This project goes over the build of a homemade waste oil garage heater made out of an old standard 55-gallon drum and a propane tank. This setup also doubles as a cooker.
STEP 1 : BUILDING A WASTE OIL BURNER
The first step is to make the Waste Oil Burner Unit. This is made out of a four-inch tin can and a candy tin. Place the tin can in the center of the candy tin and mark it around them. Cut a hole out of it with a chisel. Drill around 15 small holes around the tin can. The tin can acts like a chimney bringing fresh air for combustion. The open end of the tin is placed into the hole at the center of the candy tin. This burner uses a little over two liters of used waste oil per hour and makes lots of heat from that amount of oil.
STEP 2 : WORKING WITH THE PROPANE TANK
Make sure that the propane tank is empty. Fill it with water and let it sit for a day before we begin to disassemble them. Once the tank is safe to work with, we begin by cutting two sections and dividing them into two chambers. The top one is seven inches high and the bottom one is three inches. We also cut two openings at the top of the tank for exhaust fumes.
STEP 3: LOWER AND UPPER CHAMBER
We make a disc separator out of a 4mm steel plate with a hole in the middle. This disc goes in between the upper and the lower chamber. We place the tin can burner unit inside the upper chamber. The lower chamber is for the air intake. Doors are made with the leftover cut pieces of the tank. The door for the upper chamber has a screen welded onto them for viewing purposes. The air for the combustion comes through the lower chamber, passes through the disc separator hole, and goes into the burner unit.
STEP 4 : HEAT RADIATOR AND A COOKTOP
To radiate the heat, we place a 55-gallon drum over the propane tank burner unit. To make this unit, we take the drum and place it on the sides and cut out a portion. A steel plate is placed in the middle. This can act as a cooktop. On the other side of the drum, we make a hole so that it sits tightly on the propane burner tank.
STEP 5 : HEAT DISTRIBUTION AND FLUE PIPE
The two upright sides of the barrel are welded with a six-inch steel pipe for heat distribution. This pipe acts as suction for the flue pipe. The flue pipe is welded onto this pipe in the middle. So the exhaust gas from the burner comes up and heats the plate over it, travels up through the barrel into the pipe, and moves out through the flue.
STEP 6 : DRIP FED OIL SYSTEM
To control the waste oil coming into the burn chamber of the barrel stove, we use a drip feed system. The oil stored in a bucket is connected to a half-inch pipe with a ball valve.
The pipe goes into a standard half-inch gate valve and further connects to a pipe in the pipe system. A half-inch copper pipe is placed inside a one-inch mild steel pipe.
The pipe coming from the gate valve is connected to the copper pipe which is inside the mild steel pipe through an elbow. These two pipes go straight into our burner unit inside the propane tank. The oil gets drip-fed into the candy tin of our burner.
To get started,we add some kerosene and light up a fire using the torch. We slowly open the valve to start the oil feed into the burn chamber.
Image Credits : GerrysDiy
