Weather guessers have us down for a winter storm watch; snow/rain for today! But the outside temp is 42*.

 

The "mountain" station is showing 33 now and the High School Weather Bug just outside my back yard is now showing 39.1 with another tenth of an inch of rain added. Weather forecast is calling for mandatory wearing of life jackets when outside.

 

Finally getting my new pre-heater built for my waste oil burner.


The first pic is of the "test" setup I've been using for the past 3 years. Time to build a permanent one...........lol

 

Looking good Don.

 

Should be a lot safer too....

 

Could be, but the old fire pit in the center of Teepee does have some nostalgic charm to it!

 

Looks good Don, better looking unit..

 

I'm lucky I didn't burn the shop down with the old setup. I had the heating element touching the bottom of the tank and it burnt a hole in the bottom of it. When I walked into the shop it was full of smoke from the oil burning on the element. Lucky I was......


The new one has a half inch plate that the container sets on and will have some safety microswitches mounted so if the oil gets to low (for whatever reason...) it will shut down all the power to the stove and the preheater. Much safer.......

 

Good morning Oregon FTE gang and friends.

Morning Don, Allen and Jim.

Raining like crazy! I was going to say it's raining like cats and dogs but they all seemed to have landed at our house previously.

I took the day off of work today. I'm going to have three days in a row off. It'll sure be nice.

Good looking heater Don.

 

You guys just HAD to mention the "R" word didn't ya. Now it's raining here........

 

According to one forecast I saw you might even be in for some mixed snow this afternoon.

 

You're right Jim. I just checked and they changed my whole forecast: National Weather Service


The hell with going to the shop. Maybe it's time to go back to bed..............lol

 

That is certainly the way I feel - if I thought I could get just a couple hours of sleep. Those two oxy's the VA gave me worked about like 6 ounces of very diluted beer so I was up just about every 10 to 15 minutes all night long.

 

I assume that the electric heating element is being run at half-voltage, or it's being temperature-controlled somehow. That's a lot'a watts!

Can you be specific how this works? Is there an "oil coil" inside the drum, with exhaust gasses normally heating it?

Pop

 

Morning Marv! The "drum" holds 9 gallons of veggie oil and the 3,000 watt element is on 120vac with temperature control by a water heater thermostat set to 140 deg. The oil then goes through a filter and is pumped with a peristaltic pump to the fire box. The waste oil heater is a commercial unit built for WMO. Using waste veggie oil requires the oil to be heated first. The system works like a champ and produces in excess of 180,000 btu.