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

Got a few Vids on my YT channel for making burners and also modifying gas water heaters.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEfdKGemqGDvpn2hSuJl2Nw?view_as=public

I did just as you said, took out the gas burner and put in a self made oil burner. Very easy and you can knock up a burner in less than an hour... if that.  The trick is control. Recently I have been playing with different pumps from fleabay for that along with PWM controllers for the blower and the oil feed pump.  I'm liking pumps because unlike gravity feed, the supply is constant and does not change with tank level, oil warming up or cooling off etc. You set the output and that's it.

For your application you could incorporate some temp sensors and use a Dump load. Put a thermostat on the return water and if it hits a certain temp, a fan comes on  for a radiator and just dumps the the heat or maybe heats another area like a garage where the washing is or could even go to a thermal mass like another tank to store the heat so the burner can be switched off but the water circulated and supply heat.

You have to be a bit creative with this and work out what you want and also work to your skills and abilities. A lot of people want turnkey solutions but that costs a bomb as you have seen. To get the benefit of cost you have to invest your time and effort.   I'm looking at using arduino micro controllers for regulation but I have a lot to learn about them yet.  A dump load may not be the most efficient way to go but it may be simple and allow you to heat with oil where a more sophisticated system would be out of your grasp.

 I'm setting up a spa heater for home heating. Again just removed the gas burner and replaced it with an oil burner.
For the time being I'll open the window if it gets too warm inside. Should be nice to have the window open in winter and fresh air going through.  :0)

I'm going to use a caravan type water pump and probably stage the thing so it's idle or heat. I'm thinking one PWM controller running constantly for idle and another on a thermostat for heating when the temp drops.  When it hits preset, the thing will drop back. I'll have the thermostat on a relay so it just supplies the higher voltage over the top of the other PWM controller.  I'll have to tune the air supply a bit and probably use a 12V Bilge blower so I can control both the air and fuel together. Other alternative may be something like a car throttle body on a solenoid with a hole in the thing so it supplies air when the thing is it idle and then opens to admit the full/ tuned airflow when heat is required.

I'm also looking for a 400L hot water system to use as an extra tank.  I am in 2 minds about this. I may set up as a solar powered pre heater that feeds into the main tank therefore reducing the off peak power requirement or heating up fully and eliminating it.  Other option is to have an oil fired heater.  I'll set that up on a simple shutdown  where I fire the thing up and then one of 2 thermostats running in series hit temp the thing simply cuts the oil supply then a few minutes later the fan.  I'll use 2 thermos so they both have to be closed for the thing to run. If one fails the other will sense temp and shut down.  May even use a 3rd as a master cutout on a non latching relay.  Even if everything failed, the worst that can happen is the heaters expansion valve will blow off and the incoming water will cool everything down till it cycles again.

I may even go for both options being a summer and winter alternative. Summer should give loads of solar powered hot water and winter would be the oil fired.

One thing I'd make you aware of is your oil supply.  Do you have one and is it big enough to meet your needs?
IF you burn 2L of oil an hour which would be pretty much a minimum for what I believe you'll need where you are even 12 hours a day that's 24L. x7  plus a bit extra for rounding is 150L a week MINIMUM.  I'd be wanting a supply of 200L a week myself.  You can store it, you'd probably want 3-4000L per winter so have you the Supply per week/ month or the space for at least 3 IBC's?  The rest you might be able to make up over the winter however be aware that a lot less people go out in winter so if you want to use veg oil, the restaurants don't produce as nearly as much in winter as they do summer.  In Sydney, it's way less oil.


I favor Veg oil and if tht is your choice, would recommend you process in summer although you'll have to watch the fats in winter. You may need to add some Diesel/ turps/ kero to help keep it thin  depending on the temp and the oil you get.  You'll want to strain it at least through some fabric to get out the crumb size particles and dead rodents etc. Dosen't have to be super clean like engine fuel but it has to have anything that can build up and cause blockages removed.
The best way to deal with oil is do nothing.  Put it in a drum or IBC and the longer you do nothing with it the less you'll have to do to it when you do want to use it.  Gravity will take 95% of the crap to the bottom of the container, you pump off and strain the rest into your Clean tank and you are ready to go. If you have the space and supply I'd say be stocking up as early in spring as you can for the winter ahead. I try to do that with the oil I run my Vehicle on and I can usualy get enough put away so I don't have to do any collection or filtering in the cold months and just run off reserves.  When things warm up and the oil is plentiful again I stock up.

 You can use engine oil but again, you'll probably want to strain that as well. I used some the other day that came from my Brother in laws Battle ship of a cruiser. It was taken straight from the engines into a clean tin. it sat for a year and when I went to use it there was thick sludge like gloop on the bottom.  The stuff seems to congeal somewhat no matter how clean and sealed it is and this would cause problems.  You'd at least want to have settling tanks and pump from the top down to get the good liquid from the thick sump gunk.

If you haven't sourced your fuel, I'd implore you to do that before going any further.  Some people like myself can get more oil than they can use, others say they can't get any. In reality I think more depends more on the person than the location.  Some people are afraid to ask and have all sorts of weird and wonderful ideas on things and others like myself have plenty of front and are not afraid to approach people  or take whats sitting around largely being a nuisance.

There are a lot of different ways to design and control a heater so get an idea of the physical dimensions and output of what you need and an idea of how you are going to set it up. As a rule of thumb, 1 L of oil is good for 10 KW of heat output. you can look at your gas heater and get an idea of what it's doing, ( may have to use an online converter to change BTU or Joules into KW or whatever you want to work with) and then you'll know the size of the system you are wanting to do and have an idea of fuel flows, consumption and air/ blower requirements.
From there you can build the thing with an idea of size and control.
You will NOT get away with some simple drip feed unless you don't mind attending to the thing every 30 min.  I'd strongly recommend a pumped system because it's the most consistent and reliable.

I have had the thought of fuel injectors for a while now and the research I have done says they will be a hard task.

Firstly to get them to spray you want as much pressure behind them as possible. From what I looked up most operate in the 40-60 Lb range. I was thinking 500-1000 PSI from a power steering pump but maybe that's not necessary?

The other thing and the main reason to use them is flow rate. For the burners I make and I would think most heating applications, they don't flow all that much oil. That could be OK though, you could use multiples and click them in for low, medium high,  or now wer'e talkin!

It also seems you can't run the things permanently wide open or the coils burn out. they are designed to be pulsed. There are some schematics on different sites to build these things and can be done with aurdinos but that's a bit beyond me. The drivers allow the injectors to be controlled in frequency and pulse width, IE, how long each squirt cycle lasts.

If they can't spray oil, they could still be used with a blown air type burner to control the amount of fuel delivered.
Just set them to inject into the airstream and let the air carry the fuel along into the burner.

I was thinking to buy the highest pressure caravan type pulse pump I can find. I think I Have seen them 140/150 PSI and try an injector with one of those and see how it works..... and for how Long!  :0)

I have been working on a new setup to get more power out of my burners.
1L of oil a minute or 600Kw has been a goal for some time and I have finally got there. I have been using these burners a bit recently to separate the aluminum from steel and other metal in car parts. A monster like this will allow whole engines to be melted down in under 5 minutes I reckon.

Here's a preview of the burner running.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pt9xvB_hmWk

I'll edit the full vid and get it up in the next couple of days.

I did a flow test on the fuel before the run and measured the consumption afterwards to confirm the output. As soon as I opened the fuel right up and it ran without going rich or smoking, I knew what I had achieved.  The surprise was how easily I did it.  I measured the fuel flow before and after and confirmed I was getting 600KW but as I had the thing wide open with 3 PSI fuel pressure ion a 3/8 line and got no smoking, it's clear the thing can do more.

I also got another blower to force feed the primary one and the flame of the burner got shorter and hotter indicating the thing was then leaning out.  I'll have to go to a 1/2" fuel line as I don't want to put any more pressure on the plastic fuel tank I'm using.
This thing isn't exactly a "drip" burner, the flow of 1L of oil a minute is a very healthy stream.  I don't know what it is in pure American standard of measurement being football Fields but it is one of your gallons in Under 4 min.  Be thankful your car doesn't get that although I imagine you'd have a smile on your face if it did.

I'm thinking this burner which has a 3" outlet and a 2.5" inlet may go to 750 Kw, maybe higher.  The next goal obviously is 1000KW. For that I'm thinking a 4" outlet and a 3" inlet will allow me to get to that level.  After that, there really is no point I suppose because the sky is the limit  depending on your ability to supply air and fuel.

I also bought another blower. It's a very specialized bit of gear which is a high speed, high pressure blower capable of putting out 60 CFM @ 13 PSI. This could make for an awesome torch/ jet like burner that will shreik like an old turbo jet of the '60's .  I'm thinking of something like a small stationary  rocket type motor and see if can get Mach Diamonds coming out the end which really would be rocket science as it indicates a flame speed above the speed of sound. not sure if that is possible on 13 PSI but I aim to find out!

:0)


I'll get the full vid up in the next couple of days to show the full setup and the fuel measurement.

I wasn't trying to criticise, only suggest.

At the end of the day, you are now burning 40Kw worth of fuel and saying you want to get the same heat out of 10Kw worth.
I don't think your efficiency, heat or burn, is that far off nor are you going to come close to the heating you want without a major change in the basic burner design.

I have 3500 subscribers on my YT channel that I feature all my oil burning designs and stupidity on.

Would it be allowed and or a good Idea to put something up about this forum to bring in some new people?

I haven't found anything else covering this subject matter but is sure is quiet round here.

Stumbled across this site and thought it might be right up my alley although it does look a little quiet here?
Seems I passed the entrance exam to be allowed in, never been through that to get in to a forum before. You guys must have some real good secrets locked away in here!!!  :0)

I'm in Sydney Australia which means when most of you are freezing your butts of in god forsaken snow, I'm sweating like a pig and getting sunburnt.  It also means I don't understand your out of date temperatures in o F, Whatever the heck that is nor do I have any comprehension of your standard units of length measurements, Football fields.  We, like the rest of the civilized world work in units of 10 called the metric system. :0)
A thong here is a rubber sandal you wear on your feet, equally for blokes and sheilas, of any age from birth to death.  It's NOT something that goes up the crack of your Klakka.

I make all sorts weird and wonderful burners most of which are ridiculously and impractically over-powerful.  I like fire and being in control of it, what can I say?
 If it's not doing 100Kw or 10L an hour, I can build one that will to relieve the painful boredom.  So far the most powerful Burner I have built burnt goes through 38L an hour of oil  or outputs 380 Kw and would do more If I can finally get my hands on something like a jumping castle blower. Or 2.

I have a Youtube channel under the same name where I show my exploits and have tutorials on building and operating different home made burners. 

https://www.youtube.com/user/glumpy10/videos

The channel is for men and women who are into DIY and getting their hands dirty. If you are a whining safely zealot Nazi, it's definitely not for you.  :0(
My belief is PPE is all fine and well but basically useless if your brain isn't engaged in the first place.  Uncommon sense is the most important piece of safety gear in my book.  Don't whine about me welding without gloves, it hasn't killed me or anyone else yet and I have no time for whingers that have never done so much DIY as nail 2 bits of wood together but think they have a duty to play mother hen on the internet to everyone that can.   

The burners I make are designed for melting scrap metal to putting under your BBQ. I have used them for powering a water heater so I could have a hot shower when the electric one died recently to heating oil for processing to Biodiesel and just make big flames for the hell of it.   

For my upcoming personal projects, I want to make an oil burning heater for the house that is located outside and circulates hot water through a radiator inside.  I also have the heat exchanger from a boiler that was used to heat a council  Olympic size pool and want to finally get around to setting that up to heat my own swimming pool.  The HE is only rated at 200 Kw so I'll have to tame things down a bit so I don't melt the thing. That should give me a 20oC temp rise on my 70K L pool in about 12 hours.

I have also been running my Vehicle on used Veg oil for over 10 years now and I'm pretty familiar with that as well although I go against the grain of about 90% of what is preached with that because it's basically rubbish that people parrot and follow blindly without ever testing. I have and base my opinions and practices on demonstrated fact not what the last guy said  who followed what the guy before him did who followed the guy before him and.....

I have misspent a lot of my time following oily and often smokey pursuits and I hope to be able to contribute here and help some people avoid making the same mistakes I have and leverage their learning curve while being able to learn some things myself.

OK, now I have cured your insomnia, you can wake up now and go back to your regular Viewing.

Have Fun guys!

OB.