Thread: Oil burning shed heaters

Originally Posted by ozzirt

Very professional, Is Khos a panel beater? his work is magnificent. I'll bet there are not many Mother earth heaters around with this standard of finish.

You are gunna have to watch out from now on, I feel a real bad case of "heater envy" coming on.

I would say Khos may be a white horse as the saying goes... He has many unknown talents. His attention to detail is unreal Any thing he touches ends up a master piece in some way. He is limited at his home with lack of space and the steep drive way

He now has a season ticket to my work shop

Ahh.... The heater envy..... The unbelievable set up you have has inspired us to this level so far.... So bring it on . I have to say these things seem addictive some how

Khos and I are already planing "'Sputnik 11" for the Home stead. Also one for him as well.

We are tossing the thoughts of a duel combustion chamber with twin flues.

The lower a convection wood heater with a small oil heater on top. Some how pass a 4" flue from the wood heater from lower chamber through the second oil heater oil vaporising chamber then make it a 7" flue over the 4"flue.

Duel fuel heater It may go bang!

Apparentley,a bloke in Narrogin lit his "commercial brand" choofer heater the other day,it started up ok,then backfired spewing burning diesel all over the wooden verhandah and under the house.Luckily it was contained before it got away.
I realise these being discused at the moment are a different animal,BUT beware the animal that turns feral.
This one was only de-coked/cleaned in the last week.It was playing up,a blocked return pipe was suspected and cleaned before the backfire.Perhaps PETROL was used or mixed with diesel????
Dont know the owner,a couple of guys were discussing it at work this morning.
BEWARE,they are all potential BOMBS if they go wrong!!!!
Andrew

Sounds like the ol heated kero vapor and add cold air trick

I've seen a few wood stoves blow this way. Quite spectacular to watch.

Originally Posted by Rangier Rover

I would say Khos may be a white horse as the saying goes... He has many unknown talents. His attention to detail is unreal Any thing he touches ends up a master piece in some way. He is limited at his home with lack of space and the steep drive way

He now has a season ticket to my work shop

I'd say that is a win/win situation. They are as rare as the proverbial rocking horse poo.

Ahh.... The heater envy..... The unbelievable set up you have has inspired us to this level so far.... So bring it on . I have to say these things seem addictive some how

Khos and I are already planing "'Sputnik 11" for the Home stead. Also one for him as well.

That is great, no doubt you will have a lot of fun in the process. I was unfortunate when i built my first heater in that everyone just thought that I was a complete nutter and kept right out of it, it would have been great to have another mate to bounce ideas off of. Yeah, I'm just a big kid at heart with a dash of pig headed Jewish pyromaniac in my veins.

We are tossing the thoughts of a duel combustion chamber with twin flues.

The lower a convection wood heater with a small oil heater on top. Some how pass a 4" flue from the wood heater from lower chamber through the second oil heater oil vaporising chamber then make it a 7" flue over the 4"flue.

Duel fuel heater It may go bang!

You've really caught the bug. Just keep those ideas going, I've always said that there is a lot of room for improvement in this field and I've always been slightly disappointed with the very few "practical" ideas on the 'net.

With the availability of cheap/free fuel I always thought that there'd be a lot more "triers" out there making flame belching monsters.

I hope that you are remembering to go and have a talk with your local crash repairer so you can ask him about used thinners out of his gun washing machine. They have gallons of the stuff to get rid of and once it has stood in a drum for 12 months or so 95% of the pigment settles out of it and it becomes first class lighting fluid. I have about 500 lts of it in my storage shed.


The red drum on the right is where I tip the "new" dirty thinners, the funnel reaches almost to the bottom of the drum. The two 20lt drums are waiting to go in but everything is chock a block at the moment. This is where it sits for 12 months or more to settle out all of the rubbish and pigment etc. From time to time I syphon off 20lts or so from the top of the drum and place it into one of the three drums on the left. The dirty black looking 60lt drum is for thinners that still has a lot of colour in it, the one to its right is thinners mixed 50/50 with sump oil for lighting up fluid, the 200 lt (yellow) drum is thinners clean enough to be used for thinning paint, almost as good as new.

You must remember two things when using it though,
(1) Do not use straight thinners for lighting especially if the pan is warm, it will remove your eyebrows pronto.
(2) When using it for cleaning, you must do one last wash with petrol or turps etc., as it still contains a small amount of clear lacquer and will go sticky if left in the brush/gun.

The black crap on the drums is where I have cleaned brushes that I've used with Hydroseal (Blackjack) I know,... it's not tidy, but it protects the drums which have a tendency to rust where they are scratched.

Haven't spent much time on this since Khos went home. Have been rather occupied by the farm thing and fine tuning the 45 series Toyota

Here are some pics of Sputnik with its removable fuel cell. The air tank hanging down is now the water separator.Was not a lot of fun welding and brazing fittings in so oil tight Lets hope it works
I have a feeling it may all need to be a bit higher to work well.. Time will tell I guess

I think that I'm falling in love.

Having used 1/2" copper tube, I'd say that you should easily have enough head, it's only a short run, especially when the heater starts to poke out a bit of heat as the oil will thin down a bit. Even on sub zero mornings, I've never had significant problems, the oil is a bit slow initially, but is OK within 10 minutes or so and mine runs 30+ mtrs through 19mm poly. The main choke point is at the metering valve which is close enough to warm up quite quickly.

The only thing I would be cautious about is the proximity of your tyre rack,... they could get very hot where they are, but a simple radiation shield would solve your problem.

I like your judicious use of Stag, there's nothing more annoying than than a weepy joint. It's far better than PTFE tape with oil.

Originally Posted by ozzirt

I think that I'm falling in love.

Having used 1/2" copper tube, I'd say that you should easily have enough head, it's only a short run, especially when the heater starts to poke out a bit of heat as the oil will thin down a bit. Even on sub zero mornings, I've never had significant problems, the oil is a bit slow initially, but is OK within 10 minutes or so and mine runs 30+ mtrs through 19mm poly. The main choke point is at the metering valve which is close enough to warm up quite quickly.

The only thing I would be cautious about is the proximity of your tyre rack,... they could get very hot where they are, but a simple radiation shield would solve your problem.

I like your judicious use of Stag, there's nothing more annoying than than a weepy joint. It's far better than PTFE tape with oil.

Damn Stag.... Its seems to get allover everything Must be the way I use it so sparingly

I really need to move the oil heater away from that area as not only the tyres but that old fridge is full of paint and solvents

Have to come up with a better layout of the work shop and stick a flue through the roof in its final resting place that is out of the way.
Then I will establish a large header/storage tank out side the closest wall.

I have just started on another "Industrial grade" innovation for my setup. Many years ago I managed to did a large diesel fuel filter out of the rubbish skip on the wharf at Port Pirie, at the time I mainly grabbed it because it was cast aluminium and i thought that even if it was cracked it could be be welded, or the scrap value alone made it worth grabbing.

Yesterday whilst cleaning out under one of my benches it came to light and so I postponed the cleanup and started pulling it to pieces. The cleanup can wait.

After undoing 10 x 8mm bolts I got the top off to discover a plate holding 8 filters made of wound woollen worsted, like long balls of thick string. This was obviously far too fine for my sump oil, but after unwinding several hundred yards of worsted from each filter frame found that it had a punched metal spool onto which I could wind several layers of fine plastic fly wire, securing it with contact cement.

I'm sorry but in my haste I took no photos, and have since reassembled it with cork gaskets and a discrete application of silicone, so I'm not going to pull it apart again (hopefully).

Seen below balanced on a short offcut of PVC pipe as it has a sloping bottom and 1/2" drain plug. the ball of worsted is from just one of the eight filters that were fitted originally.


I'll clean it up and give it a coat of the obligatory Sunflower Yellow (my trademark) paint and then work out how i'm going to fix it in place where I can easily service it. Considering that a PVC garden dripper system filter usually lasts a couple of years, this filter should just about see me out.