used oil heater

I have been building up 5 gal cans of used oil, for a few yr's now, and I took 8 of them up to O Rileys, to dispose of them. They bought out the old Schucks store, and still have the sign out about taking used oil.They didn't want it because it had some water in it. I brought it home and put it in a 55gal drum, turned on it's side mounted on angle iron legs, and in a month or two, when it settles and seperates, I intend to drain out what water I can. I remembered someone on the forum, that said that they used old oil to heat their shop with. I googled up used oil heaters, and got sticker shock! is there any way to build a homemade one? Can it be that involved to drip oil in an old wood stove, and burn it, or is there some reasom that people pay #2000.00 plus, for the Northern Tool stoves, that I don't know about?

I know the used oil heaters are expensive, but if you buy the cow, you get free milk.
I look at is buying the machine and getting the fuel for free. I am sure that you can modify an old oil burner to run the waste oil if you have a consistant stream of fuel, but generally you would prefer it to be dependable and not worry about the fuel source.

I had one in my old shop, and when I sold the shop it stayed there. Nothing like free heat. (I don't have a commercial shop anymore.) My son has it.

Make sure you have an adaquet supply of used oil.

I have a "Black Gold " brand in my shop. It works great ,BUT I got through 1600-1800 gallons of oil a winter . No way would I attempt a homemade dripper type. Too many things to go wrong.

Ralph how do you heat now??? If you are using a wood stove then you can easily make a burn plate for it and use the oil you have.

All you do is put a flat plate toward the top of your wood stove. This allowing you to still burn wood under it. Then put a small cooper line into the stove so it drips oil on to the middle of the plate. Then make a reservoir on the outside. I made mine out of an old steel air tank. I put it on legs about four feet tall. That way it could set away from the stove a little but still be close enought to have short line. The tank just needs to be higher than your plate so the oil can gravity feed over to it. Then just put a valve to control the flow through the copper tubing.

To use this you just build a fire like normal. Then when the stove is good and hot slowly open your used oil valve. You just want it to slowly drip oil on to the steel plate. With the plate hot the oil will burn fast and fairly clean. I used the one I made for 15-20 years.

Then I built my newer shop and put in floor heat. I have a corn/pellet stove that heats the house and shop.

I'll second that on the dripper type. I did drip oil in the wood burner for a year or so but it was way too hard to regulate. I didn't dare turn my back on it. The oil wasn't burned efficiently and the chimney sooted up, so after the second roaring chimney fire I gave it up.

I did consider a waste oil furnace for the new shop but the sticker price kept me away. It still might happen someday. Jim

The waste oil heaters are wll worth the money if you can obtain enough free oil to last you through the winter.
As far as the drip oilers go, IF you don't mind constantly monitoring one they put out ALOT, did I say ALOT, of heat. I used plans off the 'Mother Earth News' site to build one of the forced draft ones using my old wood stove. It's about 3 foot square and made of 3/8 plate. With the drip going the skin temp on my heater was typically in the 650 degree range. This was hot enough that wood objects within 3 feet or so of the stove reached temps hot enough that I couldn't rest my hand on them. I used my heater with the drip for one and a half winters before I took it out because it was simply too dangerous to use that way.

I say spend the money on an oil burner and find enough free fuel from neighbors. I am sure they will be almost more apt to let you take their used oil as used batteries.

Aside from that, I have a cut 55 gallon barrel that I soak a few logs in standing up with used oil. I throw in one at a time to get the old wood furnace in the basement going. Usually in the spring and fall, it usually doesn't go out in the winter!

Wouldn't a small copper line melt? I built a wood heater with sliding damper to keep heat in and the 1/2" square steel bar that opens it gets red hot.

Actually it don't get so cold here, that you can't dress for it. It is my hands and fingers that suffer, and I need a heat sorce that is available for me to warm my hands up perodically when wrenching. In the past I have parked the Allis B next to the shop, and used the exaust for this purpose. I would like something inside, that didn't have to be started up first, and could turn stove off when leaving the shop. I could use a propane heater, and get along ok, but with a used oil stove, I would have a way of getting rid of my old oil, and I don't need a lot of it to do the winter, no more than I am in the shop!

Thanks JD! Yes I have an old cast iron box style wood stove in the shop, but don't keep firewood anymore. That sounds doable, and probably a few old pallets, cut up, would be all the wood I would need. I will have to find out what is available to line my existing concrete block chimney. I wish asbestos hadn;t been outlawed.It had it's uses.

I posted once already about my encounter with a waste oil drip type heater. Now, knowing a bit more info, I'll add a bit to my previous post. Based on what yor saying, the problem with a drip oil setup is that it takes awhile and a bit of messing around to get one going. Once burning they can be put out quite easily by simply turning off the supply and letting the oil burn out of the burner chamber. The problem is that once it has been put out it has to be allowed to cool down before you try to re-light it. I can say from experience trying to relight the thing when hot can be a 'hair singeing' experience. I went through that once with mine and had I not been wearing a welding golve and safety glasses I'd have blistered my right hand and probably part of my face too. When the oil hit the hot burner surface it immediately flashed into a fireball. As it was, I was lucky and only singed the hair on my sideburns, one eyebrow, and the hair on my arm for about 2 inches above the cuff of the glove.

That said a drip oiler IS NOT what you need to use given what your wanting a heater for. As someone who works on heavy equipment for a living, and does 95% of the work outside, I tell you with no doubt that one of the small round or rectangular propane heaters sitting on a typical tank (or a bigger one of you can move it around easily) will be your best bet. Personally, when the weather requires, and I'm in the field in the middle of nowhere, I use one of the small round ones with the catalytic element, and a standard small tank that I can move easily and keep close to me to warm my hands without having to run back to the truck, etc ever few minutes to do it. I don't have on in my shop but in Dads we have one of the small rectangular propane heaters on a tank that we can move around for spot heat until the waste oil heater gets the temp up to where we want it in the shop.

Like I said though for a quick on and off just for hand warming a drip oiler isn't what you want, and even a true waste oil furnace isn't going to do you alot of good as it works just like a house furnace and needs to be on for a bit of time to warm itself up and then warm the inside of the structure. It provides an all over heat that isn't really compatiable with the occasional hand warming.

Good luck and I hope this all helps you make a decision.

Copper has a higher melting temperature than steel. That is why your cutting torch has a copper tip. Also why your MIG welder has a copper tip.

Yes that been done just need a valve to alow the oil to drip but you better check with ins co first they get fussy about things like that Theres a huge shop near here that made on been in use for 20 pluss yrs he has earth moving stuff so plenty of oil.

Let me emphasize about the reservoir near the stove, that you need this as protection in case there is a problem such as the stove getting too hot. You don't want to have too much oil available to the stove and possibly catch fire so from what I have seen about two gallons is a good size for the reservoir, and you would refill it two - three times a day.

i have access to both a dripper thats home made at a friends house, and the one at the company shop which is a commercial unit, both work, the comercial unit takes several hours each season to get it properly working, guess the thing gets sticky, for a short repair job we usually fire up a torpedo heater, its just less bother, the home made one works fine too, but the space its heating is smaller, just a 2 bay garage size place, that one does require that you pay a lot closer attention to it, and whats its doing, basically its 2, 55 gallon drums stacked one on top of the other horizontally, with the oil drum mounted higher than them and connected by copper line with a valve, burns wood and drips oil, heats good

Eventually it will pay for itself, just like anything else. Then your operating costs go down. Look at the costs of outside boilers, the boiler I have inside my house costs $5,000 today. With the cost of fuel oil today I would have got my money back in two years. Only I have been doing this for 25 years at this house so I am way ahead of the game. Even if you have to buy waste oil eventually it will pay for itself. A free lunch is hard to come by.

Nothing like what you want but we have TWO large shops that are heated by used oil heaters. Have use waste oil heater for over 15 years, and tried several brands. We use a brand called CLEAN BURN. Service the units good around August ever year and have very few problems. Usually go thru something like 23 to 30 barrels of used oil each heating season. We save all our changes and take from whoever brings it in. Really cheap heat, but the real savings is shop is warm in the morning and ready to go , don,t have to wait for it to warm up.

I've got a 150000 btu waste oil heater.If it's just water and not antifreeze,just set the buckets outside,the water will freeze and you can pour off the oil.People have brought me barrels that are half water.They fill them with oil then set them outside.Water will always find a way in and eventually displace the oil.

we got some plans off the net years ago to make a oil injecting nozzle you take a 1/4 copper line insert a large torch tip cleaner and smash it down then insert this in a 3/8 steel line so it almost sticking out the end intall a tee and have the oil run down the 3/8 steel pipe with a bal valve to control the flow then hook regulated shop air to the copper line run about 30psi of air in it this will ake like a fuel injector and atomize the oil we have heated our shop for 10 years this way cost 13 dollars to build and no filters to plug or anything to clean the barrel of oil is mounted behind the stove aways we use about 15 gallons a day when its real cold

(quoted from post at 04:17:04 12/31/12) Copper has a higher melting temperature than steel. That is why your cutting torch has a copper tip. Also why your MIG welder has a copper tip.

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Melting point of copper - 1984° F
Melting point of carbon steel - 2600° - 2800° F

Thanks a lot guys for your replies, and useful suggestions.For right now I belive that I will try NC wayne's idea of using a small camping propane heater. Till Wayne mentioned it , I had forgotten about having one of those hanging in my dusty shop. I took it down from the nail, and it still had a small bottle on it. Even after blowing it off with shop air, it was quite a sight when I lit it, Dust burning on the cat part looks like tiny sparks, and the reflector is very rusty. guess I will cover the reflector with aluminum foil.

(quoted from post at 14:28:00 12/31/12) Thanks a lot guys for your replies, and useful suggestions.For right now I belive that I will try NC wayne's idea of using a small camping propane heater. Till Wayne mentioned it , I had forgotten about having one of those hanging in my dusty shop. I took it down from the nail, and it still had a small bottle on it. Even after blowing it off with shop air, it was quite a sight when I lit it, Dust burning on the cat part looks like tiny sparks, and the reflector is very rusty. guess I will cover the reflector with aluminum foil.

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Ralph, I'm pretty sure that the heater that you have is the same that we used to have in our pop up camper, which is VERY different from the one that Wayne is telling you about.