I gotta tell ya.. I started out trying to keep things simple.. I wasn't expecting to have all the things I have hooked up.. Its just that one thing lead to another..

First it was a casual observation that a combustion fan would improve heat output twice over.. Of course, that requires an inlet tube (2" conduit), an actual fan and motor(from old water heater that had a power vent on it), a light switch to turn it on and off, and some screws so its removable.. Once the fan was there, I realized that the air needed to be directed and controlled somehow.. So I put in a stainless steel combustion tube (from an old submersible well pump) and added an adjustable fan intake restrictor (the bottom of a tin can). Once that was in, I thought that as long as I have power to the unit, why not add a pump so I can use a large fuel tank without requiring gravity. So I installed the fuel tank (Old dump truck hydraulic reseviour) and pump. And another light switch. Then, I realized that with all the heat it was going to produce, I should blow some air across the heat exchanger to keep the steel at a reasonable temperature while operating..(you know, long life and all that) So I put in a circulation fan (from a junked natural gas furnace).. Of course, that required another switch... I thought I was done designing it.. I was a bit upset that I needed all these wires and it would have to be plugged in.. So, I started thinking about walking into the shop in -5 deg weather and how nice it would be to "flip" the heat on... I'm dreaming of frost on the walls, the work bench, etc etc.. Then I looked at the fuel tank..(in my dream of course), and realized that any oil inside it was going to be pretty darn thick.. Oh crap.. I need a pre-heater. An electric heating element (from another old water heater) that would get the unit going until it warmed itself up to operating temp. $hit.. that going to require a thermostat (from same water heater).. And of course, another light switch.. LOL..

So I'm up to 4 switches now.. about to add a fifth for air solenoid..I can't seem to find any appliances in anyones garbage that have one of these..So I paid $11.00 + shipping for it..

This leaves just a couple more things.. A thermostat for the circulation fan so I can free up the switch that is being used for the circulation fan and use that for air solenoid(this comes from the natural gas furnace also) (back to 4), and a flame controller to put the whole damn thing on a thermostat so I can just ignore it for a week at a time between fueling. (If I do the flame controller bit, I'll have to get a fireye or Honeywell unit)

A bit more complicated than a couple fire bowls..

Better?? More doesn't mean better so who knows. History shows some of the most simple things are also the most reliable. A wood stove is the perfect example.

I can say this however, I can burn pure dark black motor oil that's well below the freezing point and the only thing you see coming out of the chimney is a wave of heat.. if the wind is blowing, you can't even see that..

My flame is about 16 inches long total and about 4 inches wide.. (a bit wider at the end).. While only the first 2 or 3 inches is blue, the yellow is such a bright yellow that some say its white..

I'll be taking the camera in tomorrow. I finally got the paint job taken care of.

I forgot to add, I also used some angle iron to make a frame for this unit.. That came from bed-frames I find. They just happen to be 11ga x 1.5 x 1.5 angle.. About 25 feet per bed frame..

Cringe, JTF site, gives me the creeps. Ya know for people reading this there is a reason many of us do not like that guy. When I was starting out, he scarred me badly. What a jerk. Sorry Sanders has to have his info there, because I'm out as fast as possible.

Anyway I think I get the gist of this burner. Get oil into the dish, heat it, light it, and have an air draft run down over it.

Yes simple, except for all the work needed for startup. I think I better, stick a wood heater in the shop and hang a tarp on the door so I can get it warm enough to work on this furnace design. It looks like it snowed all night.
Brian

Boss;
I know what you mean about The Cult Leader, scary stuff. Of course Sanders' design is taken not from JtF but from MEN and he does comparisons with what JtF has done and where it is flawed and makes the necessary corrections.
Then along comes Tim with his double bowl thing taken from the Sanders design, but again improving on that.
What we now have is a completely different burner from what was originally designed at Mother Earth, and bears only cosmetic resemblances with what JtF promotes as "their" burner.
Could a hot air gun/paint stripper (heating element disabled) which has two speeds offer the best compromise to the need for extra air for a heartier burn ? Where in the design would it need to be installed ?

Murphy;
Thanks for the chuckle.You are one of the folks who knows what he is doing with the technicalities of building a burner, but for the layman (laid out man) it is a little too complicated.It may in fact be more fuel efficient though given that there are so many controls at so many intervals along the feed/burn route.
I know nothing about all of this stuff, so simple is best, even at the expense of a little added fuel loss, and seeing as my fuel will be used cooking oil the loss isn't monumental. I may get the thing going using biodiesel in the lower bowl with a healthy shot of methanol to get it going and then the rest will care for itself.
An open pot biodiesel fire rages quite hot in very little time, and the recovered methanol considerably lowers it's flash point to where ignition isn't much of a question.Mix 'em up reall well, light, and you're off.

Thanks Legal and Murphy.
I will post Murphy's awesome burner found Here here, in my morning newsletter tomorrow. Yes, it appears Murphy has a knack for design, fabrication and general improvisation. I feel like a major procrastinator sitting here writing instead of doing, but I guess it's ok to research for a while before I start fabricating metal. Although if I had even one of my ducks in a row, I'd be out there building something right now, regardless of my grasp of the system.
On the other hand, if I was just a couple of years younger I would hit the slopes with all this white stuff on the ground.
Brian

Murphy posted pictures of his big heater HERE, I think I now understand his earlier comment about "robots", Definatly impressive.

I had to burn wood for a few hours today, my fuel feed pump quit moving oil due to the internal oil passage into the gears getting clogged by a bit of silicone that I used as a gasket to seal the cover. I new I should have taken the time to make a paper gasket instead of using the silicone, I made the paper gasket this time.
I also reconfigured the pump plumbing as a test to see if I could use the normal pump openings to mount glow plugs in the pump for heating (that discussion is here), looks like I can mount 2 glowplugs in series and make about 75 watts of heat directly in contact with the oil in the pump.

Burning veg -- I still have not done this in daylight but I can't see any smoke from the chimney in the bright snow-reflected full moonlight.
Neither of the burner bowls makes hard crud with veg, the lower bowl makes a small amount of the normal yellowish colored soft foamy stuff but the top bowl is almost clean except for a good bit of what looks like soft dry crumbly glowing sawdust around the edge of the quickly evaporating fuel pool. If I touch this stuff with my fire poker it moves around just like dry room-temp sawdust ? Once the burner cools off this pile of stuff looks like loose dry breadcrumbs and simply drops or wipes out of the bowl. This has been the same result each of the 3 times I have burnt 100% veg.

It is 10 deg f now (10 pm) and heading for low single digits, stove is burning about 5-6 pints/hour and making lots of heat, about all I want to burn in this stove, I think, as the 1/8 inch thick steel plate insert that the combustion air pipe is mounted through is glowing a dull red at this burn rate and If I open the burner box door and disrupt the draft I get a lick of flame and a little smoke coming back up the air intake pipe.

At these outside temps it takes about 3 hours to get the temp of the cold house up to a comfort level. The burner was off all night (low of 12 deg F over night) and it was 48 deg f inside, I burnt wood for a couple hours first and have been burning oil about 3 hours now and it is finally getting to where I can take my jacket off. Still haven't decided to trust it burning unattended all night ?

I intended to try reducing the distance between the bowls down to 1 inch but my idea of using soft 1/4 inch bolts for the upper bowl's legs didn't work out quite as I had hoped. The 2 inch long bolts that I started with won't unscrew from the nuts that I welded to the underside of the bowl. The bolts are also severly eroded from being directly exposed to the flame in the lower bowl. I will grind the 1/4 inch nuts off of the underside of the upper bowl and replace them with 3/8 inch nuts and try grade 5 or possibly grade 8 bolts as legs, may survive the heat better but I dought it.

Stainless bolts and nuts? Not that expensive just for three of each and easily available.

Tim,

You could also try mixing 1 part motor oil to 1 part veg oil in your burner. The 2 seem to compliment each other and burn hotter than either alone.

I was suprised myself..

I have burnt the heater for a few 10 hour straight periods using 100% veg, each burn is pretty much the same, there is some amount of the "glowing sawdust" stuff around the outside of the upper bowl's fuel vaporizing area, this accumulates for a couple hours and then does not seem to get any larger, I assume it is reaching some equilibrium and since it is glowing it would appear to be burning away slowly. Once the burner cools this stuff looks like fine breadcrumbs and dumps out of the bowl as a powder. I did have about a tablespoon of hard coal underneath this stuff on one burn but was able to easily chip and scrape it out of the bowl with a pocket knife blade. The bottom bowl does not accumulate much crud, I didn't even bother cleaning it for 3 burn cycles.

I had a sealed cubee of NEW heavily hydrogenated (white slurry at room temp) oil that I burnt, it made the same "glowing sawdust" residue so this is something associated with vegoil in general rather than being only something that is in used veg oil.

The main problems I have been having is not with the burner but with the fuel feed. The type "J" suntec fueloil pump that I have been turning slowly with a windshield wiper motor is a bit of a pain, when it is working it is a fine metering pump but It does not handle gelled oil at all at this slow speed as the internal passageway into the actual gears of the pump is only about 3/32 inch wide and about an inch long, turning the pump at only 15-40 RPM does not create enough suction to pull gelled oil down this passage. I have had to disassemble the pump several times to clear the passage.

The pump body is heavy cast iron, I had the pump setting on the cool floor next to the stove, I melted the hydrogenated oil in a pot on top of the stove and was feeding this warm liquid oil to the pump through 3 feet of 3/8 inch fuel hose, by the time the oil got to the pump and hit the cool cast iron it gelled inside the pump body and the pump would stop feeding oil. I moved the pump up onto the top of the stove so it would stay warm, (works well as a hot pump as the only seal is on the shaft and it is made of ceramic) this eliminated the gell problem but now the problem was priming the pump when I ran out of fuel in the pot. At the slow speed and with warm thin oil it just would not create enough suction to prime itself.

I tried one of my 1 G/M shurflo 12 volt pumps, it moves oil extremely well even at 2 volts but the flow was way too much, It would fill both bowls with oil in only about 3 seconds.

Much to my surprise what has been working the best so far is a tiny cheap plastic windshield washer pump. It self primes and by running it at 12 volts it will prime all the hoses in just a few seconds even with cool (not gelled) oil, it runs nice and slow from about 2 volts on up and only draws about 1/2 amp so even a 12 amp gell-cell will run it for at least 24 hours. 3 volts is working well now and I suspect it is flowing a bit more than 1 quart/hr. I ran it at 4 volts for a bit and had the steel plate in the top of the stove a cherry red so it will move more oil then the I feel comfortable burning in this stove. At these low voltages it is barely warm so should last for a while, I will pick up a couple more of these pumps just to be sure I won't be without a fuel feed during some future power outage.

I have not tried pumping engine oil with one of these tiny pumps yet, I suspect the pump will work just fine but the non-fuel rated windshield washer hose will probably have to be replaced.

A windshield washer pump?

What kind of pump is it? Diaphragm or centrifugal? or piston?

So here are my thoughts about it,

Is the pump itself compatible with both veg oil and motor oil?
What about biodiesel?

Windshield washer pumps are only used intermittently.. will it last if running continuously?

How much pressure does it generate? How much lift suction?

Great idea Tim..

Washer pump -- The one I am using is a very small after-market plastic cased type pump, about 1 1/4 X 1 1/4 X 2 tall. This is a flexable impeller pump. Most of the pump case is a fairly cheap 12 volt simple DC motor, the motor is dry, its shaft runs through a simple seal and the flex impeller is maybe 3/16-1/4 inch in diameter and 1/8 inch thick. the impeller runs in a cavity cast into the plastic on the end of the pump that has the small hose barb connections. These pumps don't like running dry as the flex impeller needs to be lubricated because it runs in contact with the pump cavity wall. The impeller usually looks like some sort of shiny black plastic rather than rubber so it might survive pumping motor oil, so far I have only pumped veg. Most windshield wiper fluid contains a good percentage of alcohol so I suspect they will survive motor oil or even biodiesel. This is a link to a 2 page pdf for Trico windshield washer pumps. mine is not shown, must be some other manufacturer. Here is a J C whitney universal pump.

The pump I have turns very fast as the impeller is mounted directly on the motor shaft. They won't last forever but cost under $15.00 so are expendable and are available at about every auto parts store. It should take less than a couple minutes to change out a dead pump as they have built-in small plastic hose barbs and the electric leads could be push-on spade or bullet connectors. These pumps usually have mounting tabs cast into the plastic case to allow them to be screw mounted to an inner fender or firewall of a vehicle.

Don't have any specs on vac or pressure but if you put your finger over the input when powered at 12 volts you can feel a deffinate vacuum and they will shoot an open head 1/8 inch stream of liquid many feet.

They are a bit wonky when powered by less than about 3 volts DC, at this low power they will unexpectidly stop turning. This has been a bit of a problem as with the outside temps around freezing I need to run it at about 3 volts or the house gets way too hot. I am using a linear power supply now but will put together a pulse width type speed control rather than the linear type. the pulse width speed control will switch 12 volts DC on/off a couple thousand times a second, the longer each pulse stays on the higher the average voltage to the pump But each pulse is applying the full 12 volts to the pump motor, this allows the motor to produce more torque than simple low voltage. adjusting the pulse frequence to match the motor should allow it to operate reliably at slow speed - I Hope.

The one I have running now at low volts is just noticably warm to the tuch after running several hours so there should not be an electrical problem running it continuously other than simply wearing out the motor brushes over a couple years or so ?, how long the impeller lasts is unknown but should be a good while pumping well-lubricating veg. when I first hooked the pump up to prime the lines I powered it with 12 volts, it ran fine but as soon as oil hit the impeller the speed about doubled due to reducing the friction inside the impeller chamber.

Maybe not the solution for an industrial-strength burner but the simplicity and low power operation (and it is tiny) will be just fine for my use, If I can get it to run reliably at a slow speed ? It already has proven to be less of a hassle than the Suntec fuel oil pump as if it stops turning I just bump the voltage up a bit and it starts moving oil again and will self-prime. If the burner bowls are hot enough the heater self-ignites and I have heat again, worst case it takes a bit of diesel to relight it, at least I don't have to tear the pump apart or suck oil through the hoses like with the slow turning Suntec pump setup. I can also design the PW speed control to put out a long pulse a few times a second to sort of give the motor a good kick in case it had stopped turning.

great idea with the washer pump, they are amazingly durable, even when run dry they keep working.... What sort of lift do you think you get with that pump on vegi oil, would it pump warm vegi vertical 5 feet plus and maintain some pressure? Also do you have a diagram for the pulse controller you intend on fabricating?? Tigman

I am seriously wondering what an electric Facet pump would do.
I have one that was used in the SVO system that was in my Benz (which I have had removed). It's flow rate seemed pretty whimpy, which seems like exactly what I want. What kind of gizmo do I need to control the voltage ? The pump is a 12V. I can feed it with a solar panel if need be, which makes this interesting.

Sounds very promising. Like Legal Eagle, how do you control the voltage? Have you had any problems witht the fire going out and if so, where does the oil go. I asume it would just overflow everything unless you caught it in time. Any ideas on a sump or something of the likes to catch any overflow?

Tigman -- I suspect there would not be any problem lifting 5 feet and still have some pressure, depends on just what pump you use. I think the link I gave to the J C Whitney universal pump is the closest thing to the one I am using, It looks like some type of rotary pump anyway. A flexible impeller pump can only make a limited amount of pressure (several pounds) due to the flexing impeller but they move liquid well at a low pressure. Some of the pumps shown in the manufacturers link above look to be pulsing pumps as the repair kits shown seem to include some sort of valving, these probably make more pressure but there pumping speed can not be controlled by lowering there voltage as they have either internal electronics or some sort of mechanical switch to control there pulsing rate.

No diagram as of yet. I will start with something simple made from two LM555 timer chips. Both of these will be set up as free-running oscillators. One will be used to set the pulse rate and also how long the pulse stays "on", the on time will be adjustable with a veriable resister (pot), this pot will set the speed of the pump. The second 555 will also be a free running oscilator set to output a wider pulse (1/10 sec ?) every couple of seconds, this will be used to kick start the pump in case the pump motor stalls due to not having enough torque at the other oscillator's lower PW settings. This will make the pump twitch a bit at low pumping settings but it will insure that the pump does not stop pumping for more than a couple seconds at a time. This is not realy a problem as the fuel stream will still be draining the fuel line so fuel will still be going into the bowls after a couple seconds, just not as fast as it does when the pump is running.

Legal -- The Facit pump has internal timing electronics to control the pulsing rate so it's speed can not be controlled by reducing it's voltage. I have done autopsies on a couple of these, the electronics dies pretty easily due to excess heat or if they are hit by too high a voltage (This can happen when the alternator kicks on/off in a vehicle). a couple critical parts should have a higher safty voltage rating than the manufacturer is using, the higher voltage rating would add a few cents to there manufacuring cost and reduce there sales of replacement pumps. Facit autopsy discussion is here.
These Facit pumps also need a power source capable of delivering at least 7 amps instantaniously as this is the amount of current they draw during the time the internal magnetic coil is powered to withdraw the pump piston. If you read the amperage of one of these pumps while running it is a bit misleading as the meter will read the average of the on/off amps and show only about 4 amps being used.

Imark -- I am using an inexpensive lab-type adjustable (2 volts to 25 volts DC) bench power supply for the voltage now, The PW speed control will eventually allow the pump speed to be controled using a 12 volt car battery as the power source, this will insure I will still have heat during any power outages, I will use a small 6 amp battery charger to keep the battery charged during the time that I do have normal "mains" power.

If you do a web search for "DC motor speed control" you will find several PWM hobby circuit projects that can be used to control the pump speed, some more elaborate than others. There are also some kits available for small DC motor speed control circuits.

The only time the fire goes out is if fuel stops flowing into the burner. If the fire did happen to go out while fuel was pumping the bowls would overflow. In this specific case the wood burning stove I have the bowl burner installed in has an ash drawer directly below the burner bowls that will hold about 4 gallons of liquid before it overflowed. I am using 5 gallon jerry cans as my fuel source so as long as this did not happen with a completely full fuel can I don't have a huge fire safty concern. It would be possible to use some type of photocell to insure the fire was burning, if the fire went out this safty circuit would shut off the fuel pump, adds a bit more complexity to the burner design but would also add more fire safty.

6 degrees f outside and headed down, nice and coasy inside burning veg at about a quart/hr.

All this electronics is over my head. I do remember having an old toy train set that had controller for the speed of the train. Is this a posibility?

quote:

Originally posted by lmark:
All this electronics is over my head. I do remember having an old toy train set that had controller for the speed of the train. Is this a posibility?

Yup. I'm not familiar with model train controllers but I bet it would work if its DC..

Not sure, been a long time but it runs on 110 but I think the controller converts it to dc. Just throwing ideas out there, I'm pretty sure I still have on if it will work.

Imark -- the train control may work, but it may output more than 12 volts. Don't know if it would be a pulse width type unit or a linier output unit, shoulden't hurt to try it, set it to its lowest setting when first connecting it to the pump and see how fast the pump turns.

I did a web search for "DC motor speed control kit" and found several, from as little as $8.00 up to $35.00. I have not built any of these but I suspect any of them would work just fine as they all seem to be based on the same 35 cent LM555 timer IC chip.
They are all pulse width modulated type controls, some will handle a lot more power (bigger motor) than is needed for the windshield pump but should work ok.
These are all the same basic design I intended to build, except for the added "kicker" pulse, to insure the motor keeps running when set to at a very low speed.

If you have a handle on electronics you could even build one from scratch using the schematic diagram shown in the PDF documentation.

For the windshield wiper pump the speed controller only needs to operate at 12 volts or more and handle at least 1 amp, or 12 watts of power, if they can handle more voltage or power than this they will still work here but the extra capacity means heavier duty parts so the cost may be a few bucks more.

These are pretty simple kits and you don't need to understand the electronics to build one, just solder the indicated parts in the indicated holes in the printer circuit board.

Here are just the first few kits listed in the web search, there were many more.

This web store is in canada so the shipping may be a bit more but the price is right at $8.00 (don't know if canadian or US ?). No documentation is listed but for the price it should still be worth it, surely there is documentation in the kit.

This kit is from allelectronics.com in california.

Here is one on Ebay, a bit more expensive than it should be but it comes with a plastic enclosure so looks nice.

All of these kits will have all the perts needed and have a printed circuit board that the parts are soldered into so they are easy to build, shouldn't take but a couple hours at most to build. you will need a small soldering iron, a cheap small soldering iron is all that you need, these are usually available at your local hardware or home improvement store for a few bucks.

You may need to do some web searching about how to read resistor color codes (color bands on the resistors that indicate the resistance value) but all that should be explained in the kit instructions, if not, PM me and I will explain what I can.

I have been burning the heater at about 3 pints/hour during the single digit temps over the last couple of days, this higher temp is getting to the upper bowl a bit. It has warped a bit due to the higher heat but still works fine. It is also burning (fast rusting) away a bit, showing some pitting and thinning in places. looks like the upper bowl should really be made from stainless steel if it is to last indeffinatly. The lower bowl is holding up just fine.
Since I am still experimenting with the configuration of these bowls (upper bowl center hole size mainly) I will make up another upper bowl using a bit thicker steel from a cultivator disk blade, The center hole will be 3 inches in this one and the bolt legs will be stainless steel to allow testing of different distances between the bowls. The current 2 inches works well but the bottom of the upper bowl gets coated with a thick layer of soft soot due to the lower flame contacting the metal, I don't know if changing the distance between the bowls will make this soot layer better or worse ?

quote:

Originally posted by Tim c cook:

You may need to do some web searching about how to read resistor color codes (color bands on the resistors that indicate the resistance value) but all that should be explained in the kit instructions, if not, PM me and I will explain what I can.

Remember,

B ad
B oys
R ape
Y oung
G irls
B ut
V iolet
G oes
W illingly

Believe it or not, I learned that in the air force..
I think I remembered it correctly.. its been a while..