you know what if anything I figure out.

[snuffy]

The key to efficiency is high combustion temperature. Those Vogelzang barrel stoves are 50% or less efficient because they burn so cold. They are creosote factories. So are any of the smouldering burn stoves.

When you get a chimney fire with one of those double barrel rigs, it's a doozey. Under the right conditions, the upper barrel can get so hot it comes apart - dumping flaming crap all over the place.

Robbing heat from a low efficiency firebox is counter-productive. The high-efficiency stoves burn hotter than hell and the heat is transferred from the firebox, not the flue. A clue: smoke is fuel, why are you sending fuel away from where it's supposed to burn?

Check this place out http://www.chimneysweeponline.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

and especially here http://www.chimneysweeponline.com/library.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

This is also a good place http://hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

[trthskr4]

Very good info Snuffy. Definately something to keep in mind when doing this sort of research.

[Adverse Effects]

I saw a blacksmith forge set up a few years ago for use with used oil. Just the pump and stuff out of an old oil furnace. Those pumps are very strong!
This fellow would get all kinds of used oil and just let it settle out in 45 gallon drums 'till it was fairly clear then put it in his tank to burn. Used motor oil burns much hotter than regular furnace oil does. Worked like a charm. Don't think it would pass an EPA inspection though it wasn't at all smoky. The highly atomized oil burned very clean.

here is a burner i made to fire my smelter

http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/862/ ... 005rs3.jpg

its a big pic but that flame is 6 foot long and about 20 inch at the widest

i am working on a mini version of it for under a boiler

[trthskr4]

That'll cook a steak in no time at all. I'd be interested in the actual plans on making one of those if they aren't proprietary.

[Adverse Effects]

That'll cook a steak in no time at all. I'd be interested in the actual plans on making one of those if they aren't proprietary.

no i made it as i went along

here is a build log

http://www.abymc.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=391" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

i can melt steal if i am not carful

[grunger]

We use an old wood stove to heat our 14'x20' tent at the moose camp during the winter. It's large (~80gallon) and burns 3' unsplit spruce. I welded a stainless steel water jacket that fits around the top and sides and once the water gets hot it radiates heat really well. Hot running water on tap is nice too when it's -30. Keeps the whole place toasty warm. Sometimes you gotta kick open the door just to cool off.

[big worm]

nice....add a water tank.... circulated thru a old condener or radiator, that would be good cheap heat. it would be good for the other end of the greenhouse

[astrangebrew]

I was looking into a used oil burner a couple of years ago and ran across this little jem.
http://www.epa.gov/ttncatc1/dir1/w_oilacr.pdf - food for thought.