This 48 hour burn was on WVO only I had recieved about ten gallons from the canteen at my work (VA Hospital). I was burning this thing pretty hot for this test at I calculated 1/2 qt/hr this gives me about a 60 degree rise (delta/T) across the heat exchanger.
Remember I am heating a 24x36 uninsulated metal building hince the high fuel rate. Lookinfg at radiant insulation now.

I would just like to say thanks to all of you guys for your help.

john so what kind of stroke and pump rate was the last setting?? Do you have a control to shut it down in case of flameout?? any way to see it burning?? what kind of outside temps when you are trying o heat uninsulated area teens or higher?? jeff

Tigman ,

I assume the last question was directed to me. Not sure you mentioned "John" anyway I had the stroke at about 40 and the pump at 60 .I keep the pump at 60 thats exactly one stroke per second. I dont have anything for flame out but we dont have high wind gusts where Im at. We had a small storm the other day but I checked it and the barometric flue control was absorbing the extra draft. So far as outside temps it ranges anywhere fro low 20's to upper 40's Im in North Carolina so weather is very eratic.
I dont run the heater all the time just when I plan to work in the building Im restoring a 1964 Impala . So when I get home I start it up very high to try to bring it up to temp quickly. Then after an hour or so I can start to adjust down to just maintain. I have no problem with this setup of doing 200 degrees out with a entering temp of about 40 degrees. Thats all with about 250 cfm of air moving across the heater.

I just finished a baffle or heat deflector to mount around the cumbustion intake tube to try to force more heat to the sides instead of up the flue. I will let you know.

oops sorry Scott to many forums jeff

I need ideas how to mount the air intake pipe. I do not really want to weld it. want to able to adjust the distance of pipe to burner. I cut the hole just a little big and will probably seal that up with jb weld, and I also want to bring my fuel supply down the middle of this pipe. will 1/8" pipe nipple work and connect that to my copper tubing. my burner will be a 4" brass plug with the sqaure part of the plug will be sitting in a 2" pipe coupler. I hope this will work good. Brad

Scott -- 1/2 qt/hr -- Is this correct? this is about the SMALLEST amount of fuel my stove will run at without flameouts, I don't consider this to be all that much fuel. 1/2 G/H is about the largest fuel flow I ever have to run but I am sure the burner will handle probably twice that and still burn pretty clean, not sure as I haven't had to burn anywhere near this much fuel flow yet, hope I don't ever need to.

At the 1/2 quart/hr fuel flow rate the burner tank outer skin stays at about 200 deg f with a small 10 inch table fan blowing across the tank from a few feet away.

Brad -- I welded a collar with a 1/4 inch thick wall onto the burner tank and used 3 bolts through this to clamp the combustion air inlet pipe in place, this lets you adjust the pipe easily, actually, one bolt would work fine, the air tube does not have to be perfectally centered. There is no problem if there is a bit of a crack between the air pipe and the collar, a bit of air leak is not a problem, my collar I.D. is 1/4 inch larger than the O.D. of the air pipe. My combustion air pipe comes through the side of the burn tank but the same thing would work even better from the top. My next stove will bring the air tube down from the top and I will also make it adjustable. Check out my pictures on the first couple pages of this discussion to see the collar and combustion air intake pipe used on this stove.

Fuel inlet - I use 1/8 inch pipe fittings to pass the fuel through the side of the air tube. I drill a hole through the air tube big enough to pass a "close" pipe nipple through, I then screw either a straight pipe coupler or a "90" on the inside and/or the outside of the tube, adjust a number of washers slid over the pipe nipple until the pipe fittings clamp down tightly through the side of the air pipe. I prefere to use steel brake line rather than copper tubing, just my bias.

This picture shows the fuel fittings through the side of the 2 1/4 inch combustion air pipe on my wood stove oil burner insert stove, Yep, need to clean it a bit, this is after 2 winters of burning, wind gusts have a tendancy to cause it to loose draft and push smoke up the intake pipe if I set the flue damper too far closed (no barametric draft control on this setup yet).

To allow air tube adjustment on this wood stove I just passed the air tube through a hole above the burner and use a 4 inch welders clamp to hold the tube in place. I had originally intended to do something a bit more permanent for this adjustment but just have never gotten around to it.

fuel_tube_throigh_air_tube.JPG (27 Kb, 49 downloads)

Tim,
I would say that is an average. I was outside in the shop tonight for about 4 hours and used just shy of 1 gallon of oil but I was running it at a very high output .It was 41 degrees inside when I started and was putting out 155 degrees .Thats 114 degrees delta/t.

I dont think a snowmobeile oil pump will do it so I would also like to go with a suntec. Tim I see some on ebay does it mater which model, if not I would like to buy one that could adapt to my f250 as you know it would be the one that would give me the most gph. what model is that?
A had a thought about the sanders burner, if it had the same angel on the bottom side and spun 180 degress (2 burners in one)would it be hot enough to self egnite after flipping?

Scott -- OK, a quart/hr sound better, that fuel flow makes a good bit of heat,

Harry -- I did a quick search for snowmobile pumps on Ebay, only found air pulse powered diaphragm fuel pumps and a couple of wierd pumps used to feed oil into the carborators for the engines that did not have to have the gas/oil premixed. None of these seemed like they would adapt well for fuel feed pumps.

This links to page two of a discussion named -reliable electric lift pumps for svo- I describe the mods I have made to use the suntec pumps as lift pumps. You don't want a 2-stage pump, the 2-stage pump can even create problems for these applications, 2-stage pump part numbers start with a "B", B1-- or B2--, they also cost a good bit more than a single stage. Single stage pumps are all that is needed for either a stove or vehicle pump, the same mods are made for both stove and vehicle use, the main differance is in how fast you turn them.

The 1750 RPM "A" model Suntec pump is the smallest and will move a lot of oil if turned fast enough,(up to around 45 G/H at 5000 RPM). Single stage 1750 RPM rated pumps will have part numbers starting "A1--. A2-- pumps are 3450 RPM rated pumps, these have smaller gear sets and move only 2/3 the amount of oil of a 1750 pump for the same RPM, they are fine for stove fuel pumps but the A1 moves more oil for lift pump use. You need to know how much fuel your year truck needs to flow from the lift pump, newer trucks require HUGE amounts of fuel pumped round-n-round from/to the fuel tank, even the 1750 RPM model "A" pump may not move enough fuel for the newest trucks, A "J" model likely would but I have not tested these as lift pumps, they do work ok as veg stove metering pumps once modified.

Check "Ebay stores" for fixed price A1 model Suntec pumps, sometimes they are actually cheaper than the ones on the auctions. The Ebay prices are high for winter now, Patriotsupply.com and other industrial suppliers sell new ones for around $65.00.

Thanks Tim, I will get the 'a' pump and hope to get through all the mods that need to be made.

you guys are very knowledgeable in this subject. I am very new. I am tired of paying 3.09 a gallon for heating oil and was wondering what would be the easiest and most cost effective way to modify my system. is there a good book for me to read? can i take a class? I also have a 96 passat tdi and am looking to do the same thing with that. I am just tired of paying the oil companies for crappy fuel that only serves to line the pockets of the government and oil companies. How do i get started? thanks in advance for your patience with me.

J -- Unfortunatly I don't know of any quick how-to book or class, There are books, guides and classes for making biodiesel, also a few plans for building heavy-oil burners, but nothing I am awhere of that covers everything from scratch. Read all the posts on this forum that seem to be about your interests. The altfuelforum listed at the top of this discussion subject is dedicated to conversions of home oil furnace burners to vegoil. There is also a discussion section about VW's in the "vehicle" section of this forum, many posts there will link to other VW vegoil forums, Sorry --

I have now had the stove burning continuously for several days with a mid-yellow flame with no problems. I have noticed that as time goes by the nice yellow flame created from a clean burner bowl slowly grows more and more of a darker yellow as the bowl crudds up and does not vaporize fuel as well. this setup still produces a LOT LESS soot flakes inside the stove but there is still a bit of smoke visable from the chimnney, more smoke is visable the darker the burn color gets, seems correct, darked color indicates a less-efficient burn.

I did have to make one other change to the flame sensor. The 3/8 pipe nipple must finally be large enough that it does NOT clog with soot, unfortunatly, it DOES blow a bit of soot out the end of the nipple, there is not enough soot to see except at a cold startup so I have not yet quite figured out how or why it does this but it blows enough soot out that a thin layer of soot completely covered up the flame sensing elements over a couple days. I even moved the sensors out to about 4 inches away from the end of the pipe nipple but they still got sooted up. I have added a glass shield between the outer end of the pipe nipple and the sensors, this has worked well now for several days, the glass does collect a bit of soot but not enough to completely cut off the flame image from the sensors. I have not had a false shutdown due to the flame sensor since adding the glass.

When I shut the stove down every couple days to swap in a clean burner bowl I now also brush the soot off the glass shield using a small half inch wide paint brush. The soot brushes away easily with one swipe.

This is a picture of my current flame sensor setup.

overview_2.JPG (26 Kb, 38 downloads)

This shows the soot on the glass shield, the sensors still get enough flame image to keep the fuel pump turning.

soot_on_glass.JPG (32 Kb, 39 downloads)

This is a closer view of the glass shield. I just superglued the glass to a thin aluminum tab, so far the glue has held up just fine but the tab stays cool enough that I can hold my finger on it, superglue will soften up under too much heat, If this happens I will then use silicone to attach the glass, I just wanted to try the idea out and couldn't wait over night for the silicone to set up, so far - so good.

closeup_of_glass.JPG (40 Kb, 34 downloads)

well I finally finished my heater, I have a couple of questions. I had it burning outside just to see how it would work and see what else I had to do. I just have a 2 foot flue on during this test. It was producing alot of smoke and I would have to blow air down the air pipe to get the draft going up the flue, but I dont think it was vaporizing the fuel it was just burnung as a liquid, not getting very hot just a little yellow flame with a constant liquid in the burner. I was burning biodiesel. will it burn hotter when the fuel is vaporizing and produce less smoke. I also did not have any way to preheat the fuel. I think I will wrap the copper tubing around the flue pipe. I was using a milton roy pump. I also was just dripping out of the 1/8 " pipe nipple. What size should I reduce down to so I get a smaller drip? Sorry for the long post but just wanted to get out as much information i could.

Brad I did'nt build mine yet but in Roger Sanders e-mail to me he calls for 12 feet min. chimminy.

Brad,
I had the same problem when I started to build mine and I too tried it outside with just about 5 foot of flue pipe. Tim chimed in instantly and said this was the problem and he was right add some more flue pipe and wow watch the difference.
I about 10 foot total on mine and it works great I am actually slowing the air coming in some.

I use the double burner design also with the air pipe directly over it and with a dampner. And for my storage tank I use a 55 gallon drum with a air pressure regulator on it inside my shop. Set to 4 psi on the barrel and going thru my filter and then thru a needle vavle that I adjust for the flow. And down thru the air pipe and this works great and hay my fire stays lit regardless of where I set the needle vavle too.

Brad -- Yep, you need several feet of warm flue or chimney to get a decent draft flowing through the stove. You will still burn a bit smoky for a couple minutes when you do a cold startup until the flue warms up and the warm air inside it starts rising.

Drip tube -- I think the smaller the outlet the better but need to test this, the smaller outlet should make smaller droplets, these should vaporize more easily. My fuel drip tube is made from 1/4 inch O.D. steel brake line, I brazed about an inch of 3/16 O.D. steel brake tubing in the end of this as my drip source. The I.D. of the 3/16 tube is 1/8 inch, this has worked ok so far, the low fuel rate of the house heater is small enough thaty I get individual drops out of it for all the fuel feed rates so far, still getting drops up to a bit over one quart/hr of fuel flow. I used this same fuel feed tube design for my wood stove insert heater but for some reason it runs a solid stream at anything much over 3/4 pint/hr of fuel, still works just fine. I have thought about brazing the 1/8 nch hole shut and drilling a 1/16 inch hole in it as a test, maybe next year.

My heater is running fine over the last few weeks now. I did move the glass and the flame sensor mount out about 8 inches from the outer end of the 3/8 pipe nipple, this seems to be far enough that the soot does not make it to the glass. I only get the excess soot when I close down the flue damper trying to squeeze the max heat out of the stove, this setting makes a dull yellow burn and a bit of soot, the flue damper reduces the air flow through the stove so much that the interior of the stove is no longer running at a reduced pressure, at this setting even small changes in flue draft, due to flue temp or burner tank temp changes, cause the burner tank to occasionally becomes slightly pressurized and blow soot. If I set the dampers for a mid-to-bright yellow flame The interior of the stove stays at a reduced pressure so no soot is blown out but the outer tank temp is about 20 degrees cooler than with a dull yellow burn, everything is a compromise.

I also finally had the 3/8 pipe nipple flame viewing port plug with soot after a couple weeks of burning, should have expected this, if it is blowing soot through the nipple it is also likely building up inside it. I now push a 6 inch long 3/8 bolt through the pipe nipple (the threads on the bolt work like a rasp), as well as clean the glass in front of the sensors, every time I swap in a clean burner bowl (every 2-3 days), only takes a couple minutes. I have not had a flameout or a false shutdown over the last 3 weeks and have had the stove burning continuously anywhere from about 1/2 pint/hr up to a quart/hr, we had 2 days below 10 deg f, then jumped up to almost 70 deg f for the last 3 days, back down around freezing again now, normal winter for here, no way to predict it.

Tony -- Glad to hear yet another double burner style is working, what type of burner design are you using ?