Waste Oil Heater Forum - Your definitive source for burning waste oil for heat.

I left off the last post with a successful running heater that required a lot of "Hands On" to keep running.  We were asking for a lot of heat and so we kept dumping more fuel.  In the last picture of the Ist post I posed with the stove during a good burn.  As you can see it was cherry red and I was still in 3 layers of clothes, gloves and a hat.  As we dumped more fuel in, we would hit a maximum combustion potential for the available air and the heater would begin to huff and puff and belch smoke.  This was usually followed up by the fuel overflowing out of the front door in a stiff black ooze.  In an effort to increase the available air we supercharged the stove by taking the blower fan out of a propane space heater and mounting it in the air intake.  Man did that make some heat!  It came with a drawback though.  Due to the cold temperature of the air in the building the combustion temp would gradually go down and then out, this took about 1 to 2 hours.  During all this, we would end up with burning fuel soup in the bottom of the heater that eventually pooled and overflowed (this was a recurring problem with the fuel soup and the temperature.)  We ditched the original fry pan design burner and after reading about Roger Sanders but not wanting to buy the unit we found a chimney cap from 4 inch flue and turned it upside down on the pedestal and filled it up.  This worked very well but the stamped steel had no thermal mass and would cool down, bubble up a black crust around the rim and then go out.  At this point we shelled out the money for the fancy aluminum Sanders unit and put it in.  One hour is all that it lasted.  The fuel overflowed the side and melted half of the aluminum into a puddle at the bottom of the heater.  So much for that idea.  In a moment of inspiration later that week I decided to stop fighting the pooling fuel in the bottom and embrace it.  I lifted the heater onto some cement blocks and directed the sidewalk torch we had been using to light the stove through a pipe elbow and blasted the bottom the heater.  The bottom of all these heaters is a pressure dome and thusly was just the inverse of the sanders idea and capable of dealing with a lot more fuel.  I left the burner pedestal in place inside the heater to act as a splatter plate.  This worked awesome.   We could open the valve full bore (1/2" line) and actually change the temperature in the building!  As the photo shows we were getting the stove REALLY HOT.  It was uncomfortable to be within 6 feet of it but it was definitely controllable with the valves.  With different site conditions I bet you could heat a pretty large space with this version of the MEN heater.      I think I finally came to a proof of concept with the new design and I would love figure out how many BTU's I was creating.  Look at the pictures and feel free to ask questions or tell me I was crazy. 

Hi Everyone.  This site looks like a great resource.  I will be sharing the experiences I had this winter.  I built a MEN burner about 8 years ago and brought it out of the moth balls to heat a 30x40 boat shed with 20 ft ceilings.  No insulation, only a single layer of white shrink wrap plastic for walls and roof, and a wet dirt/mud floor (frozen most of the time).  I was rebuilding a wooden catamaran using a lot of temperature sensitive epoxy.  Did I mention I was doing this on the coast of Maine?  We had one of the snowiest winters I can remember and it was COLD!  It all worked out in the end, but what a learning experience!  I look forward to posting my adventures and sharing what I learned with everyone. 
Bucky