Wood Heater Experiments

[Coils]

For those of you that remember me talking about a barrel wood stove in another thread that I mentioned, just to let you know it wasn't very great. It put out some heat when burning it hot, but it consumed a lot of wood to keep that heat going, when it was damped down to get a good burn it didn't throw off much heat. So it was pretty much a waste of time and some wood.


Well after cutting up a couple barrels a few times trying different things I figured I'd try a rocket style heater with the one barrel, some 6" stove pipe and a few bricks to make a down feed with horizontal burn setup.
I made the ash pit and feed tube area with some fire bricks and regular clay bricks, the opening is 7"x7".
The main burn tube is a short pieces of stainless 6" pipe connected to a 90 and another 6" pipe going vertical in the barrel about 20" or 22", there's about a 4" gap from the top of the pipe to the top of the barrel (this could actually be tighter for more heat on the top of the barrel). Where the pipe meets the brick and half way up the vertical is covered with a high temp mortar to keep as much heat as possible in the pipe.
It works very well for being built from scrap pieces and just slapped together, so I'm going to look into building something better over the summer to mess with next winter.

Here's a couple pics so you can get an idea of what I'm talking about and a couple short videos.

[Coils]

Oops, hit the wrong button, here's the videos.

This one shows how the flame goes sideways into the tube.
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And this one is mainly for the sound when it gets burning hot
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[555th]

That's neat. That thing really draws a draft. Is it hard to clean out?

[Coils]

The ash pit at the feed tube seems easy enough, but the way I slapped this together it would be hard to get anything that goes into the barrel, I could take off the pipe on the back and go in that way.

I was messing with it some more today, getting 800-850 degrees on the top center of the barrel, and the elbow at the wall is still in the upper 200 range.


Edit to add;
I had some scrap flat stock and bent it to make two square hoops and welded them to the barrel, they hold long pieces of wood upright so now I don't need to cut it down to about 2' pieces, I burned some 48" boards from a pallet and they dropped down fine.


I think I'll have to talk to a friend of a friend who's a welder and see what he thinks about some of my ideas.

[hcpookie]

A thought about the heat - you could make a longer chimney to allow for more heat transfer. My dad did that to his stove and it makes a big difference!

[00redZX-6R]

Why didn't you just build a double barrel stove. They seam to heat many a barn around here.

[Frogman]

I think you would have been better to just have gotten a Benjamin Franklin style pot belly stove for inside the house.

[sjohnson]

But, that wouldn't have been nearly as much fun as getting creative and rolling your own

[mija]

This has been posted elsewhere, but I swear if your gonna "roll your own" you can't beat this design as far as I know. It's the most efficient, wood saving, heat producing stove I've ever had. After it burns down, open the top cover, shovel the coals over to the draft pipes, and it will produce heat for 3-4 more hrs. and burn up 50-75% of the ash that you normally have left.

Now that the REAL winter weather has arrived, I've been burning it pretty hard. Clean it out about every fifth to sixth day, put the hot ash in my drive to melt snow /ice so I can get the hell out.

If your mechanically inclined, which ya must be if your tuned into this site you can build this yourself. The fire brick is easily cut to size with a chop saw and a masonry blade.

I've built and used the 30-55 gal. barrel stoves before. They work good and are inexpensive. But they do not last. If your going to expend the effort, get a lengthy payback on your time.

I got nothing to gain by BS'ing you about it. It's the best stove design I've ever tried.

[Coils]

A thought about the heat - you could make a longer chimney to allow for more heat transfer.

HCP Are you talking about the pipe to the chimney or the internal one in the barrel?
If you mean the internal one, I just used what scraps I had on hand, I wanted it to be about 1 1/2" to 2" from the barrel, but the closest I could get it was about 4". The only thing I bought for this build was the bricks, about $40.

Why didn't you just build a double barrel stove.

I did, that was the top barrel from it. It only threw off good heat when it was burning strong and then it went through a lot of wood, when I tried to get it to burn a little slower it would die down so much it barely gave off any heat. I think that setup would be good for a garage or work shop that you want to heat up quick when you need it.
So far I've only fire this rocket thing up a few times, I'm getting as much heat with far less wood (at least 1/4) then when I burned in the double barrel stove.

I think you would have been better to just have gotten a Benjamin Franklin style pot belly stove for inside the house.

I was looking for wood stoves in the area, too expensive for new ones and used ones are over priced or junk.
And like SJ said, it was fun putting it together too



Mija, I do remember you talking about that, but at the time I saw your post there were no pics, only that drawing and it was hard to get an idea of the size of the stove, I see you added pics in that thread and it looks interesting. Here's the thread if any one wants to see what he's talking about (post #5)
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When you look into the stove, can you see the opening for the exhaust pipe or is it baffled in some way?