New member introduction

[MT6]

Just joined today. I'm running a old Lanair L110 waste oil burner in my shop. According to the date on the label it was made in 1980.  It is in pretty good shape tho. I'm in northern Colorado at 7000' elevation.  The shop has 16' side walls so I have a 2nd floor in part of it. I put the burner on the 2nd floor to get it out of the way and shorten the expensive stove pipe. When I built the shop I also put PEX tubing in the floor for radiant heat. I'm also running 5 4'x10' solar hot water panels that feed the radiant floor. I put a radiator in front of the Lanair heater so it also is heating my floor.  The solar can generate more heat than the waste oil heater, when the sun is shining. Unfortunately the sun doesn't always shine. I'm currently running the heater 4 to 11 hours a day depending on outdoor temp and solar gain.  It burns about 1/2 gallon/hr but it can make the shop comfortable. I ordered one of the cheap peristaltic pumps from China and plan to use it to better control the heat output of the burner.  Enough rambling for today.

[Russ]

Welcome to the forum MT6!  Sounds like an interesting setup you have there with the solar hot water panels.  Wow, I'm amazed that you can get that much heat out of them!  Sounds like you have a pretty nice combo with the solar & waste oil.  Good luck with your project!

Russ

[MT6]

I can get up to about 200K btu per day out of the panels but it depends on the time of the year and clear sky. That's why I added the Lanair heater.  The key to solar is having a way to store the heat which is where the radiant floor comes in. I also have panels on the house and dump the heat into 34 yards of concrete in the basement floor and 10 yards of gypcrete on the main floor. I filled on 510 gallons of propane last fall which was for 3 years of use. Back in the 80s the feds and the state of Colorado subsidized solar panels so a lot of people put them on their houses. Thirty years later the systems fail or the roof needs replacing so down they come. I pick them up for a very reasonable price. Just clean them up and mount them.

I plan to use waste oil to fire a forge and foundry. Got a Beckett burner out of an rusted out Hotsie pressure washer. Also have a Karcher pressure washer but haven't looked to see if the burner is usable.  Plenty of projects to work on.

MT6