- 2 months ago
Build Plans & Detailed Diagrams:
https://www.instructables.com/Simple-waste-oil-burners-Construction/
— Instructables Simple Waste Oil Burners Construction — runs on engine/veg oil, full build photos
https://www.motherearthnews.com/diy/waste-oil-heater-zmaz78sozraw/
— Mother Earth News bolt-together waste oil heater with Waste Oil Heater Diagrams & Photos
🛠️ https://www.murphysmachines.com/waste_oil_heater.html
⚠️📍💠 Safety: Vent with 6" stove pipe past the roof, keep secondary holes clear, crack a window for makeup air, and run a carbon monoxide detector. Never burn gasoline/brake cleaner and never leave the drip running unattended.
⚠️ Visual source note:
This video may include a mix of original footage, custom visuals, stock media, public-domain material, and occasional brief third-party visual clips used only to support original commentary, instruction, and educational storytelling. All narration, editing, music, and overall presentation are original to this channel.
https://www.instructables.com/Simple-waste-oil-burners-Construction/
— Instructables Simple Waste Oil Burners Construction — runs on engine/veg oil, full build photos
https://www.motherearthnews.com/diy/waste-oil-heater-zmaz78sozraw/
— Mother Earth News bolt-together waste oil heater with Waste Oil Heater Diagrams & Photos
🛠️ https://www.murphysmachines.com/waste_oil_heater.html
⚠️📍💠 Safety: Vent with 6" stove pipe past the roof, keep secondary holes clear, crack a window for makeup air, and run a carbon monoxide detector. Never burn gasoline/brake cleaner and never leave the drip running unattended.
⚠️ Visual source note:
This video may include a mix of original footage, custom visuals, stock media, public-domain material, and occasional brief third-party visual clips used only to support original commentary, instruction, and educational storytelling. All narration, editing, music, and overall presentation are original to this channel.
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00Last winter, a gallon of heating oil hit $4.72. The average house in the northeast burned 700
00:06gallons to stay warm. That is $3,150. Gone up the chimney. For heat, you could have pulled
00:13for free from the 5-gallon bucket sitting behind any auto shop in town. Today, I'm going to show
00:18you how to turn a scrap propane tank and a brake rotor into a stove that burns that used oil
00:24clean,
00:24hot, and all winter long. For essentially $0 in fuel, the same chemical energy the oil company
00:30charges you $4.50 a gallon for, you will burn for free, and you will see exactly how the drip,
00:35the pan, and the secondary air combine to make a smokeless burn. And the trick that makes it burn
00:40without a single puff of black smoke, the one everyone gets wrong, is coming at the end.
00:46I have heated my shop two full winters on oil, the garage next door was paying a guy to haul
00:50away,
00:50and I am never going back. Your house does not care what you call the fuel. It only cares how
00:54many BTUs
00:55you dump into the room. A gallon of heating oil delivers about 138,000 BTUs. A gallon of used motor
01:03oil delivers about 125,000. That is 90% of the same heat, chemically identical, because heating oil and
01:10motor oil both started as the same base stock before one got additives and a price tag. The difference is,
01:15you are paying $4.50 for one, and the shop on the corner will give you the other for free
01:19if you
01:20bring a jug, because by law they have to pay a disposal company to take it. 14 million gallons
01:25of used oil are generated every day in the United States alone, and most of it never gets re-refined.
01:30It sits in tanks, waiting for someone to burn it. So why does pouring oil in a bucket not just
01:36make
01:36a smoky mess? Oil needs two things to burn clean. It needs to be hot before it burns, and it
01:41needs a
01:41second dose of air after it vaporizes. Cold oil smokes. Hot vapor with fresh oxygen does not. The scrap
01:48stove solves both with parts that cost almost nothing. The bottom is a heavy cast iron skillet
01:53or truck brake drum, two or three inches deep that acts as a heat battery. Oil drips into that
01:58screaming hot pan, flashes to vapor instantly, and the vapor rises through a steel cylinder,
02:03usually an old 30-pound propane tank with both ends cut out, that has been drilled with a ring of
02:07secondary air holes halfway up. That second ring is the entire secret. Without it, you get a yellow,
02:12sooty bonfire. With it, the vapor meets fresh air at 600 degrees and ignites a second time,
02:17clean and almost invisible at the chimney. Think of it like a wood stove turned inside out.
02:22The pan is the firebox. The cylinder is the secondary burn chamber. The first myth dies right
02:27here. People will tell you a waste oil stove will blow up or fill your shop with black smoke. It
02:33does
02:33neither when you let physics do the work. An explosion needs oil pooled and vaporized under pressure.
02:37This stove never pools more than a thin film in a hot pan. It drips at one to two drips
02:42per second,
02:43controlled by a needle valve. That is about half a gallon per hour at full tilt,
02:47which is roughly 70,000 BTUs an hour, enough to make a two-car garage sweater warm at 20 degrees
02:52outside. If the drip stops, the fire stops. If the pan cools, the vapor stops. There is no pressurized
02:59tank, no atomizing nozzle, no pump to fail. The smoke people, remember, comes from the same mistake,
03:04dumping cold oil into a cold stove and lighting the liquid. Cold oil cannot vaporize, so it burns
03:10as droplets and makes soot. Hot pan, tiny drip, second air, no smoke. The chimney tells you instantly.
03:16Clean burn is a heat shimmer, dirty burn is black. You adjust the drip until you see heat,
03:21not color. Let me walk you through the build exactly as I run it, with real parts and real prices.
03:26You need three things, a vessel, a drip, and a stack. The vessel is a 30-pound propane tank,
03:33the short fat barbecue kind, or a 5-gallon air tank free from any scrapyard, often $10 if you have
03:39to
03:39buy it. Do not use a thin paint can. You want at least 16th-inch steel. Cut the top and
03:44bottom off
03:45with an angle grinder so you have an open cylinder 18 inches tall. Inside that cylinder, centered on the
03:51floor, sits your burn pan. The best pan is a 10-inch cast iron skillet from Goodwill, $8, or a
03:57front brake
03:57rotor from a half-ton Chevy, free from the brake shop. Bucket, because it already has the perfect
04:02heavy walls and a center hole that centers the flame. The rotor is almost poetic. The part that
04:07used to waste heat stopping your truck now makes heat for free. Set the pan on two bricks so air
04:12can
04:12crawl under it, then set the cylinder over it. Drill eight half-inch holes evenly around the cylinder,
04:17about nine inches up from the base. Those are your secondary airports. Do not skip them.
04:22They are the difference between a heater and a smokestack. The drip is a length of quarter-inch
04:26copper tubing, three feet long, $6 at any hardware store, fed by gravity from a five-gallon metal jerry
04:32can hung on the wall two feet above the stove. Between the can and the copper, screw in a brass
04:38needle
04:38valve, $8 on Amazon, the kind used for aquarium air, not a ball valve. A ball valve cannot meter one
04:44drip
04:44per second. A needle valve can. Run the copper down the outside of the cylinder and bend the
04:49last six inches so it pokes through a small hole near the base and drips dead center into the pan,
04:54not on the sidewall. If the oil hits the cold wall, it runs. If it hits the hot center, it
04:59vaporizes.
05:00Warm the pan first. Splash an ounce of isopropyl alcohol or diesel in the pan. Light it with a long
05:05match. Let it burn 30 seconds until the iron is too hot to touch. Then crack the needle valve until
05:11you
05:11hear a soft tick, tick, tick. One drip every half second. In 10 seconds, you will hear a low roar
05:16as
05:17the secondary ring lights. That roar is the sound of free heat. The stack is non-negotiable for indoor
05:22use. Six-inch single-wall stovepipe, $24 for a three-foot section at tractor supply, straight up
05:28through the roof or out the wall with a 90-degree elbow and then up three feet past the roofline.
05:33You need draft, and draft comes from height. No draft, no second burn, and you get carbon monoxide
05:38instead of heat. The pipe must be sealed with furnace cement, and the room must have a cheap
05:42carbon monoxide detector. Kidda makes one for $24 that screams at 35 ppm. I run one at knee height
05:48and one at the ceiling, because you never trust your nose with any fuel. Never burn gasoline,
05:53brake cleaner, or anything with chlorine in the stove. Only motor oil, transmission fluid,
05:57hydraulic oil, or used cooking oil cut 50-50 with motor oil so it stays thin in winter. And never
06:03leave
06:03the drip running when you leave the shop. Close the needle valve. The fire dies in 60 seconds, because
06:07there's nothing left to burn. If you are getting use out of this, hit the free subscribe. It helps
06:13this channel stay away from sponsors. And for members I put the exact cut list, the drill template
06:18for that secondary ring, and the cold weather viscosity chart for filtering used oil in the
06:22members only video that goes with this one. Now let me clean up the other stories that keep people
06:27paying for oil they could be burning for free. Second myth, you need a $2,000 commercial waste oil furnace.
06:33Those furnaces are wonderful. They have a pump and a compressor and a thermostat. The company
06:37that sells them loves to tell you a homemade stove cannot pass inspection. What they do not say is
06:42their patent is just a pan, a drip, and secondary air in a prettier box. The Bureau of Labor Statistics
06:47lists the average commercial waste oil heater installed at $2,800 before pipe. My scrap version
06:53is a cylinder, a rotor, and $8 in valves. And it makes the same 70,000 BTUs an hour because
06:59BT us do not
07:00care about powder coating. The commercial box gives you a thermostat and a blower. You get the same heat by
07:05cracking the valve a quarter turn. Third myth, you have to filter the oil to lab grade. You do not.
07:11You have to let it settle and screen the chips. Pour your collected oil into a clear 5 gallon jug
07:16and
07:16let it sit 48 hours. Water and heavy sludge sink. Clean oil rises. The middle 80% is what you
07:23burn.
07:24Pour that middle through a pair of old denim jeans legs doubled over as a filter into your feed can.
07:28Denim catches anything bigger than about 60 microns, which is good enough because the pan vaporizes,
07:34it does not spray through a nozzle. No paper filters. No centrifuge. Shops that give you oil love this
07:40because their oil is already mostly clean and you are solving their disposal problem. Fourth myth,
07:45burning used oil is filthy for the air so you should feel guilty and keep buying. Heating oil. The data
07:51flips that story. A clean secondary burn of used oil releases the same carbon you would release burning
07:56heating oil. Plus, you prevented a truck from driving 40 miles to collect it and a regular refinery from
08:02burning natural gas to reprocess it. The soot only happens when the stove is built wrong without
08:07secondary air. With secondary air, the particulate drops by more than 90% because the second ignition
08:12burns the soot itself. I hold a white paper above my chimney for 30 seconds. If it stays white,
08:18the burn is clean. If it freckles gray, I open the needle valve a hair less or add two more
08:22secondary
08:23holes. The paper never lies. Let us do the math with pencils, not promises.
08:28At $4.50 a gallon, a family burning 700 gallons from November to March pays $3,150. The same heat
08:36from waste oil costs the price of the oil. Zero, plus about $15 in diesel to preheat the pan across
08:42the winter, and about $6 in copper and valves amortized. Call it $21. Even if you only offset half
08:48your heat and run the heating oil furnace on the coldest nights, you saved $1,500 in one winter.
08:54If you heat a shop or garage where you would have run a propane torpedo at $3.80 a gallon,
09:00five gallons of waste oil replaces four and a half gallons of propane. That is $17 a night you do
09:05not
09:05pay. Three nights a week for 20 weeks, $1,020 back in your pocket. The free oil never stops because
09:12cars never stop needing oil changes. One auto shop doing 10 changes a day makes 50 gallons a week. They
09:18are
09:18happy to see leave in your jug. Three small tricks make this stove boringly reliable and push it past
09:23just heating the garage. First, if your oil is thick in January, thin it. Mix one part used
09:29vegetable oil from any restaurant fryer. They will give you that for free too, with two parts motor
09:33oil in the feed can. The fryer oil drops the viscosity so it still drips at one per second
09:39when the can is at 30 degrees. Shake the can before you hang it. Second, add a cooking top. Lay
09:44a quarter
09:44inch steel plate, 12 by 12 inches, $15 scrap, across the top of the cylinder. At full burn,
09:50that plate sits at 380 to 420 degrees. Perfect for a cast iron kettle, soup, or drying gloves.
09:56You get a heater and a cooktop from the same drips. Third, keep the pan alive. After shutdown,
10:02while the iron is still warm, scrape the thin crust of carbon with a flat screwdriver. Takes 15 seconds.
10:07If you let that crust build for weeks, it insulates the pan and the oil stops vaporizing cleanly,
10:12which brings the smoke back. A clean pan lights in one match. Fourth, size it for the space.
10:18A single rotor pan and 18 inch cylinder heats 600 square feet comfortably. If your shop is 1200,
10:24build two cylinders side by side on one long feed can with two needle valves. Not one huge stove.
10:30Two small clean burns beat one large, smoky one. You can run one on mile days. And a quiet bonus
10:35few
10:35people talk about. You can use the same stove to make dry kindling all winter. Stand split wood in a
10:40rack
10:41three feet from the stove, not next to it. The steady radiant heat drops the moisture from 30% to
10:46under
10:4615 in a week. So when you do feed your housewood stove, it lights faster and makes less creosote.
10:51No extra fuel, just placement. Safety, plain and short. Because respect beats fear. This is a real
10:58flame that makes real carbon monoxide if you starve it of air. Always run that 6 inch stack past the
11:04roof.
11:04Always keep those secondary holes clear. Always burn with a window cracked an inch for makeup air in a
11:09tight shop. Always trust the $24 detector over your confidence. Keep a lid nearby, a flat piece of
11:15steel bigger than the cylinder top. If you ever need to kill the fire fast, slide the lid over the
11:19top,
11:20close the valve. The fire chokes in seconds because you cut the draft. Keep nothing flammable within
11:25three feet. Never use plastic pipe. Never use a barrel with old chemical residue. Put it together.
11:30You have a vessel that costs nothing, a drip that costs $8, and a stack that costs $24. Turning oil
11:37someone else
11:37threw away into 70,000 BTUs an hour of clean, dry heat for an entire winter. At $4.50 a
11:43gallon for
11:44heating oil, that is $1,500 to $3,000 you keep this year. And the same next year, because you
11:50learn to
11:50hold heat in a pan and give it a second breath of air. If this saves you that $1,000
11:54this winter,
11:54share it with the neighbor who just paid to fill his tank. I will see you in the next one.
11:58I will see you in the next one.