Anybody have a waste oil furnace? Home made?

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toolmanmike

toolmanmike

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I was in a customers shop today that has a Thermobile AT307 waste oil furnace.
With a couple fans in the shop, it heats his shop, engine assembly room, parts room, and office. It's slick little unit that he wheels in the back room during the summer. He has had it for quite a few years with little maintenance. The major drawback is that it isn't automatic so he has to manually light it each morning.
Looks like the #305 model is a radiant heater. The more deluxe models have a forced air fan. There's quite a bit of info on the net about home built units
but they look pretty crude and I'm sure unsafe. Any of you guys have anything that works good for you? Mike
http://www.heatechinc.com/wasteoil-thermobile-heaters.htm
 
LOL, my dad did something like that back in the early 70s.... probably get in trouble for it today... and knowing him, it was not necessarily the safest thing in town!
 
Buddy of mine had some cobbled up petroleum cocktail...had a 5 gal pail up high, with a copper line coming out the bottom and slightly pinched off (so it would slowly drip) feeding a furnace of some sort...looked crude and burned crude...but he got heat
 
I have not kept up on "whut's out there." Some 15 years ago, I worked HVAC/R so I know and understand home and light commercial gun type oil burners.

Having said that, a number of years BEFORE I knew anything about oil systems, a different outfit I worked for had a low pressure (air aspirated) waste oil burner that was, quite simply, a huge, giant, PITA.

You have to have some way to REALLY FILTER your oil, it would help if you have a STABLE type of oil, IE nothing but ATF, nothing but motor oil, etc.

Back then, we fed all kinds of "sludge" through that thing, and it was a constant bother.

What I'm trying to say is, like a friend of mine who runs an auto trans shop, or an oil change shop that has a lot of motor oil, or unless you have some other fairly CLEAN form of fuel, ...................

Personally, most of the homebrew ones I've seen on the www look pretty flakey to me.
 
I put one of these in my garage when we built new shop about eight years ago. It's a great easy to use unit that burns very clean and hot. Heats my three car (24x30) enough thatI can work in a t-shirt while it's very cold out(Chicago climate). The payoff was about 5-6 years as apposed to running nat gas. Very easy maintenance too. http://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_586_586
 
Thanks Glen. If they had one about 1/2 that size it would be good for me. I have
a stall and a half. Looks like a good one though. tmm
 
Mike ,
I have a waste oil heater in my shop (roughly 40 x 80) 5 bays and an office. It will run you out of the shop if you put it to 75*. I keep it about 60-65* during the winter. I use oil changes, atf, some gas from fuel filters, kerosene, I do occasionally add some gearlube and have only had issues from customers oil that may have sat in their garage for a while and absorbed or had moisture seep in. I just bleed off the storage tank of water and go. Adds about a $30 price tag to my electric bill being that it has a high flow (IE:HUGE) fan to blow the air into the shop. Me and my techs LOVE IT!

BTW- it was about 6K investment initially. Turn on the thermostat and go...
 
my dad has a used oil furnace that works excellent in his shop. we have to have permits and inspections with this. he uses a 200 gallon furnace oil tank in the shop and uses about 40 55 gallon drums through the winter.it is cold up here. has to be cleaned twice a year. my dads shop is 36 x 80 heats it no problem.
 
godspeedglen said:
I put one of these in my garage when we built new shop about eight years ago. It's a great easy to use unit that burns very clean and hot. Heats my three car (24x30) enough thatI can work in a t-shirt while it's very cold out(Chicago climate). The payoff was about 5-6 years as apposed to running nat gas. Very easy maintenance too. http://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_586_586
Click to expand...

We make those for Northern tool where I work, I probably punched some of the parts for your heater. Never used one, heard our maintenance guy telling the other day that synthetic oil doens't work very well if at all.
 
good filtering system, build a small safe pre-heater to heat the in coming oil to about 220-230 degrees it will burn in just about any kerosene furnace or boiler. i did it for about 30 years. i built a 1/4 in. double wall heater with a dry house trailer type water heater element. it would hold about a quart of oil. heated the oil before it went to the furnace nozzle. i did not alter any of the safety controls on the heater. good filter is what it takes
 
A few years back my dad and I built a Waste Oil / Veggie Oil furnace for the shop using a small Mobile Home Oil Fired Furnace (aka heating oil)

The nozzle was replaced with a 60A 90* nozzle, a Coffee Maker heating element/tube was used (with the copper line running inside it) as a Post-Pump heater to thin the Waste Oil or Veggie Oil out enough to spray properly.

For every 15 Gallons of Veggie Oil (or 20 of Waste Oil) we added about 1/2 Gallon of Diesel to help with "Cold Starts" in the mornings. Once it had fired once, it would shut itself off and turn itself back on with no problem. It was the first start that required a little bit of Diesel Fuel to be mixed in to get it going (once the firebox was warm it wasn't an issue)

On those really really cold mornings, we would attach a Magnetic Block Heater to the side of the Pump and warm the pump up slightly to thin the oil out enough that it didn't gum things up until the temperature in the shop was warm enough that the oil didn't turn to pudding.


It now serves as a backup furnace. Our primary Heating Source at the moment is another Modified Mobile Home Furnace fitted with a Stainless Steel Tube, Stainless Liner & Stainless Auger, with modified Pellet Stove controls and gear reduction boxes to feed the furnace with Wood Chips (from a Wood Chipper/Stump Grinder) Free Heat, since one of the customers is a Tree Trimmer, he just drops off 10 or so ton when we need "fuel" for the furnace :D
 
old mopars said:
74dusted, sounds neat. How about some pics?
Click to expand...

I'll get some pics later today, I left my camera plugged into the computer last night and it drained the battery. So when that charges back up, I'll grab the pics.

The wood-chip furnace isn't pretty at the moment, since it's in the "Design & Test" phase. Everything is mounted with scrap materials that were laying around, and no side covers on anything. the "Use what you've got" approach, that way you're out only time (no money) if it turns out to be a failed plan.

The Gear Drive/Feed system is the following :

1 Garage Door Opener Motor
1 340 Double Roller Timing Chain
1 Industrial 50:1 Reduction Box
Chain Drive (can't remember the tooth count) with homemade Load Tensioner
1 Rototiller Gear Box/Transmission

In that order, the last in line is the Tiller box/trans, which connects directly to the Stainless Auger. That took some head scratching to figure out how to slow the auger down enough to burn properly.

Sub-systems include :

Forced Air to feed the head at the end of the Stainless tube (near the end of the auger)
An Agitator in the hopper, to keep the chips from binding up.
Extinguisher system that cuts the power to the furnace and sprays the Hopper, Auger & Firebox in the event of a failure
A "Magic Cube" style heat exchanger built into the plenum around the exhaust stack, to reclaim heat from the exhaust


I still have to figure out a backup power source for the Extinguisher, so that it still functions in the event of a power failure (like say, if someone hits a telephone pole). So that it can put the fire out, to prevent it from burning back through the auger.

Anyway, that's the simple breakdown of the furnace. Everything operates on timers, relays and such. The agitator for example, runs in bursts of 2 - 3 seconds, for about 15 seconds, per 1 complete revolution of the auger. And then it will do that again in about 10 minutes (the average time it takes the auger to make a complete revolution, on the 3rd setting/speed).

You want your brain to hurt? try imaging the amount of microswitches, relays, timers, wiring, temperature sensors and so forth that are in the furnace :grin:
 
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