Thread: Oil burning shed heaters

make a stainless steel mesh cover like the one used on an indoor kero wick type heater to retard the airflow a little.

Well,... after much procrastination and having been inundated with requests for information and drawings from those in the northern hemisphere who are now well into their Spring and heading for Winter, I have started to put together a few web pages on building drip fed oil heaters.

There are as always a lot of "tyre kickers", but true to past experience about one in ten actually does something about it. My latest two builders being in the UK.

The pages can be seen here: Spike's Oil Heater

At the moment I am slowly adding photos that were sent to me by past builders, hopefully this will encourage more to send them as I do not have a great number. As yet I only have one heater shown, but I am working on page two showing my own early efforts and hope to have a partial page posted in the next day or so. My progress is slow, as I am also having to learn about HTML at the same time. Needless to say my work doesn't always turn out as I would expect.

Originally Posted by ozzirt

Well,... after much procrastination and having been inundated with requests for information and drawings from those in the northern hemisphere who are now well into their Spring and heading for Winter, I have started to put together a few web pages on building drip fed oil heaters.

There are as always a lot of "tyre kickers", but true to past experience about one in ten actually does something about it. My latest two builders being in the UK.

The pages can be seen here: Spike's Oil Heater

At the moment I am slowly adding photos that were sent to me by past builders, hopefully this will encourage more to send them as I do not have a great number. As yet I only have one heater shown, but I am working on page two showing my own early efforts and hope to have a partial page posted in the next day or so. My progress is slow, as I am also having to learn about HTML at the same time. Needless to say my work doesn't always turn out as I would expect.

I thought you must have been blowen away during the dreaded dust storms as you've been very quiet lately.

I'll shure be using your link as a reference wile building my next heater.
But at the moment, I would call my self a rim kicker as that image before is still the same

Actually fired Sputnik up again yesterday as was cold and drizzly here. Still haven't got the burner spot on yet. Have managed to keep the flame on it but now runs rich (a little smoke) when turned up to around 650 deg onwards. Fueled back runs clean as. Seems like it needs forced induction A small blower ducted down the intake?

Tony

Originally Posted by Rangier Rover

I thought you must have been blowen away during the dreaded dust storms as you've been very quiet lately.

I'll shure be using your link as a reference wile building my next heater.
But at the moment, I would call my self a rim kicker as that image before is still the same

Actually fired Sputnik up again yesterday as was cold and drizzly here. Still haven't got the burner spot on yet. Have managed to keep the flame on it but now rins rich (a little smoke) when turned up to around 650 deg onwards. Fueled back runs clean as. Seem like it needs forced induction A small blower ducted down the intake?

Tony

I hate to tell you this Tony, but we've had ideal weather, every time we needed a bit of rain, we got plenty and always nice gentle showers. The crops and feed here are looking the best they've been for at least 8 years. Of course the down side is that we'll have a bad fire season with all that feed about, no one has much stock as yet and even poor stock from around Western NSW is bringing very good prices at the markets here, a leg of Lamb will soon be dearer than Scotch fillet.

As for the smoke problem, are you still only using 4" flue? If so, I would suggest going to 6" and then if no better, more air holes in your secondary burner with at least 10 - 20 of them being no less than 10mm to ensure really good fuel/air mixing. You also need at least three lengths of flue pipe 8 - 9 feet to maintain a good draft. The heat is limited by the amount of fuel you can burn, and the clean burning of your fuel is only limited by the amount of air that you can get mixed with it.

I'll be pulling my heater down again this summer, as I have several new secondary burners that I want to try in it, plus fitting the firebox baffle. While it's in pieces I'll also take a few photos of all the parts individually and probably a couple of videos of the test runs to post on the new web pages. I'm quite eager to get going, but I remember several years where we had very cold spells just before Christmas, so I'll wait a while yet.

Cheers,
Spike.

Due to some minor problems with my recent change of hosts, the Link in my post above is now redundant (for matters relating to the heater). Those pages may now be found here: Spike's Oil Heater

I have not linked the two sites together as they relate to totally different interest groups.

G'day fellow tinkerers, I thought that with our first decent shower of rain the other night that it was time to resurrect this thread, the weather will soon be needing the heater kicked into gear and I've had my first Australian email enquiry for this year, as sure sign that our winter is approaching.

I seem to remember someone asking about nice adjustable metering valves in one of our earlier posts as these are one of the items that seem to be hard for people to find. During the last six months i have been regularly corresponding with about a dozen people in the northern hemisphere who are building heaters and one of them, Nebojsa, from Belgrade came up with a very innovative design built out of pieces that he had on hand.


This is my impression of how it goes together, using an old tap bonnet and a couple of standard pipe fittings. Those who so desire could easily have SAE flare fittings instead of brazing the pipe straight into the assembly.

Nebojsa's setup can be seen here for those who are Interested: Spike's Oil Heater

It had to come eventually. I kicked my heater into gear tonight for the first run of the year.

A slow start, about an hour ago, just to check that there were no birds nests in the flue,... all is going well and she's sitting just under 400deg C. at the moment.

Ahhhh,..... I might just go and have my shower and then sit and toast my tootsies in a minute, the nights are definitely getting cooler now.

Originally Posted by ozzirt

It had to come eventually. I kicked my heater into gear tonight for the first run of the year.

A slow start, about an hour ago, just to check that there were no birds nests in the flue,... all is going well and she's sitting just under 400deg C. at the moment.

Ahhhh,..... I might just go and have my shower and then sit and toast my tootsies in a minute, the nights are definitely getting cooler now.

Give it a good dose of lighting fluid should clear the birds nest

I've still got to move sputnik into its final resting place and cut a hole in the roof for the flue. Once up I'll try a bit more length to see if it will run cleaner when wound up a bit.
Then start putting the baby sputnik together. Or should that be set up a filtration system first