Author Topic: Waste oil spa pool heater  (Read 15716 times)

mackswood

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Waste oil spa pool heater
« on: October 31, 2013, 03:57:43 am »
Greetings , thought you guys might be interested in a waste oil spa pool heater, we going to hook it up tomorrow , has a 4 inch inlet pipe and a six inch chimney stack , burner is an aluminum v shaped dish on a central plinth , main body of the heater was an off cut of a spiral welded pipe , the water will be heated in a 32mm stainless steel tube which is looped around several times  inside, was running this setup in an old metal drum using wood as a heat source , would take about 4 hours to heat from cold to 40 celsius , the old drum rusted out and after successfully building a waste oil heater for the shed thought id try and make a spa pool heater, will add some pics ,
Regards
Kevin
New Zealand
« Last Edit: November 10, 2013, 04:52:09 am by mackswood »

doug

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Re: Waste oil spa pool heater
« Reply #1 on: October 31, 2013, 09:16:27 am »


  Kevin,

   That's impressive. You do quaility work.

  doug
« Last Edit: October 31, 2013, 11:41:24 am by doug »
You can't put it on the internet if it isn't true!

http://wasteoilheaterforum.com/index.php?topic=102.0

Russ

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Re: Waste oil spa pool heater
« Reply #2 on: November 01, 2013, 10:29:59 pm »
Quality work for sure!  Looks great.  Are you heating now with it?  If so, how is it performing versus the wood?

mackswood

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Re: Waste oil spa pool heater
« Reply #3 on: November 10, 2013, 04:31:42 am »
Hi , thanks Doug and Russ  , we got it going today and had to make a few adjustments , took out the fancy aluminium burner and replaced it with a $ 10 cast iron frypan , same as i use on the shed heater, we use half a cup of what we call Angel Juice to get it running , was given a 200 litre drum by a company that services portable generators , they said the drum was a mixture of waste oil , kerosene , diesel and petrol , i was reluctant to use it as the primary fuel and decided to test it as a starter fuel and it will burn for a good 20 mins , we run the drip valve at about 3 drops a second for about 30 mins and the turn it up to a fine stream, the heater was boiling the water in the coil before it had a chance to run back to the pool so the no pump and natural convection idea was a dead duck , we shut it down and re plumbed it so the water is pumped around the heater and its alot safer , the return fitting is about 3 inches below water level so its easy to poke a hand in to get an idea how the heater is going, a few facts , the pool is 1500 litres , start water temp was 18c  ( 64.4F) it took 4 hours to bring it up to 40c (104F) which is about 30 mins faster than the timber , i estimate that i may only have to run the heater for say an hour a day to maintain temperature,  the heater uses about 1.5 litres per hour, i did a deal with a guy and got a 600 litre header tank , based on my figures  it will keep me going for a while , i will try and add a picture of the set up, will add a roof to keep the weather of the heater and maybe a little concrete pad for it too , feel free to ask questions , Regards Kevin

mackswood

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Re: Waste oil spa pool heater
« Reply #4 on: November 10, 2013, 05:12:43 am »
Greetings again, last photo shows the header tank connected to the heater, the tank is being topped up from the blue drum, we made a pressure pump to transfer the oil, we put about 5 psi air pressure into the drum and the oil is forced out the stand pipe , works really well, the lid on the header tank has a stainless steel screen that filters out any muck from getting in , next job is to mow the grass , Regards Kevin

Fireman Jim

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Re: Waste oil spa pool heater
« Reply #5 on: February 24, 2015, 03:02:18 am »
Looks good but you'll probably find oil may overflow & fall to the bottom of the tank and ignight, causing an out of control oil fire which can be quite frightening inside the shed or home so keep a bloody good eye on it. I hope I'm wrong for your sake, but I have built one like this 4 years ago and that's what it would do from time to time so i pulled it out turned it upside down and popped a burner unit under it.
www.dripfedwasteoilheating.com