Hi everyone:

I thought I would tell how I have made my WMO burner.

I started with a wood stove that is short but long, I drilled holes in the sides and used 1/8 black pipe across the inner chamber, The center of the pipe has a T with a short nipple and a cap, the cap is drilled with a #40 hole (smallest bit I had) and pointed down at an angle to drip into the burn pot. The burn pot is the bottom of a 20# propane tank. The 1/8 black pipe is connected to 1/4 copper that is wrapped around the flue pipe and then goes into the other half of the propane tank turned on it top, as the oil hold. This is on the wall about 1 ft above. To light it I use two fire starter pieces in a tent shape, Light them and turn the oil drip onto them.

So far I have only gotten about 5 hours of burn time, And none of that during the day to know my smoke output or any crusting problems. Hope to get some pics of the setup soon.

One change I want to make is a better valve to adjust the flow and maybe a twin burn pot like Tim Cook is doing.

Thanks for sharing.
Flow adjustment = needle valve.

Hades12 -- Stable fuel flow has always been a problem for me too, from reading the Sanders burner info It looks like a good bit of pressure is needed, he has his fuel tank 30 feet higher than the stove, your 1 foot isn't making enough pressure. I don't have any conveniant way to raise my fuel tank above the stove but I am having acceptable success using a small 12 volt fueloil gear pump, sorta, I control the amount of fuel by changing the speed of the pump by changing the voltage fed to it, It has been no colder than the low 40's f here the last couple days and running the pump down at around 3 volts causes it to simply stop running now and then. I will have to build a better motor speed control unit that gives the motor a bit of a "kick" every couple seconds, along with the normal pulse width modulated speed control pulses, to make sure it keeps pumping.

Are you using any sort of vertical draft air inlet into the top of your burner bowl, it creates a much better burn than simply using the normal wood stove combustion air draft control.

Tim
What do you do to the tanks before cutting them to make it safe?

The 1 ft of head is enough, My flow problem is that I get more oil then I have air, I need to turn the oil down some or add air to the mix. The heater sits and chuffs like it wants more.

Right now I am just using the Heater front drafts for the air inlet, I will not cut a hole in this one for a down draft but I can maybe add forced air to it.

The Sander's stove article (HERE) explains the down draft combustion air princaple as it works for a bowl type burner.

The air tube doesn't actually have to come through the top of the stove as long as the air exits the tube above the center of the burner bowl, the tube could be bent in about any shape to get one end above the burner bowl and the other end outside of the stove so it can draw in fresh air. The straighter the tube the easier it would be for the air to flow but from my experiance there is PLENTY of draft to pull air down even a badly contorted tube. If you can get a tube made up I dought you would need any forced air to get the air to move through the tube. I use an exhaust flue damper to control the draft, opening the flue damper more allows more heat to go up the chimney but it also causes more air to be drawn through the air intake tube to replace that going up the chimney. The chimney flue is 6 inched in diameter, the air intake is 2 1/4 inches in diameter, the chimney flue volume is about 6 times as big as the cold air intake tube volume so a slight change in the amount of air going up the chimney makes a 6 times increase in the speed of the air coming through the combustion air tube. If I set the flue damper any more than about 1/3 open I get a huge roar from the burner flame, I run the damper mostly between 30 and 45 degrees closed.

Stove "chuffing" -- Mine does that too a bit for the first few minutes til the fire box comes up to temp, then the chuffing stops and I get a nice steady burn.

I don't know if a clean burn can ever be done in a wood stove using only the normal cold air damper that is used to control the wood fire, the air is just not in the correct place to flow efficiently over the top of the fuel pool to promote vaporization ?


PROPANE TANK SAFTY -- Ideally I like to pull a vacuum on the empty tanks over night to insure any tiny amount of propane is pulled out of the pores or tiny cracks in the metal (usually dont actually do this step), after that I remove the valves and place the tank upright on it's base and fill it with water til it is overflowing. I use a screw-adjust nozzle on a garden hose and set it to make a small powerfull stream, the nozzle is pushed through the 3/4 inch pipe thread fitting in the top of the tank and moved around to knock any stuff inside the tank loose, then I slow down the water flow and overfill the tank again, this flushes out the small amount of liquid light oil that is always setting in the bottom of any propane tank. I then lightly screw either a pipe plug or the original valve back in the tank to insure there is absolutely NO air in the tank. I use thin ( 1/16 or 1/8 inch thick)abrasive cutting disks in a hand-held angle grinder to cut almost through the entire cut line being removed from the tank but try not to pierce the tank until everything is almost ready to cut completely through. Once the adrasive disk cuts into the tank the water will slowly seep out through the cut but this water also quenches any sparks from the abrasive disk to further reduce the chance of igniting anything, the wet disk still cuts just fine. Once the entire cut line is pierced in several places you can use a hammer to tap around the cut line and the remaining thin strip of metal in the bottom of the cut line will break free, sort of like a big pull-top can lid. I have never had a problem with this technique as far as safty, it does get you pretty wet once the abrasive disk cuts through and starts slinging water. I made up a big bib from some vinyl appolstry fabric, keeps most of the water from soaking your cloths.
Other folks have said that a plasma cutting torch will cut through these thin tanks even with water on the inside, this would be MUCH faster and cleaner if it actually works that way, never tried it myself.

Hoping you get a cam for xmas Tim. Lots of interesting pics you could take.

How much oil pressure in PSI would be equivelant to a 30 foot head?

Tim,

Have you inpsected your chimeny pipe lately?

I'd like to get data on soot or carbon build up..

How often and how long do you run your heater?

head pressure -- If I understand THIS webpage correctly the pressure should be 30 ft of head X .8 (general specific gravity of veg oil, assume used motor oil is similar) = 24, divided by 2.31 = approx 10.39 pounds pressure if the oil tank is 30 feet higher than the stove.

Inspection of chimney - Both of my chimneys are made of brick so I haven't done this for a few years (not easy to see inside without a lot of work pulling ash covers or flue pipe adapters). Smoke goes in the bottom and comes out the top, so do the small thin postage stamp sized pieces of soot, seems to be doing its job. I don't have any soot collecting in the firebox so don't expect there to be any in the chimney either.

Burn time -- It is not getting more than down around freezing at night and is up in the mid 50's f during the day. With these temps I only light the stove after the sun goes down and burn it at a low rate til about 2 in the morning, then shut it off til the next evening, maybe 8 hours every day, the house gets into the upper 70's by the time I shut the stove off and will be down to the low 60's deg f by the time I fire it up again the next evening. a couple weeks ago the temps were single digits at night and teens in the daytime, ran the stove over these same hours but at a bit higher heat, coolest the house got down to was 52 deg f.

Tim,
You probably already know this but just in case, I'm going to say it anyhow..
I was watching an episode of "Dirty Jobs".. They did a story on chiminey sweeps.. Yes its a dirty job for sure!! LOL

Anyhow, a chiminey fire can take out your whole home.. Even a brick chiminey is no match for a 2000+ degree fire.
I would strongly suggest you check out the soot build-up in there..

My "guess" is that its probably clean.. From my experience (you probably know more) I have noticed that WVO seems to clean everything it touches. But is it worth loosing a home over?

I would strongly suggest you check that baby out and see what kind of buildup you have.

From watching dirty jobs, I learned that the best way to look into the chimeny is to remove the cap on top and use a mirror during a sunny day to re-direct the suns light down into the pipe.. This is how they did it on dirty jobs.. It was a very interesting episode..

Anyhow, the reason I am commenting on it is because I know your double bowl burner isnt the cleanest of burns.. If its smoking, its leaving behind soot..

so if you put 11psi in your fuel tank would that not help solve your feed problems in a simple reliable way? Wouldn't take much of an air pump to maintain 11psi. Something small and quite linked to a pressure switch?

Are you still thinking of adding a third bowl inverted over the top bowl with holes or grooves to encourage blue flame vapour burning? I would be interested to see how that worked out. It sounds like a promising way to get an efficient burn, a la coleman stove stylie, whilst still having a burner that can be cleaned easily.

How about using a sureflo Rv style water pump and setting the pressure regulation down to 10 psi. Using this to maintain presure on the fuel line would give the equivalent of a more of less constant head. The pumps seem to stand up to WVO as this is what I use for my collection pump. Cheers

quote:

Originally posted by bigblockchev:
How about using a sureflo Rv style water pump and setting the pressure regulation down to 10 psi. Using this to maintain presure on the fuel line would give the equivalent of a more of less constant head. The pumps seem to stand up to WVO as this is what I use for my collection pump. Cheers

What happens if a food particle gets into the restricter valve?

I use a 30 micron screen on the suction strainer this gets the particles out. You could go down to a 10 micron screen if necessary. Cheers

Murphy -- I appreciate the concern about a chimney fire but It is just not practical for me to reach the top of the chimney. This old house has 10 foot ceilings on the first floor and the roof has a 45 degree pitch, the chimney runs at least 4 feet above the ridge of the roof. This puts the top of the chimney at least 2 1/2 stories off the ground and nothing but a tripple extension ladder to stand on (don't have one).
Anymore I can fall down walking up stairs so the chance of an accident on a ladder FAR outweighs the likelyhood of a problem from a chimney fire, been burning wood through this chimney for the last 20 years without incident except for filling up the lower section with fly ash.
I only burn this stove when I am present and I have a 10 pound CO2 fire extinguisher handy that I can dump through the stove if nescicary, hopefully this will do some good if it comes to needing it.

Ant -- Pressurizing a fuel tank with air -- This should work ok but it requires a sealed fuel tank, could be done but makes filling the tank a bit more difficult. Another problem with a tank-type fuel supply is that it must be kept warm enough for vegoil to be liquid, this means the tank must be in a heated space or have some sort of auxilery heat applied, again, can be done but complicates things. I store my veg oil in 5 gallon jerry cans and only bring them into the house as I use the fuel, it is simplest to just drop a fuel pickup into each can as it is being used and move the fuel by using a pump.

Air pump -- If you used a diaphragm pump you wouldn't even need the pressure switch as they only make about 10 pounds pressure, they do have sort of a soft "purr" when running, not a problem, may need some sort of on/off timer to keep the motor from overheating ?

bigblockchev -- Shurflo pump -- Most Shurflow's don't have true pressure regulaters, they have simple pressure cut-off switches, the problem with this is that the pressure switch has a pretty large pressure differance from on/off, setting it to turn off at 10 pounds would likely cause it not to turn back on until the pressure had dropped way down, probably down below 4 pounds or so, this is not going to be nearly enough of a steady pressure to create a stable fuel feed. On my Shurflo filter pumps the cutoff is set to 120 pounds but it does not turn back on until the pressure drops down to about 80 pounds.

Some pics of the setup.

I will some of the inside next time I have a chance.

A pic of the inside.

How is your burner working?

Chuck

Have not fired it yet this year.

But the last few times I used it, I found I need to make some changes.

1. get a flow control valve. Once hot I am getting to much flow for the amount of air that can be pulled in from the front.

2. From cold it takes a bit to get the oil flowing. A heat wrap or just start it about 1 hr before using the shop.

The only big problem was the air intake. the heater would start to chuff after about 1 1/2 hrs to the point of blowing smoke out the front and almost putting it's self out.


I have an old water tank to try my changes on but with a new baby on the way and two businesses to run I don't see me having time to do anything with it.



One other thing I have done is setup a 240 tank outside for my oil.

Run it a bit yesterday, But got it way to hot. Side of the heater was glowing red.

Any good places on the net for a needle valve, I need to turn the oil down a bit.

I also made one change, I put a SS plate in the bowl for the oil to drip on. But once the heater gets very hot, the oil comming out the drip is vaperized and shoots out as a stream of fire.