The Gustavus Thread

[Otto]

I'm on my second year free heat from waste veggie oil, purchased this Colombia hot water boiler 4 years ago and finally got it wired and plumbed in just before X-mass last year. I became barren Realms apprentice during the installation he coached my over the telephone on how to wire up the aqua-stats, thanks Barren.

The furnace has been flaming out for the past week or so, I could always relight it by tossing in a piece of news paper but you could never count on it to fire on its own. So I decided to bite the bullet and source out the problem.

What I found is that the electrodes were totally encapsulated in carbon, after removing three nuts, air and oil line along with a quick disconnect multi wire power cord the burner is easy to remove. About 20 minutes work from removing to re-installing.

When I switched the power back on she fired up on her own.

You can actually but a kit to convert the standard type furnace oil burner to use waste oil, the kit is available here. ckBurners - info & parts for WVO/WMO burners; reduce foreign oil dependence and carbon footprint


I have been saving all the oil burners that I come across, I'm going to convert one to use on the home foundry.

This is really interesting, Gus. Does the veggie oil burn as hot as regular furnace oil? Are you filtering and removing the glycerin yourself? Should be a snap, compared to refining PMs. I came across a tradesman who converted his full-sized van to veggie. It prompted me to do some reading on the subject. Turns out there are quite a few folks doing this - often farmers. They're producing the oil as a by-product of animal feed. I find this whole self-sufficiency thing fascinating.

[gustavus]

This is really interesting, Gus. Does the veggie oil burn as hot as regular furnace oil? Are you filtering and removing the glycerin yourself? Should be a snap, compared to refining PMs. I came across a tradesman who converted his full-sized van to veggie. It prompted me to do some reading on the subject. Turns out there are quite a few folks doing this - often farmers. They're producing the oil as a by-product of animal feed. I find this whole self-sufficiency thing fascinating.

I have a Mitsubishi Pajero diesel that I would start on diesel then switch over to straight waste veggie oil which was only filtered, the Pajero would start on veggie oil the rest of the day on waste oil last run of the day I would run a liter of diesel through to clear the injectors.

The Pajero has been laid up for two years now, last run did not clear out the veggie oil and the injectors are full of snot, another project i wanted to have done before spring. The PJ ran fine on straight filtered oil.

I do have a 45 gallon drum of alcohol and plenty of lye to convert my stock into bio just never have enough time to build my equipment as I want to reclaim the alcohol its much to expensive to discard.

As for the hot water boiler using waste oil, about all I can say is that I'm pleased with having free heat with a bit of maintenance once in awhile, when the furnace is fired all you can see coming from the chimney are heat vapors.

The furnace also gets fed used engine oil that the neighbors drop off for me, I think my carbon build up came from the engine oil.

If you can get a steady supply of waste veggie oil I would strongly recommend making bio for your diesel burning vehicles or even to convert an oil fired furnace to heat your shop or house.

My preference was for the hot water boiler which resides in the back room to my shop, from the boiler I will be able to plumb hot water into the house and green house for year round growing. With forced air heating your restricted.