Waste Oil Furnace

[Deuling]

Ok we'll since I got a whole bunch of Pm's after posting a pic of it... I'll just make a thread.

I can't take any credit. It was built by pricygmc's dad about 20 years ago. Little hard to explain but here goes.


It's basically a barrel inside of a 55 gallon drum. I believe the inner part is from an old water heater or old oil furnace.

The oil is run through a piece of stainless tubing through both and into the middle barrel with a cast iron pan in the bottom.

There is a lip welded on the inside of the big barrel a foot up, and a lip on the outside of the small barrel same height, the small one seals to the other one with some of that high temp rope stuff.

Holes are drilled into the sides of the bottom portion of the small barrel to let air in from those two small fans on the sides.

The squirrel cage then blows against the upper portion of the inner barrel that gets hot and that's where the hot air comes from. And the fumes and smoke go out the exhaust pipe and out the ceiling.

That top piece on the small barrel just sits there.


An electro motor turns the oil pump and that and the blowers are on separate switches.

The red box on the wall is the oil container.

Turn the oil on, let the pan fill a little and toss a rag in and it lights.



Thing cranks some heat. I was in a t shirt and still sweating.

Lemme know if I missed anything and ill get more pics.

 

[1BEATK5]

We have the commercial version of that. They kick azz. I will have to make one of those when I get a shop.

 

[ryoken]

we had one of the cheaper "pan fired" ones at my one marina.. it sucked just cuz the pan got so skanky so fast... I've heard the ones that really filter it and actually spray it out a jet, and fire that, like a regular furnace work much better, but are more coin...

 

[TerryD]

we had one of the cheaper "pan fired" ones at my one marina.. it sucked just cuz the pan got so skanky so fast... I've heard the ones that really filter it and actually spray it out a jet, and fire that, like a regular furnace work much better, but are more coin...

I did some research on them and it seemed that the ones with a blower feeding the pan would keep the trash burnt off. They still needed cleaning, but much less often and not as much debris.

I like the shell around this one to scavenge the heat off it and blow it into the room much more effectively.

With scrappers so common now, I never could find anything to make the burner body out of. I need to get back to looking I guess.

 

[Deuling]

This one is all home made, FYI.

 

[snowdriver]

i have a old oil fired furnace in my shop tht uses regular heating oil or diesel,anyone know if i can throw waste oil in with the fresh ,i would probably just throw in 5-10 quarts per 50 gallons of oil??

 

[cybrfire]

I have an oil burner in my shop and I really hate that thing at times.

Have to mess with it all the time.

Water in the oil.
Cad cell eye is fried.
Over fired
under fired
Clogged filter
Debris in front of the nozzle
transformer goes out

Something all the time and I have it gone through by the manufacturer every sumer.

 

[stubburn]

The inside looks like a propane hot water pressure washer tank. The mechanic at my work has a large waste oil furnace that he tried using bio oil. We have the safer bio oil for our greens mowers. It burned like crap.

 

[muddermilitia]

The body shop I worked at years ago has a waste oil furnace. I think they actually bought it through NAPA and installed it all themselves. They get oil from several local municipalities. And it paid for itself in the first year. They started with just one storage tank and heating unit, then bought a second heating unit for the other half of the shop.

 

[diesel4me]

Several years ago I sent away for plans to build a waste oil heater from Benjamain Aviation Company,after seeing an ad in the back of a magazine like Popular Mechanics...they sent a order form and brochure to order the plans and a few photos of ones in use others built,and just enough info to get your curiosity up and go for them...

I never did though,after reading they needed a steady low pressure source of compressed air to operate the burner,(4 psi)--didn't want a compressor running all the while when using the burner--and it also could not be left running unatennded,it was all manually controlled and needed someone watching it constantly to be "safe"...they also had "ready built" parts available to avoid having to make everything yourself from scratch,but I decided I'd wait and see if I could get a factory made one used first (have never found one under 2K yet either!)....

I've heard you can use up to 30% used motor oil in a home heating oil furnace,but I'd not do it,even though I do have access to all the drain oil I want free...some synthetics have a high flash point and dont burn well if at all,and used oil is filthy and would need to be well filtered before adding it to the fuel oil or diesel to avoid clogging ...also the possibility of coolant being mixed in with the oil is pretty high too,if an engine with a leaking head gasket or other woes had its oil dumped into the drain bucket,poisoning the whole load!...that'll cause a lot of greif too...

Here home heating oil is biodiesel based now by law,to lower emissions...

 

[cabledawg]

As cool as this is, I dont have any of that stuff laying around so now I'm wondering if a standard fuel oil furnace can be modified to burn waste oil. They have them for sale cheap on CL. And someone said something about synthetic oil not good for burning. Is that true? If so, I'm going to have to make sure I start seperating the synthetic from dino oil.