Waste Oil Heater Forum - Your definitive source for burning waste oil for heat.
Waste Oil Heater => User Projects & Pictures => Topic started by: Russ on January 17, 2012, 10:11:38 pm
-
Here is my new project. Doug was the inspiration to this project. Have been heating the garage with my forced air pressure system, but I wanted a way to get some of the heat into the house. It will be in the garage and will provide heat for the house and the garage. More details to come.
-
Russ,
Glad to be of help to you. Isn't that why we're here is to help and encourage each other. It wasn't to long you were answering my questions and helping me get started. Thanks.
Nice looking boiler. Looks like it's going to be easy to get inside and clean.
Are you staying with your pressure system?
What kind of heating do you have in your house now?
doug
-
Yes, with that swing open door it should be a snap to get in and clean.
No, I have a ckburners block sitting here on my desk. Just waiting for the rest of the parts to show up. Hoping that the siphon system will be more reliable and will start easier.
The house is currently heated by an off peak electric plenum heater inside a propane forced air furnace. I am just hoping to get some of the heat into the house to lower the heating bill a little. I might experiment with plumbing it into the plenum at some point, but will just start out with a radiator and fan in the 4' crawl space for now.
Cant wait to get started!
-
Russ,
Glad to see you come over to the siphoning side of oil burning. So far mines been reliable and low maintenance. The heat exchange in the plenum is a great way to go.
doug
-
Parts are starting to show up. I'm going to keep a running total of all of my parts throughout this thread. Just don't let my wife see it ;)
I went with all 1/8" air connections. After thought tells me I probably should have did 1/4". Hopefully with the low pressure it wont matter.
Burnham boiler found on craigslist: $250
Ckburners preheater block: $160
Arrow R161 air regulator (ebay including shipping): $13.80
Weksler/Ashcroft 0-15 pressure gauge (ebay including shipping): $11.00
Asco U8262C2 air solenoid valve 110V (ebay including shipping): $33.00
Beckett 5432 flange & gasket (drillspot.com fulfilled by Grainger shipped): $10.11
Ceramic fiber blanket (replace damaged flue clean out): $15.49
More parts coming next week. Almost time to start getting to work...
-
Auberins SYL-2352 PID controller: $60.59
Opto Solid State Relays: $28.00
Will get the float valve tomorrow and that should do it. Wow, lots of stuff to get.
-
Wow, its been a while since I had time to work on the project. Its gonna be warm out before I get it done if I dont get going!
Here is the retention head from Kagi.
$43.77 shipped.
-
Its been a while since any updates. Things have been crazy busy around here. I finally got the boiler in place of the old pressure hot air system and got it fired. It is just circulating into an old 30 gallon water heater at the moment. Heated things up to 160F last night. The burn chamber is so shallow in this boiler. I can actually see oil hitting the back of the boiler when it is firing. I might have to work on a better burn. Waiting for the weekend to do some tuning on it.
-
It's a good feeling when your creation comes "alive". Looking real good. How deep is your burn chamber? I was thinking with 121 mtb's the chamber would be fairly good size.
-
Hey Russ. the boiler project looks great. One thing to consider is that you don't want to allow the flame from the burner to hit the back wall of the combustion chamber, it will burn it out, and then overheat the end cast iron section causing it to fail. Another point to consider is that this is a cast iron sectional boiler. Opening the door only gives you access to the combustion chamber. To properly clean this boiler you must remove the side panel and the top panel and brush between the sections. Also the biggest enemy to this type boiler ( sectional cast iron ) is thermal shock, the return water entering the boiler should be above 130f, this is achieved by a continuous bypass of a small amount of the leaving boiler water back to the input of the boiler. This can be controlled automatically with a thermal mixing valve. I hope this is helpful.
-
Hello Pdham,
I appreciate you suggestions and sharing your knowledge. When I got the boiler I took off the sides and seen how it can get clogged up. It was full of junk when I got it and was quite a chore to get all cleaned up. It will be interesting to see how dirty it will get with the waste oil. So far so good, although I have probably only burned 30 gallons this year.
I dont have any kind of bypass valve at this point. The return water dumps into the water heater storage tank, so once the system is warmed up, the water going back into the boiler is pretty warm.
Again, I appreciate your suggestions and hope to see you out on the forum some more!
-
Not a whole lot has changed in the system except that I am now running the hot water into the crawl space of the house. I bought a 16x18x3.5 heat exchanger off of ebay and built a box for it and connected up a blower fan to it. For now it is blowing into the wide open crawl space of the house. The crawl space is 4' and has a sand floor covered with plastic and is completely open except for a small enclosed area where the electric/gas furnace and hot water heater is. It is a poured foundation with styrofoam, so it is pretty well insulated. It normally runs between 60-65* down there. The exchanger can warm it up to 75-80* pretty fast. I figure a good portion of that heat should be making its way upstairs. I sized the exchanger to fit in the plenum and maybe over the summer I will work on getting it installed in there.
The small exchanger you see on the left is a transmission cooler. It helps to warm things up a little more in the garage if need be. Other than that, things have been working very well. I dont have it running continuously as I dont have a large enough supply of oil, but when it is running, things are nice and toasty.
-
I see you went with a closed loop system. What are you using for oil supply?
-
Yea, that sounded like the only way to do it. It sounded pretty important to keep the air out of the system to prevent rusting of the boiler. Got the oxygen barrier pex and all :).
I have a supply from an owner of an over the road semi and the rest is from friends and farmers in the area.
I have a few 15 gallon barrels scattered throughout the area. The supply seems to keep getting better as I connect with more people.
-
How are you getting oil from the barrel to the burner? Are you using a constant level tank? Is the water heater tank just for bulk storage?
-
Just below the heat exchanger on the left is a 15 gallon holding tank that goes into a CL tank. The CL tank is the orange 5 gallon bucket. Every once in a while I stick the pump back on the burner and filter some oil from a nearby 55 gallon barrel into the 15.
Yea, the hot water heater is just for storage.
-
I'm going to try this Thomas 2660 vacuum pump for my air source. Matt (Mschindler300) is working on getting his burner attached compressor done, but in the mean time I wanted to get something quieter than my big compressor. I was also having problems with my big compressor blowing the breaker. Unfortunately everything is plugged into the same circuit, so hopefully this will prevent the breaker from blowing. I have heard that these pumps (they work as a vacuum or compressor) will easily provide enough air for a burner. I will report back how it works.
-
Russ,
Are you having any problems with unburnt oil collecting on the walls of your boiler?
-
I havent actually looked in my boiler all winter. It was definitely time to check it out. It is hard to get pictures of, but they should give you an idea of how it looks. My boiler had a brand new liner in it and it seems like that is holding up pretty well. I think having that in there helps. It looks like the same stuff that was in my forced air furnace and it gets red hot when the burner is running. Anything that hits that is pretty much gone. It does look like there may be some above where the liner ends. I will have to investigate further. Hopefully I can get through winter first. Otherwise there is a bit of white ash that will need to be cleaned up soon.
-
That's not bad looking. The refactories do a good job of burning off the unburnt oil. I was wondering if may be I needed to put a Kagi retention head on mine to help with unburn oil issuses. I think first I should clean the heater block to make sure that's not causing my problems. Thanks for the pics.
-
My ignitor died last weekend, so I had to get a new one. Patriot Supply had a Dongan SSI-BK103 Solid State Ignitor Kit on ebay for a little under $30. It doesnt look to much different than the one that was on there. Hopefully it will hang in there. Fired it up tonight and it has a nice strong spark. Below is a picture of the new one on the burner and the old one taken off.
-
Russ,
Do you know what the differences is between the solid state ignitor and the older type transformers? Wasn't sure if it would be better to upgrade to a ssi.
-
Thats a good question. I couldn't find much information on the differences between the two.
My old forced air furnace had the old iron core transformer. My boiler came with a solid state and it died. Maybe the transformers are more durable? I posted some info I got from the Beckett site regarding solid state transformers here:
http://wasteoilheaterforum.com/index.php?topic=273.0
It looks like the biggest difference is energy usage.
-
Thanks for the link I believe that's what I was wanting to know.
-
Just checking on your boiler. Any new info? Still doing fine? Any upgrades? I want to start a boiler project just like yours. Thanks
-
Hello superduty_59. Nothing much to report besides burning oil as I type. I am still using my constant level tank rather than the metering pump, but that’s because I haven’t taken the time to research and implement a solenoid to cut the oil flow off to the burner.
I have to clean the ash out once a year and clean the nozzle about once a month, but other than that, the system works really well. There is a lot of heat to be had as long as you have a good oil supply.
Have you found a suitable boiler yet?
Good luck on your project!
-
russ, are you running your burner 24/7 ?
-
Russ are you still running your heat to the heat exchanger in the crawlspace? Who much does it help with heating you house?
-
Doug: no, I still only run it only when I am home. I dont have an oil supply to keep me going 24/7. If I did I would have to do a little revamp on the vent stack as well as the supply tank. I am working on automating some of the system with an arduino board. I'll update this post when I have something working. I am still prototyping, but hope to have it running soon.
Super: yes, I still have the heat exchanger in the crawl space. It only has a 6" intake and exhaust into the house duct system, but it will hold the house at 70 until it gets 0F and below. Above 20F it will gain temp and I have to shut the blower off. Part of my automation system is going to solve the manual turning on and off of the blower.
-
russ,
would you feel safe running the constant level 24/7 ?
-
No I really wouldn’t. My fear would be the float not sealing off and waking up to a garage floor covered with oil. I had a bad oil leak once already. Never want that to happen again! I still havent moved to my metering pump. I tried it for a while, but I must need to put a solenoid on the line up to the burner because there was residual pressure after the pump shut off and the nozzle would drip oil and make a mess. Do you have some sort of solenoid between your metering pump and burner?
-
i do have a solenoid shut off valve with in 3" of the heater block. I do get a residual drip also. i have the burner tipped up at the nozzle end so the unburnt oil runs back down the blast tube then it drips out the oil supply hole into a catch pan. not the best system but better than the mess it makes in the burn chamber.
-
Do you guys think that the oil is seeping past the solenoid or maybe residual oil in the pipe from the solenoid to the nozzle?
-
I am thinking residual oil from between the solenoid and the nozzle. In my case, between the metering pump and nozzle. I remember reading somewhere about a purge type setup where the solenoid closes a few seconds before the rest of the system shuts down to allow the pressure to be relieved. I'll have to see if I can find that again.
-
Russ there is a Honeywell safety control for Becketts that has a programable post-purge. Ithink up to 4 minutes.It help dry the retention head. Not sure if this is what you were talking about but this oil burner guy is funny. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vsiePKbH68&t=3s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vsiePKbH68&t=3s)
-
Ohhh yea, that is a nice control. I might have to get me one of those. It sure gives you a lot of control.
-
http://www.ebay.com/itm/HONEYWELL-R7284U1004-Oil-Primary-Control-Junction-Box/331346459577?_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m1851&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D2%26asc%3D38530%26meid%3Db396d1791800401dbbd80c79213901ac%26pid%3D100005%26rk%3D5%26rkt%3D6%26sd%3D401236950985 (http://www.ebay.com/itm/HONEYWELL-R7284U1004-Oil-Primary-Control-Junction-Box/331346459577?_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m1851&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D2%26asc%3D38530%26meid%3Db396d1791800401dbbd80c79213901ac%26pid%3D100005%26rk%3D5%26rkt%3D6%26sd%3D401236950985) $65 too. Not too bad!
-
I'm going to try this Thomas 2660 vacuum pump for my air source. Matt (Mschindler300) is working on getting his burner attached compressor done, but in the mean time I wanted to get something quieter than my big compressor. I was also having problems with my big compressor blowing the breaker. Unfortunately everything is plugged into the same circuit, so hopefully this will prevent the breaker from blowing. I have heard that these pumps (they work as a vacuum or compressor) will easily provide enough air for a burner. I will report back how it works.
Hi Russ,
I was wondering if we could get a picture showing how you got the 2660 vacuum pump set up and any comments you have about it? Was wondering if I should use a little tank with it or does it pump air straight to the nozzle and what's the max rating on the regulator you use?
Thanks!
-
No tank, just straight from the compressor to the regulator. I use a needle valve on a T connector coming out of the pump so I can bleed off the excess air. The pump does produce more air than is needed, so you could add a tank and on/off pressure switch, but it was simpler just to add the T and needle valve.
-
The pump works wonderfully. It is quiet and power efficient and produces more than enough air for the heater. I would never think of going back to a full size compressor.