My new shop heat

[jimdad07]

Well, it's not a wood burner but I wish I had built it years ago.  I took an old wood stove I had and turned it into a waste oil burner.  It took about three hours to start to running and I couldn't be more impressed with it.  I ran it for 14 hours strait yesterday and only used 4 gallons of waste oil.  My uninsulated shop was in the 70's and maintained all day without hardly any fluctuations in stack temp.  Keep in mind it's only a 16x24 building but it's also in a wind tunnel on the Nadian border.  Having a small hobby farm keeps me in waste oil all the time

https://youtu.be/CrXI_tRDQ4g

[Ljohnsaw]

That's pretty neat.  Do you need a huge air flow or could you get by with a squirrel cage blower?  Is it the oil in the pan burning or is it atomized?  How do you start it?

[jimdad07]

That's pretty neat.  Do you need a huge air flow or could you get by with a squirrel cage blower?  Is it the oil in the pan burning or is is atomized?  How do you start it?

A small squirrel cage would work fine as long as you can cut the flow of air down on it.  That old heat gun has a squirrel cage in it and moves the air just right.  It's not a lot of air flow, just need a good positive pressure on it to blow the flame away from the oil line and also keep the oil line cool enough from sooting up, that's why I ran the line down the blast tube.  The oil just gravity feeds onto a steel disk I cut with a hole saw.  When it hits the steel, the steel is hot enough to vaporize the oil around the outside edges of the disk and get a fairly complete burn in it.
I've been starting it with a light layer of planer shavings coated with used oil and a match.  That seems to work great, going to see how well a blow torch will start it next.

I'm like you, waiting for the weather to break to keep going on my building!

[Ljohnsaw]

Yeah, talk about snow delays...  Two days and 13" of rain later, the snow pack went from 10' down to 6 or 7'.  This is what it looked like yesterday.

 

Top of my sawmill (just to the left of the roof) is over 8 feet from the ground  :-\

 

[jimdad07]

Wow, I can't really complain much about the weather after seeing what you have!

[jimdad07]

Well I've been running that oil burner for over a week now every night and all weekend long.  I've gone through 10.5 gallons of waste oil and I've been keeping my uninsulated shop right around 70.  Now that I'm confident that it won't burn my shop down, I'm going to start saving up to buy some 1/4" and 3/8" plate steel to make a bigger one for the first floor of the barn.  That one will have to wait until the building is up.  Also started building a sawdust burner for the woodshop on the second floor of the barn.  This one is going to be an air right stove complete with a secondary burn.

[Ljohnsaw]

In regards to your waste oil:  How sensitive or forgiving is this set up to contaminates such as water in the oil?  Like milky oil.  I don't produce enough waste oil but I'm sure I could gather some.  Lots of people have waste oil from their deep fryers that I'm thinking would work.  Though the neighbors might think a McDs has opened up in the neighborhood! :D

[hedgerow]

I heated a 40 by 40 with 14 foot side walls shop for many a years with a home made drip style oil burner I used a drip oiler off a machine out of a factory. I used a cast iron frying pans for the drip pans they work great and lasted. I never was brave enough to run it unattended over night. Then we were up dating our insurance on tools building and the house they saw the oil burner and not being UL listed that was the end of the homemade oil burner. I needed to keep my insurance on the building and tools.

[jimdad07]

In regards to your waste oil:  How sensitive or forgiving is this set up to contaminates such as water in the oil?  Like milky oil.  I don't produce enough waste oil but I'm sure I could gather some.  Lots of people have waste oil from their deep fryers that I'm thinking would work.  Though the neighbors might think a McDs has opened up in the neighborhood! :D

I've run some milky oil through it without any issues.  Here's one on lighting it, I need to put a better pan in it.  That warped pan actually throws the burn off quite a bit.

https://youtu.be/CnbdZau6iBw

[Ljohnsaw]

Nice!  Pretty simple to start.

On your oil line, did you think about using those old drip oilers that have the glass viewing cylinder?  I think I have one of those I could use and then all copper pipe for the rest of the plumbing.  With that black crude oil you got there, it would be hard to judge the flow once the clear hose is full.  But I suppose you just go by the flame at that point.