Waste Oil Heaters - Anyone ever build one?

I'm planning on building a waste oil heater for my shop. Kinda along the 1970's Mother Earth News (MEN) model. I've been trying to find success stories, but there aren't that many out there. Some "I made this kinda like this and it sorta worked..." Some warnings that the original MEN design doesn't work well with modern motor oils because of some type of anti-flash additive or something. People selling plans, but to what?

I've been keeping my waste oil. I bought a 40 gallon plastic drum and all my oil changes go into it now. I've got maybe 10 gallons, almost all full synthetic. I can get a lot more if I just go get it from our club house. I have an old water heater tank that is in pretty good condition. And of course, enough tools and skillz, y0.

So, anyone built/use a waste oil heater for the shop?

Never used one, but I looked into it last spring and found this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiKcx7ghtHk

Watching with interest. I've got about 30 gallons of oil now.

I've got over 70 gallons of used oil right now, so something like this would work great for me if it isn't too much of a pain in the ass to ignite etc.

armt350 wrote: Never used one, but I looked into it last spring and found this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiKcx7ghtHk

That may be waste oil, but it does not appear to be waste engine oil- way, way to clear.

I picked up a pair of orchard/barn/rocket heaters last weekend & took them to a friend. I wasn't previously familiar with them, but they apparently run on any combustible oil/grease/lard/whatever.

They're explicitly for outdoor use, but it seems like you could set one up indoors safely with a good double-wall stovepipe and judicious use of shielding/insulation.

They're also as simple a design as it gets and could be built from scratch easily.

There are tons of vids on YouTube of them to give you inspiration, or scare you away.

The ones I have seen are basically a hot water heater (because they are iron and fairly thick) with a burner inside. The oil drips down onto the burner, where it is vaporized and ignites. That's the principal. Talking with a friend of mine that grew up in Syria, he said that when he was a kid they heated their house with a kerosene heater that worked that way. Anyway, the burner itself seems to be the key. A common theme is a low pan with flame proof stuff in it. Bolts, or fire brick, etc. To light it, you put a couple ounces of kerosene in the burner and light it. It gets hot and then the dripping oil vaporizes and ignites. The kerosene gets burned up, and the dripping/vaporizing/burning oil sustains the reaction. Some models require you to also put some newspaper in the back to get the draft going properly. Some don't. They say it starts putting heat out in a few minutes.

In reply to alfadriver:

One of the comments says he uses both cooking and waste motor oil, you just have to adjust the drip rate.

My rental house has an oil furnace that used a pot burner. Oil basically flowed into a pot in the bottom where it vaporized and burned. It had a fairly complicated carburetor that controlled the flow. It also had floats in it that kept it from overflowing and would shut the unit down if it overheated. I'll try to remember who it was made by.

A friend of mine owned a Dodge dealership and he heated the whole shop with waste oil. Obviously, he had an unending fuel supply. It was an old building and he was not the original owner. I'm not sure if the heater was something that was built or purchased. I doubt that he could have told the difference anyway.

Similar to this, but without the blower. It used draft from the chimney to pull in fresh air.

armt350 wrote: In reply to alfadriver: One of the comments says he uses both cooking and waste motor oil, you just have to adjust the drip rate.

That would make sense. But do be aware- if you burn engine oil, there will be ash. Most of it some kind of metal oxide- since there are so many metal additives to the oil, as well as any metal that has worn away from the engine.

Whereas veggie oil's issue is more about glycerin (sp?) which needs to be removed before using as a diesel fuel replacement.

Anyway, that ash can be problematic. If you can contain it in the burner area, that would be better than just let it go out.

One other thing I wonder- being such a yellow flame, it seems very poor cumbustion. But that could be a result of the ash, too...

This is the similar to the carburetor.

I think the furnace was made by Duo Therm. I'll have to look at it the next time I stop by the house.

When I worked for a John Deere dealer we had a waste oil furnace in the shop. It was similar to a fuel oil burner. I think it had a different jet.

Biggest problem was that the storage tank was outside and the oil would thicken and not flow. then it as necc. to apply some heat.

In reply to Dr. Hess:

I collected parts several years ago to build one of those, but in the end it didn't seem worth the complexity for an end result that would likely only be mediocre at best - based on many of the references I found online.

After seeing one of these in action, I'm more inclined to build/find something like this, but modified for indoor use. Much more simple, much less to go wrong, and more flexibility in fuel options.

Be prepared to spend a LOT of time adjusting, re-engineering and fine-tuning. Mine would not light one night, melt an aluminum skillet one night and have a half-@$$ flame the next. There is little to no consistency.

When not burning well, it STINKS!

Be sure to add an inline water filter.

Plan on adding some sort of blower. (I have an old hair dryer to try.)

Mine will, at best, knock the chill off. ...but I have to work right next to it so I can regulate the fuel flow.

If you want a project, it's perfect. If you want quick, easy and cheap, it's only one of those.

My old boss had an old waste oil heater with a carburetor style set up. It was a pain in the ass, because every day it had to be cleaned out. Luckily it finally crapped out and he just purchased a modern waste oil heater.

He also couldn't burn certain oils in there too. I think synthetics were an issue.

armt350 wrote: Never used one, but I looked into it last spring and found this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiKcx7ghtHk

I found his website earlier. It's an interesting design. I dunno about the glass view port.

It looks like you'll have ash/gunk as a left over product when using waste oil, and there's no way around that. A burner that is easy to clean seems to be a good idea. The ones that use forced air seem to burn hotter and have less ash. Or, the ash goes up the chimney, I suppose, but less to mess with.

This guy: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/ethanol_motherearth/me4.html

experimented quite a bit with the MEN design. His book has a modified burner design that looks interesting.

I know it's pretty simple to modify an old oil furnace burner to burn it(I think it's just adding a preheater, maybe a nozzle), hotter combustion probably leads to less buildup and cleaning, plus it's already built.

I don't know why you'd want one over a woodstove for a home shop. Firewood collection, while time consuming, is good exercise.

Well Answered my own question NfpA 211 bans solid fuel burning anywhere gasoline or solvents are stored.

NFPA 211-2002 12.2.3 Solid fuel-burning appliances shall not be installed in any location where gasoline or any other flammable vapors or gases are likely to be present. 12.2.4 Solid fuel-burning appliances shall not be installed in any residential garage.

So if your town adopts nfpA as its Fire code you are hosed. Sometimes they do Sometimes they do not.

I have a good ole barrel stove in my shop. I burn lots of wood.. the bottom of it is full of old brake parts..

off to one side I have an old metal lawn mower gas tank. Holds about a gallon and a half of oil. Out of the tank I have an old piercing type saddle valve. which runs soft copper to a drip into the top of the barrel..

I get a good hot wood fire rolling. Let it go a while then I start a bit on an oil drip. It will make the wood go 5 times as far. The Small Oil tank will last most of the day.. And I tolerate the nuisance of having to fill it because having a smaller quantity of oil means less of a problem if the drips runs away and gets it to burning a little to hot.

There are more efficient designs for sure.. but this works pretty darn good.

Dad has a forced air waste oil burner in his shop. It came out of an old ford dealership. It is awesome.

Fueled by Caffeine wrote: I don't know why you'd want one over a woodstove for a home shop. Firewood collection, while time consuming, is good exercise.

The wood stove (or drip pot heater for that matter) take up a solid 100sq ft to keep things safe. A old oil furnace you can store stuff close to and not worry about burning the building down.

I thought about one for the ex's garage until I looked at the efficiency/burn rate. At the time we had 8 running cars combined. If I changed all of the oil in them at once, it would net me about one week of heat, working part time. In reality, most of the cars were changed once a year with my TDi about 3x a year. That's not a lot of oil when it comes to heating. My residential heating oil tank holds 250 gallons and I go through most of that during a season and my house is smaller and better insulated than her garage. My mother's house (slightly larger, both retired - always somebody home) goes through 3x that much.

Granted, I was heavily involved with the local MINI club at the time so and had a few friends with classic cars. I could probably do about 2 oil changes a week... maybe. Still not a lot of oil. It just seems like a lot of work for not much benefit if you don't have a professional shop feeding you used oil.

Here in AR, we don't need it all winter, and I don't work in the shop every day. I figure that I probably do enough oil changes through the year to supply oil for my winter shop wrenching time. If I need more, our car club is a good source, as we have a shop that people use for oil changes. I thought about wood, and I have plenty, but the problem with that is that it takes about 2-3 hours from a cold wood stove to kicking out about 3KW of heat, and then about 8 hours to "turn it off." If I'm out in the shop for 2-3 hours, that just isn't going to work out. Here in the woods, we have no building codes, but I still don't like the idea of a wood stove around the shop from a safety standpoint either. From what I read, a waste oil heater will start putting out heat in a few minutes, and you can just turn it off.