Bob Bownes writes:
>So, since we're talking about shop heat here, what do folks think about
>waste oil furnaces? I've kinda been thinking along that line for
>my garage since fuel oil, gas, and electric are a mite expensive to heat
>a garage with. But I do have an endless supply of waste oil. Of course
>most of that ends up on the floor since I own british cars. :-}
I'll bet I know where Bob saw his first waste oil heater. It was probably in
my shop. I have a Fornax 165,000 Btu waste oil heater to heat my 50' X 30' X
12' garage. The reason why I throw in the height is because codes seem to be
even less entertained by having a waste oil furnace anything less than 8' off
of the ground.
Let me start off by saying that I do not regret having bought my furnace. It
keeps me warm and dry in the winter, and it is relatively inexpensive in
terms of keeping it going.... So where does the cost come in if we're talking
WASTE oil? First of oil(heh, heh,heh) time is not free. Since waste oil
furnaces burn the crud that ended up on the bottom of your crankcase, they
generate more residue and crud than your home furnace. I end up cleaning my
once in the beginning of the season (for 1/2 day), and then once in the
middle of the winter (for at least a couple of hours). Second of all, since
they have nice big fans in them to make sure that they don't overheat
themselves in case you happen to burn some really good crude (or gas washed
oil), they use a fair amount of electricity. Between the kick butt fan, the
extra heavy duty pump necessary to move the heavy oil from the tank to the
furnace, and the heavy duty furnace motor with enough umphhh to power the
furnace and the extra (small, attached) air compressor which atomizes the
sludge you were happy to get out of your engine, waste oil furnaces use
enough electricity to impact your electric bill.
As for the oil, Bob better have a really good supply of waste oil, because he
is going to need it. Waste oil furnaces seem to work best when they get in a
rhythm. I now have access to a few shops where waste oil is used to heat the
garage, and all three of the manufacturers state the same thing in their
owner's manual. "Do not rely on waste oil furnaces to be the only source of
heat in your garage." They can be finicky. As I started to say, they work
best if you keep them on all winter. Certainly they go off when the
thermostat is satisfied, but a warm garage means warm (lower viscosity) oil,
less chance of settling in the gun, and a unit which can pass a kidney stone
of bad oil better than a cold furnace.
How much oil are we talking? We live in upstate New York, and I keep my
garage at 45 degrees when I am not out there, and 68 degrees when I am. The
garage is fully insulated, and the one 12' X 10' garage door is insulated as
well (I still smile at it when I get close enough to realize that I don't
feel drafts from it). Last year we could see our grass almost through the
entire winter and the furnace went through about 300 gallons. This year, I
haven't seen the grass since October (okay it's melting fast with this
January thaw) and we're on pace to burn about 500 gallons. One of the other
garages that I metioned earlier doesn't do enough oil changes in a year to
keep his going (Okay, he has a bigger garage). The other garage has a row of
home furnace tanks set up to hold the oil necessary to heat his drafty old
place. If that set up ever leaked, the Exxon Valdez would look like a bad
day at the races for just one Production car.
Which is the other concern with waste oil heaters. You take oil when it is
given to you. If you don't have the space to put it, you're in trouble. Many
garages have an agreement with the local recycler, and won't appreciate it if
you say, "I'll take 55 gallons now, but I don't want any more until next
fall."
In some ways you will be surprised how many friends you have. Oil shows up
on your doorstep while you're not home in the strangest of containers. Sure
you have the windshield washer bottles, and the anti freeze containers, and
sometimes they are nice enough to put it in 5 gallon containers. The fun
ones are the Tide bottles. You can never get all of the detergent out of the
bottle, so the next thing you know you are launching little oil bubbles
around the garage as you pour the fine mix in your furnace. Always concerns
me how well that stuff will burn as well. The best way to get oil is in 55
gallon drums. Ya know its funny, those folks rarely want those drums back
(forget about trying to give back the tide bottles, and the local recycling
center won't take them when they have been full of oil). You very often end
up trying to get rid of the empty 55 gallon drum. With recycling and dumps
being what they are today, that's not always easy.
Which brings me to my next point. Rumor has it that many states no longer
allow waste oil furnaces due to the difficulty in making them burn clean
(consistently). This means that some day I may have to consider going to
other fuels (#2), or getting rid of the furnace. The other problem with
regulations is that many companies have gone out of the business of making
waste oil furnaces, because they either have a shrinking customer base, the
reg's finally got 'em, or never got in the business to begin with because
they are concerned about future regulations. The places that you deal with
will not be as big as Ford or Chevy, and therefore service and parts are a
bit dicey.
Now for the good news. My garage is heated all winter, I keep it as toasty
as I like when I am out there, and it is still pretty cheap to keep... even
though it was expensive up front. The key to keeping a garage happy in the
winter is to keep it warm. Problem with sporadic heat is that the slab cools
off, your tools cool off, your toes cool off, and it takes forever to get
everything warm again. That's why I went away from salamanders and the like.
-Kurt Weiss
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/kurt_and_steph_weiss
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