Free Heat: How to Make a Waste Oil Burner

So like many small scale farmers with a full time job, young family and a thousand things to do all the time it seems that when you live in a cold climate there is always a ton of time devoted to the gathering of fire wood to heat the house and the shop.

So like many people like me I have overlooked a free and ready heating resource that I am always having to get rid of as a nuisance byproduct of the farm: waste oil. Now I have been planning on building a waste oil burner of some type for a few years now and finally decided that I was going to do it.

So here is what I did complete with a materials list.

Materials List:

-an old or new wood stove. I recommend using an air tight stove with a secondary burn.

-a 2' piece of 1.5" black iron pipe

-if you don't have a welder, then one end of that pipe will need to be threaded and a black iron 45 will need to be used with a short 1.5" black iron nipple

-about 4' of 3/8" soft copper tubing

-a length of 3/8" ID clear nylon tubing however long you need it to get from your fuel source to the copper tubing

-an 1/8" brass ball valve with a male pipe thread on one end and a 2"x3/8" brass nipplel

-a blower of some type that will insert tightly into the 1.5" black iron pipe, I used an old metal bodied heat gun I had kicking around that the heater elements had burned up in

-a five gallon pail that will get hung well above the stove for a fuel tank, remember this is a gravity feed burner

-a 2" hole saw

-some 1/4" x 20 thread nuts and bolts about 2" long

-a couple of fire bricks, these can be bought at Lowes or Home Depot for a few bucks each

In conclusion this is a very easy project. I had three hours into this from the time a started the project to the when I fired it up for the first time.

Some things to remember, if you build this, you accept all liabilities of this heater. I hate to have to add that but it is the world we are living in.

DO NOT BURN HEATING OIL, KEROSENE, DIESEL, GASOLINE, PAINT THINNER OR OTHER VOLATILE COMBUSTIBLES IN THIS HEATER. DOING SO COULD RESULT IN SERIOUS INJURY OR A STRUCTURAL FIRE FROM GETTING THE STOVE TOO HOT.

You can burn just about any waste oil in this unit including cooking oil. I have noticed that used frier oil burns very well and very clean in this stove. I am also burning a lot of old diesel oil in the stove and it is burning very well.

I hope you enjoyed this project and invite you to follow along on the many other projects going on around the homestead. I will be putting up videos weekly and will be covering all kinds of projects that will bring our family farther down the road to self reliance.

Thanks for Watching,

Jim from TheTradesmanChannel 2017