I'm sure you get a lot of suggestions but instead of wood I would use a used oil drip feed. It's simple and it heats up instantly. Great job and simple. That's helps out a bunch. Thank you and God Bless Everyone
I was playing with the idea of an oil drip heater, and one day I might build one. It would be an awsome way do utilize all the otherwise useless oil from oilchanges. But we also have an abundance of firewood, we have each year multible burnpiles to get rid of, so I might as well heat my garage with that. But I agree, an used oil drip heater is a great idea!
Thanks brother That was inspirational, nice to see something so honest. Sometimes seeing the mistakes and problems is what encourages me. Love ya mate, keep it up
Good job. Heat pump water heaters use 2" of closed cell foam around the unit with the copper coil on the outside of the water tank so you've essentially done it the correct way. I've been cruising the internet to see somebody do this before i do it so i am glad i stumbled upon this video lol.
To prevent overheating in case of power outage, consider using a 12v pump and a UPS, maybe in a loop with the pump? It even just a12v car battery on a trickle charger? Great thought process, and inspiring! Well done, thumbs up and all that. 👍🤟🧟
Good work. You 7se your brains and the things around you. That's what 8 do as well. I have a lot of stuff leftover from many projects so I use what I have as well it just makes sense most times and it's fun and engaging creative building and I learn as I go then make adjustments or adapt and modify as you go and or aquire things. Keep up the great work and I like the way you think
Thank you! I am glad you understand the way I tackled this one! I get a lot of comments on how to make this system better. I understand myself that it is not perfect in any way but most people overlook the fact that the goal was to build it as cheep as possible and to recycle or use up old materials as much as I could.
It's called being creative smart and resourceful there is no since in letting things go to waste or waste money when with a little creative thinking you can utilize 2hats around you not waste challenge and exercise your mind I 2ish you lived closer there another guy I talk to we always talk about exploited new diy I looked at quite a few of your projects you doing great I do lot of wood working as well I need start doing the videos sometime I do but still don't post I struggle with some social disorders more of an isolated they say I just think I'm old sol and don't like this generation
@@SavageDraco believe it or not, I am not a very social guy myself. That is actually one of the reasons I started the youtube videos. This way I don't have to be on the phone for hours with friends and family to explain over and over again what I am up to, they can just watch the videos. It was quite a challenge to find the courage to upload the first video though, my English is not the best and I don't have professional filming equipment. So I really appreciate people like you who can relate to what I am doing and like the content!
@LaRaineBarton The return line just ends loosely in the bucket, so technically, the pipe can not split due to high pressure. It would just push the coolant out in the bucket. The issues I have are pump failures. (Powerout, etc...) If there is no constant flow of the coolant, the temperature becomes so hot that it melts the pex pipe.
Might have to steal this as well. I have a radiator, box fan, and hot water loop (outdoor furnace). I was going to cobble together hydronic heat with fin tube and copper.
It is a cheep solution for heat as long as you are willing to get out there to keep the fire going. Since the chicken coop is close by, I thought it would be cool to tie that one in as well one day. It might be a project for next year!
@@adrianwoodworm our furnace has a thermostat controlled blower which supplies of 160°F water. It will increase the amount of wood burned but also increase productivity.
I never measured the temperature, but a couple of times, I forgot to turn on the fan, and the radiator became too hot to touch, and the pex pipe felt dangerously soft😆
Cool video. I have a few suggestions for you or perhaps other people who are considering something like this. You really don't want to draw heat from the firebox, and in fact in should insulated with fire bricks on the inside to be kept as hot as possible. The main problem with your heat exchanger design is that the contact area between the copper pipe and the flue is actually very small, so you are not get efficient heat transfer. Either put the pipes inside the flue, or try to make a full water jacket on the outside. If using tubing, make sure the cold water is coming in from the top, so the system is setup in counterflow, this is more efficient. By having your firebox totally uninsulated, your are not only losing a tremendous amount of heat to the outdoors, you are also preventing the fire from getting hot for efficient and complete combustion.
As mentioned in the video, I don't want the pipe in the firebox, people who did so have to clean their pipes regularly from the creosote getting build up, which then insulates the pipe from the fire/heat, and cleaning that is something I am not interested in. I agree, the heat transfer could be more efficient, but it is not really a problem, since I produce an excess amount of heat already, so much so, that I have to keep the fire small to not overheat the system(which did happen before...) that brings me to your last point, the fire has no problem to burn efficiently, that might be a theoretical concern but I can ensure you that in reality it burns hot and clean. Don't get me wrong, there are certainly a lot of ways to do things different and more efficient, but my goal here was to build something quick, functioning and cheap. And sitting in a warm garage as I write this, while it is -27 Celsius outside tells me that I achieved that.
@@adrianwoodworm yeah i get that your project is working well, and the way you did it is fine. I just like to look for areas that could be improved, perhaps i came across negatively, but i didnt mean to.
You're asking for smoke condensation in your chimney with a water jacket. And if you wanted a thermosiphon system, running countercurrent would completely ruin that. I'd say using something like plaster of paris or sand would be much better as packing for the coils to increase your heat transfer efficiency, and could easily get hot enough to not negatively affect your chimney health.
@@pre176 that's true. In a legit system you would have a thermostatic mixing valve that keeps the boiler temp at 140 degrees or above to prevent flue gas condensation.
It's the first part of the stove pipe because the total heat volume of the stove is larger and is condensed to a small area by draft to escape the confines of the stove.
Nice inexpensive diy design/build. And, it works! Failure modes are always an interesting diy design problem. Imagining what could go wrong and having a mechanical or electronic control system that remediates each potential problem is very hard to do. Especially with a wood stove fire heat source. If the circulating pump or the fan fails or the thermal transfer fluid leaks, how could a safety control system sense the failure and quickly shut down the wood stove? (Electronic dampers would have to choke off airflow in to & out of the firebox to quickly smother the fire. The control system would have to have sensors for each possible point of failure and a microcontroller, like an Arduino, to read the sensors and take pre-programmed actions to protect the system from every possible problem scenario. A complicated control system to setup, program and test.) Something like this often happens to people building solar hot air collectors where hot air stops exiting the collector and the heat builds up until the glazing pops or cracks from overheating (called "stagnation"). If their fan fails or their thermostat fails or the airflow damper fails then their solar thermal collector(s) can self-destruct from overheating. Others who want to emulate this system might want to look at the failure modes and implement an Arduino-based control system with appropriate sensors. The parts would be pretty cheap, but writing the control program would be challenging. (Maybe someone could write an open source generic Arduino heating system control sketch that would ask a few questions about how the system is set up & monitored and then call the appropriate blocks of program code to handle basic system operations & failure responses?)
The changes to this design that I would make are as follows: * Split the flue pipe so that the heat exchanger is on its own branch and put an electronic damper at the beginning of each branch so that the hot exhaust could be directed up thru the heat exchanger branch OR the flue exhaust branch (i.e. control heating of the heat exchanger) * Direct vent the fresh air intake of the wood stove so it gets combustion air from outside air and put both an inline fan & an electronic damper on the intake pipe to control airflow to the combustion chamber (i.e. control rate of wood combustion) * Put temperature, fluid pressure, damper state, fan state, and other sensors where needed to provide Arduino microcontroller with all the sensor data it needs to control system operations (i.e. monitor all critical system components & operating conditions) * Put a thermostat in the shop to send heat calls to the Arduino (i.e. automatically control the temperature in the shop) These proposed changes should create a more automated heating system that also implements system shutdown failure modes in the event that a key component fails. It would be fun to implement such a system and open source the design, the software control program and a list of the off the shelf components used. I would love to be involved in such a project, especially since I've started playing around with an Arduino Uno on a custom cargo lift that I created using a discarded garage door opener.
@@alanmcrae8594 wow, you put quite some thought into this! Your solution sounds very interesting, quite brilliant actually. Definitely beyond my skills though! I don't think I ever have seen a controlled woodstove like you describe, this would be such a fascinating project!
@@adrianwoodworm Thanks for the compliment Adrian. I think an automated diy woodstove thermal transfer fluid space heater could be a fascinating global open source project with different people doing what they are good at. I don't have the welding & metal working skills that you have, but I have some experience with computers, automation and now microcontrollers, sensors and actuators. My wife & I are attempting to develop a 21st century sustainable homestead and a diy wood heating system is definitely on my radar.
@@alanmcrae8594 That sounds like you guys have a big project coming up! It would deserve its own youtube channel! And regarding the heater, the skills you seem to have are hard to find, but there are plenty guys out there who can work with metal, I bet you can make this a reality! I wish you the best of luck with all of it and if there is any information you need from my side, I will be here to help where I can and as time allows!
@@adrianwoodworm Hey, thanks Adrian! I am seriously interested in a full featured, automated, diy wood heating system and I'll probably be attempting a design/build in the near future. I'll definitely reach out to guys like you who have real world experience with their own project. Yeah, our Little Eden Sustainable Homestead Project is a really big project. We'd like to spend the last part of our lives doing something challenging rather than sitting around playing cards or watching tv. We might do a UA-cam channel, if it doesn't interfere with getting our work done.
Hey good video. I like this setup I'm thinking of doing it. Couple questions.....does it have to be a barrel stove or could I use my big cast iron square stove and use the copper piping the same way on the stove pipe? I've seen a few videos on this same thing and I only ever see barrel stoves. Also do you have some piping right inside your barrel, and if so, does it not melt?
Thank you for your interest. It does not have to be a barrel stove. It just happend to be the cheepest solution for me. It can be any woodstove. And no, there is no pipe on the inside.
just want to say ,THANKS, for posting this . You put a great effort into your build and it has helped me somewhat in what I am trying to achieve in my 12x20 2 story barn for cheap winter heat!! Do you have any creosote problems in your stack pipe where you have your copper coil ? I have a barrel stove and I'm considering wrapping copper pipe around the drum and covering the assembly with fiberglass insulation instead of in the chimney . I am also trying to decide if I should run black iron pipe through the firebox from end to end inside the drum for about 8 passes. Thanks for letting me know about the solder getting too hot at the joints wrapped around the drum and causing leaks!!! If I go with copper I'll remember to silver solder my joints to prevent leaks ! If the copper pipe got hot enough to melt the soldered joints , there should be plenty of heat around the body of the drum to heat my water?!! Do you have a video on your build for your tent ?? I would like to see how you did this . Very good work !!!
Thank you! No, I don't have creosote problems in the stovepipe. I think those problems show up mainly when pipe is directly exposed to the hot smoke, which is why I chose to have no copper or steel pipe inside the stove or stovepipe. (I put the copper pipe between two different sized stovepipe to avoid contact with the smoke..) I think you will be successful by only wrapping the pipe around your barrelstove, others have done it before and it seemed to work for them. If it doesn't heat up enough you always could go back and add more pipe. As more you wrap around, as more time it has to heat up. It would be just two connections you have to deal with. Unfortunately I don't have a video of building the tent, I didn't have anything to film it back then. I do consider building a second one in the spring, if you are patient you might get a chance to see how to put one of those up. It is really easy and such an enjoyable space!
Hey Joel. I'm a retired HVAC/R man and I have six years of experience running a wood-burning fireplace in my home (25 in the business). Up in Idaho, one would tell you that creosote is primarily a problem if you run a bunch of wet wood that is not seasoned. That is year after year. A house rental manager I use to work for as an HVAC/R said he would have chimneys cleaned every 3 years (That's the brick-and-mortar type) regardless of whether the wood was seasoned or not. He always warned about unseasoned wood and it would burn too hot. . I know from experience that the really nice part of using a black pipe is how easy it is to clean out if you do get any build-up. That is either with wet or seasoned wood. Even seasoned wood will have sap in it...just less. The unit I am viewing in the picture may be disassembled easily. If not remember to use 1/4 inch zip sheet metal screws. Basically, the black pipe can come apart real easy and it can be cleaned easily. I would leave a clean-out in the burner unit above the flame area if I were building a unit for the same purpose. Hot water boilers as a rule have areas that can be accessed to be cleaned or have the burner tubes replaced. So basically keep cleaning in mind and build it so it can be easily accessed with a simple screw/bolt situation or any other safe secure method you may employ. Nicely done by the way!
you could make an insulated buffer tank - water holds heat well - also think about a pumpless design - this would work well with a buffer tank with a check valve and you could team it up with solar to keep tank hot - free heat - pressure test everything and have relief valves to prevent too much pressure - pls do an update on this idea
Redneck is a style! A good one👍 imho anyway. I have been told that this whitewash, bleached wood, beat it up with a chain stuff that’s popular these days is called “farmhouse” style. I have been in more farmhouses than almost anyone because of past jobs, across all of western Canada. Farmhouse style is someones invention, it doesn’t come from farmhouses. Redneck, on the other hand, is rooted in invention, recycling and cost consciousness. It’s the most valid design style out there.
I think it’s a cool concept, but I don’t think the efficiency is great. I definitely understand the safety concerns with wood stoves, I run one in my house and shop through winter and would be lying if I said I was never nervous about it. Although modern technology has better options today, pellet stove and oil monitors are great alternatives for wood stoves and push really good heat. I do really like the build though, it’s like a back yard built hydrotherm outdoor furnace. Have you thought about adding in a hot water heater and using rv anti-freeze?
There is no doubt about it, it is not a very efficient option in comparison to a woodstove on the inside. I am not nervous about it, it is more the fact that the insurance would be very expensive since our area is not covered by a fire department. So before I spent hundreds of dollars per month for the baseboard heaters I just spent a couple hundred bucks in this system and burn all the excess wood I have on my property. There is antifreeze running thorough the lines. I do have allready a very efficient hot water system installed in the house, so there is no need for me to change anything, but I have a friend who uses a very similar system to heat his water on his off grid property, so there is for sure potential under the right circumstances.
After watching this video i think i will buy a diesel heater to suppliment my garage heating. Although i may experiment with this idea as a pool heater. Maybe use some larger copper pipe flowing through the firebox and out .
After years of using this system I get tired of maintaining a fire. There is quite some work involved on a daily bases. I recently bought a chinese dieselheater for our greenhouse and I am very impressed with the heat output for a $200 unit! Long story short, I decided to take down my system this year and install a dieselheater for convenience as well. So I think you are on the right track! Cheers!
Put another looser coil inside the pipe inlet on the top outer , inside use 1/2"k copper , flatten it with a twist so the water tumbles the hotter flue gas may require a step up in size of copper , or smaller fires , as well as drive another heater core , maybe plumb a few underground for floor heat . Would be more interested in placing more circuits inside the pipe. Does the barrel pull air from a duct and not burn inside hot air?
I just used Prestone antifreeze. It can't really burst because there is not enough pressure that can build up. The return line is just open-ended, so any significant pressure would just push the fluid out in the bucket that holds the pump. The problems start when the pump fails for whatever reason. Then, the temperature of the coolant increases, and it starts to soften the pex pipe. Once soft enough, even a little bit of pressure is enough to burst the pex pipe, and you are in for a very uncomfortable repair in the middle of the winter😄
@@adrianwoodworm thank you for the reply. I wanted to make a closed system. But I don’t know how to deal with the pressure increased by steam in the closed system. And doesn’t your open system cause loss in heat?
Adrian, you are what people years ago would call "a very useful neighbor" :) Did you use coolant vs. water in the pipes just to avoid rust or did you have another reason?
No, I am not too concerned about corrosion, the reason for coolant is its freezing point. Water would just freeze up here in the winter and burst the pipes.(For example, we had around -25c° at night the last couple days here and the coldest months are still to come.)
Hi there, My name is Dale, from BC, Canada i have a small youtube channel and i want to build a wood/waste oil burner similar to the one you have in your youtube video (Outdoor Wood Burning Garage Heater - Heat Your Garage For Free Using a Car Radiator!) I have watched your content over and over on building a wood boiler it’s just awesome info! My question is would you be ok with me using some of your video content clips in my next youtube video about waste oil boiler build? I would also link back to your channel Thanks Dale. :)
I’m wrapping outside bottom in copper to heat water for greenhouse and ibc poor man’s hot tub and top barrel fence pipes all around exterior and 4 intake pipes for fresh air to fire and hoping to incorporate old cast iron radiator as well radiant heating under my plant beds to keep semi warm I used it for a year and I could take my spray foamed shop from 55 to 95 f in about an hour had to open door to cool it down so much waste as well straight out chimney going to try and take my flew vent pipe the longest I can as to milk as much heat as I can
nice attempt 😇. Remove pipe around heater. Outlet pipe should be in upward flow only! add header tank with a heat trap ( 'S-trap'). Tank volume should be greater than outlet total volume. This eliminates pump. Be sure to bleed system and eliminate all air. Top of outlet pipe to be filled just before tipping point... hot water will rise if the header tank volume is heavier. circulation starts around 80C. this system works in slab heating too! tricky part is getting your water levels correct...good luck!
The outlet pipe IS in upward flow. What you describe there is a thermosiphon. One of the problems with your suggestion is that this would require a massive amount of coolant due to the holding tank which is not cheap, let alone buying and building the tank. Also, as you said yourself, it would be very tricky to adjust the coolant levels just right to make this actually work. Thermosiphons are known to fail due to air in the system. As mentioned in the video, I tried to build a cheap and quick system with materials that I had kicking around for the most part. Considering that my garage is nice and toasty right now I would argue that my "attempt" was successful the way it is. Under different circumstances this might be an interesting solution, it just wasn't in my case.
@@adrianwoodworm appologies for my delayed response I'm super busy..!! I have been tinkering with my own hot water circulator for around 4 years... thermosiphon only works if the heat source is at the bottom. I live above my garage. My woodstove is upstairs. I circulate my water from the stove to the garage floor and up again without pump (4 meters height difference). I have used copper pipe (note: all pipe sloping in one direction) and a brass cistern from an old toilet to hold my water. All up system holds around 80 litres of water... and starts circulating at 80C. My way enables me to eventually inbed the pipe in my garage concrete slab and create mass heating.🙂
@@adrianwoodworm where I am winter is not as rough as yours so I have limited reliance on my wood stove. That's why it's taken so long to develop....... watch this space and I'll send u a tingle once I've made my movie. hopefully we can help save the world with the knowledge 🙏
22x60 shop were the dimensions are rather and green house about 8x35 ft and have everything at least 1and 5/8 thick 4x23 foot long foam board insulation like they use in chicken houses and 72 cases of caulk I don’t mind fresh air coming in I just want to control when and where
Honestly, though it just makes more sense to have a pellet stove in this man’s garage if he’s really worried about having a wake up extra early just to heat his garage because a pellet stove runs all day until it runs out of pellets and also the I have a wood furnace that is outside and it only takes me an hour to heat our housebut guess what it only takes me five minutes to put 3 to 9 logs in it and it will last longer than 10 hours. That’s why I don’t understand why people bitch and complain about how hard it is to keep your woodstove running. It’s not.
Again, I am not interested to spend a lot of money in a pellet stove or a proper wood furnace setup. My cheap setup needs more time and attention during the day than your standard woodstove. A simple fact that has been pointed out..
I guess it could work as long as it is not exposed to the fire directly and as long as the radiator would be placed flush against a flat surface for optimal heat transfer, like the back of the drum. That being said, efficient heat transfer is not really a problem in my setup, the coolant does get more than hot enough with the copper pipes. Anyways, It is always good to think about alternative solutions, and I believe your idea would work! Thank you for commenting!
Yes, it is coolant that flows through the pipes, same stuff you would use for a car. It gets pumped from the bucket towards the stove where it heats up, and then it flows through the radiator where the heat is beeing extracted and cold coolant returns to the bucket/pump.
@@adrianwoodworm that's cool been wondering for a long time how to heat our ground level floor since a wood stove wouldn't fit anywhere this could probably work if I could guarantee no coolant spills in the house lol
@@johnnyversaci7091 I can see this working in a basement. You could put a catchpan under the radiator, big enough for a couple gallons of coolant. That way you don't have a big mess in the unlikely case of a leak.
Not sure what you mean, but if you are thinking of putting a coil in a fire pit and pumping the coolant with solar power, then I would say it could work. In the end you still have just hot coolant running through your radiator, which is what it is meant for.
If you value you your time at $20 an hour, that extra hour to wake up, start the fire and then be less productive adds up to $5000 per year. That doesn’t include time working on firewood, repairing this system, or setting it up in the first place. Are you sure the electricity to run the baseboards is that expensive?
If I value my time, most of my projects don't make much sense😆 but I agree, the big drawback is the time investment. This year I actually won't use the system. I am going to try a Chinese dieselheater. I used one with great success in our greenhouse and hopefully it works for the garage as well. I liked the idea of burning my excess wood and making good use of it, but as you correctly noticed, it is very time intense, and I get really tired of fixing a busted pipe at -30 and starting fires with my fingers turning to icicles each morning.
That is a good thought and I was thinking about that myself. However, I decided to install a Chinese diesel heater this fall. I am tired of babysitting the fireplace. I purchased one for our greenhouse this spring, they are cheep (200$canadian), efficient and very convenient. Not as cheep as a waste oil burner or a woodstove, but more convenient overall.
This guy says that baseboard heaters are too expensive because it takes a lot electricity well they make baseboard heaters that are not run by electric and they run by a water boiler so why don’t you just use a water boiler style heat register if you’re one of those people that would rather live without electricity just so you know we have come along way so you don’t need to waste a lot of electricity just run your water boiler if you have a electric water boiler run it on a battery and an inverter but like for my instance, I only have a 12 V battery running my recirculation pumps on my water boiler so I am not using any on grid electricity I am using all 100% off grid 12 V car battery and an inverter box and the inverter box, the water boiler, and the battery is protected to buy an EMP
You missed multiple points. I am not interested in investing a bunch of money in a water boiler, solarpanels, inverter and batteries. I needed a cheap setup that works for a couple years. Also, water freezes if not taken care of, where I live that's a problem at -40C at night. Not sure where you got the idea from that I want to live without electricity but it couldn't be further from the truth. By the way, the electricity I am using in my setup is minimal compared to a baseboard heater. A fan doesn't consume much, and neither does that little pump. Also, I am not afraid of an EMP nor am I off grid.
I have been building this in my head forever and it made me think I wonder if anyone else has thought about trying this then I found your video
I'm sure you get a lot of suggestions but instead of wood I would use a used oil drip feed. It's simple and it heats up instantly. Great job and simple. That's helps out a bunch. Thank you and God Bless Everyone
I was playing with the idea of an oil drip heater, and one day I might build one. It would be an awsome way do utilize all the otherwise useless oil from oilchanges. But we also have an abundance of firewood, we have each year multible burnpiles to get rid of, so I might as well heat my garage with that. But I agree, an used oil drip heater is a great idea!
I would add a removable burn pot and wast oil drip line to what you have now. Plus whatever else you would need to make it work. Just a thought.
Thanks brother
That was inspirational, nice to see something so honest.
Sometimes seeing the mistakes and problems is what encourages me.
Love ya mate, keep it up
Thank you! I appreciate you taking the time to leave such a positive comment! 👍🙏
you are very talented. your welding is on point. keep up the good work Sir!
Good job. Heat pump water heaters use 2" of closed cell foam around the unit with the copper coil on the outside of the water tank so you've essentially done it the correct way. I've been cruising the internet to see somebody do this before i do it so i am glad i stumbled upon this video lol.
Thank you! Glad you liked it!
Nice job👍🏻… thank you for sharing your engineering and experience for the rest of us! Best of luck continuing your mission
!
Thank you!
Really appreciate your function creating form. Looks cool!
To prevent overheating in case of power outage, consider using a 12v pump and a UPS, maybe in a loop with the pump? It even just a12v car battery on a trickle charger?
Great thought process, and inspiring! Well done, thumbs up and all that. 👍🤟🧟
Hard work pays off!!
Thanks for some good info😇😁
Good work. You 7se your brains and the things around you. That's what 8 do as well. I have a lot of stuff leftover from many projects so I use what I have as well it just makes sense most times and it's fun and engaging creative building and I learn as I go then make adjustments or adapt and modify as you go and or aquire things. Keep up the great work and I like the way you think
Thank you! I am glad you understand the way I tackled this one! I get a lot of comments on how to make this system better. I understand myself that it is not perfect in any way but most people overlook the fact that the goal was to build it as cheep as possible and to recycle or use up old materials as much as I could.
It's called being creative smart and resourceful there is no since in letting things go to waste or waste money when with a little creative thinking you can utilize 2hats around you not waste challenge and exercise your mind I 2ish you lived closer there another guy I talk to we always talk about exploited new diy I looked at quite a few of your projects you doing great I do lot of wood working as well I need start doing the videos sometime I do but still don't post I struggle with some social disorders more of an isolated they say I just think I'm old sol and don't like this generation
@@SavageDraco believe it or not, I am not a very social guy myself. That is actually one of the reasons I started the youtube videos. This way I don't have to be on the phone for hours with friends and family to explain over and over again what I am up to, they can just watch the videos. It was quite a challenge to find the courage to upload the first video though, my English is not the best and I don't have professional filming equipment. So I really appreciate people like you who can relate to what I am doing and like the content!
With a system like this you still need the radiator cap on and a over flow can. It will save your pipe from splitting. Nice job .
@LaRaineBarton The return line just ends loosely in the bucket, so technically, the pipe can not split due to high pressure. It would just push the coolant out in the bucket. The issues I have are pump failures. (Powerout, etc...) If there is no constant flow of the coolant, the temperature becomes so hot that it melts the pex pipe.
@adrianwoodworm Mite try heater hose don't know if it would hold up.
Might have to steal this as well. I have a radiator, box fan, and hot water loop (outdoor furnace). I was going to cobble together hydronic heat with fin tube and copper.
It is a cheep solution for heat as long as you are willing to get out there to keep the fire going. Since the chicken coop is close by, I thought it would be cool to tie that one in as well one day. It might be a project for next year!
@@adrianwoodworm our furnace has a thermostat controlled blower which supplies of 160°F water. It will increase the amount of wood burned but also increase productivity.
I like how the heat exchanger was built
Looks like a great Design. Yes it has pros and cons, Noprefect
Thanks, yes, finally someone who gets it! 😄👍
This is exactly what I was looking for. What is the highest temp you could reach? How hot does the radiator get? This is awesome thanks for the share!
I never measured the temperature, but a couple of times, I forgot to turn on the fan, and the radiator became too hot to touch, and the pex pipe felt dangerously soft😆
Cool video. I have a few suggestions for you or perhaps other people who are considering something like this. You really don't want to draw heat from the firebox, and in fact in should insulated with fire bricks on the inside to be kept as hot as possible. The main problem with your heat exchanger design is that the contact area between the copper pipe and the flue is actually very small, so you are not get efficient heat transfer. Either put the pipes inside the flue, or try to make a full water jacket on the outside. If using tubing, make sure the cold water is coming in from the top, so the system is setup in counterflow, this is more efficient.
By having your firebox totally uninsulated, your are not only losing a tremendous amount of heat to the outdoors, you are also preventing the fire from getting hot for efficient and complete combustion.
As mentioned in the video, I don't want the pipe in the firebox, people who did so have to clean their pipes regularly from the creosote getting build up, which then insulates the pipe from the fire/heat, and cleaning that is something I am not interested in. I agree, the heat transfer could be more efficient, but it is not really a problem, since I produce an excess amount of heat already, so much so, that I have to keep the fire small to not overheat the system(which did happen before...) that brings me to your last point, the fire has no problem to burn efficiently, that might be a theoretical concern but I can ensure you that in reality it burns hot and clean. Don't get me wrong, there are certainly a lot of ways to do things different and more efficient, but my goal here was to build something quick, functioning and cheap. And sitting in a warm garage as I write this, while it is -27 Celsius outside tells me that I achieved that.
@@adrianwoodworm yeah i get that your project is working well, and the way you did it is fine. I just like to look for areas that could be improved, perhaps i came across negatively, but i didnt mean to.
@@zachary3777 all good. You have some valid points, to adress them just doesn't fit in the frame that I set for myself.
You're asking for smoke condensation in your chimney with a water jacket. And if you wanted a thermosiphon system, running countercurrent would completely ruin that. I'd say using something like plaster of paris or sand would be much better as packing for the coils to increase your heat transfer efficiency, and could easily get hot enough to not negatively affect your chimney health.
@@pre176 that's true. In a legit system you would have a thermostatic mixing valve that keeps the boiler temp at 140 degrees or above to prevent flue gas condensation.
Well done good work Adrian
Thank you!🙏
It's the first part of the stove pipe because the total heat volume of the stove is larger and is condensed to a small area by draft to escape the confines of the stove.
That sounds like a logical explanation!👍
Nice inexpensive diy design/build. And, it works!
Failure modes are always an interesting diy design problem. Imagining what could go wrong and having a mechanical or electronic control system that remediates each potential problem is very hard to do.
Especially with a wood stove fire heat source.
If the circulating pump or the fan fails or the thermal transfer fluid leaks, how could a safety control system sense the failure and quickly shut down the wood stove? (Electronic dampers would have to choke off airflow in to & out of the firebox to quickly smother the fire. The control system would have to have sensors for each possible point of failure and a microcontroller, like an Arduino, to read the sensors and take pre-programmed actions to protect the system from every possible problem scenario. A complicated control system to setup, program and test.)
Something like this often happens to people building solar hot air collectors where hot air stops exiting the collector and the heat builds up until the glazing pops or cracks from overheating (called "stagnation"). If their fan fails or their thermostat fails or the airflow damper fails then their solar thermal collector(s) can self-destruct from overheating.
Others who want to emulate this system might want to look at the failure modes and implement an Arduino-based control system with appropriate sensors. The parts would be pretty cheap, but writing the control program would be challenging. (Maybe someone could write an open source generic Arduino heating system control sketch that would ask a few questions about how the system is set up & monitored and then call the appropriate blocks of program code to handle basic system operations & failure responses?)
The changes to this design that I would make are as follows:
* Split the flue pipe so that the heat exchanger is on its own branch and put an electronic damper at the beginning of each branch so that the hot exhaust could be directed up thru the heat exchanger branch OR the flue exhaust branch (i.e. control heating of the heat exchanger)
* Direct vent the fresh air intake of the wood stove so it gets combustion air from outside air and put both an inline fan & an electronic damper on the intake pipe to control airflow to the combustion chamber (i.e. control rate of wood combustion)
* Put temperature, fluid pressure, damper state, fan state, and other sensors where needed to provide Arduino microcontroller with all the sensor data it needs to control system operations (i.e. monitor all critical system components & operating conditions)
* Put a thermostat in the shop to send heat calls to the Arduino (i.e. automatically control the temperature in the shop)
These proposed changes should create a more automated heating system that also implements system shutdown failure modes in the event that a key component fails. It would be fun to implement such a system and open source the design, the software control program and a list of the off the shelf components used.
I would love to be involved in such a project, especially since I've started playing around with an Arduino Uno on a custom cargo lift that I created using a discarded garage door opener.
@@alanmcrae8594 wow, you put quite some thought into this! Your solution sounds very interesting, quite brilliant actually. Definitely beyond my skills though! I don't think I ever have seen a controlled woodstove like you describe, this would be such a fascinating project!
@@adrianwoodworm Thanks for the compliment Adrian.
I think an automated diy woodstove thermal transfer fluid space heater could be a fascinating global open source project with different people doing what they are good at.
I don't have the welding & metal working skills that you have, but I have some experience with computers, automation and now microcontrollers, sensors and actuators.
My wife & I are attempting to develop a 21st century sustainable homestead and a diy wood heating system is definitely on my radar.
@@alanmcrae8594 That sounds like you guys have a big project coming up! It would deserve its own youtube channel! And regarding the heater, the skills you seem to have are hard to find, but there are plenty guys out there who can work with metal, I bet you can make this a reality! I wish you the best of luck with all of it and if there is any information you need from my side, I will be here to help where I can and as time allows!
@@adrianwoodworm Hey, thanks Adrian!
I am seriously interested in a full featured, automated, diy wood heating system and I'll probably be attempting a design/build in the near future.
I'll definitely reach out to guys like you who have real world experience with their own project.
Yeah, our Little Eden Sustainable Homestead Project is a really big project. We'd like to spend the last part of our lives doing something challenging rather than sitting around playing cards or watching tv. We might do a UA-cam channel, if it doesn't interfere with getting our work done.
Really good video thanks 👍
Hey good video. I like this setup I'm thinking of doing it. Couple questions.....does it have to be a barrel stove or could I use my big cast iron square stove and use the copper piping the same way on the stove pipe? I've seen a few videos on this same thing and I only ever see barrel stoves. Also do you have some piping right inside your barrel, and if so, does it not melt?
Thank you for your interest. It does not have to be a barrel stove. It just happend to be the cheepest solution for me. It can be any woodstove. And no, there is no pipe on the inside.
just want to say ,THANKS, for posting this . You put a great effort into your build and it has helped me somewhat in what I am trying to achieve in my 12x20 2 story barn for cheap winter heat!! Do you have any creosote problems in your stack pipe where you have your copper coil ? I have a barrel stove and I'm considering wrapping copper pipe around the drum and covering the assembly with fiberglass insulation instead of in the chimney . I am also trying to decide if I should run black iron pipe through the firebox from end to end inside the drum for about 8 passes. Thanks for letting me know about the solder getting too hot at the joints wrapped around the drum and causing leaks!!! If I go with copper I'll remember to silver solder my joints to prevent leaks ! If the copper pipe got hot enough to melt the soldered joints , there should be plenty of heat around the body of the drum to heat my water?!! Do you have a video on your build for your tent ?? I would like to see how you did this . Very good work !!!
Thank you! No, I don't have creosote problems in the stovepipe. I think those problems show up mainly when pipe is directly exposed to the hot smoke, which is why I chose to have no copper or steel pipe inside the stove or stovepipe. (I put the copper pipe between two different sized stovepipe to avoid contact with the smoke..) I think you will be successful by only wrapping the pipe around your barrelstove, others have done it before and it seemed to work for them. If it doesn't heat up enough you always could go back and add more pipe. As more you wrap around, as more time it has to heat up. It would be just two connections you have to deal with.
Unfortunately I don't have a video of building the tent, I didn't have anything to film it back then. I do consider building a second one in the spring, if you are patient you might get a chance to see how to put one of those up. It is really easy and such an enjoyable space!
Hey Joel. I'm a retired HVAC/R man and I have six years of experience running a wood-burning fireplace in my home (25 in the business). Up in Idaho, one would tell you that creosote is primarily a problem if you run a bunch of wet wood that is not seasoned. That is year after year. A house rental manager I use to work for as an HVAC/R said he would have chimneys cleaned every 3 years (That's the brick-and-mortar type) regardless of whether the wood was seasoned or not. He always warned about unseasoned wood and it would burn too hot. . I know from experience that the really nice part of using a black pipe is how easy it is to clean out if you do get any build-up. That is either with wet or seasoned wood. Even seasoned wood will have sap in it...just less. The unit I am viewing in the picture may be disassembled easily. If not remember to use 1/4 inch zip sheet metal screws. Basically, the black pipe can come apart real easy and it can be cleaned easily. I would leave a clean-out in the burner unit above the flame area if I were building a unit for the same purpose. Hot water boilers as a rule have areas that can be accessed to be cleaned or have the burner tubes replaced. So basically keep cleaning in mind and build it so it can be easily accessed with a simple screw/bolt situation or any other safe secure method you may employ. Nicely done by the way!
Superb work dude!
Thank you!!
What was the length of copper pipe you used ??? Nice work fella too.
Thank you! I think I used a 50ft roll on the stovepipe as well as around the drum.
@@adrianwoodworm Do you think by increasing the coil times two would increase the efficiency a lot more ???
you could make an insulated buffer tank - water holds heat well - also think about a pumpless design - this would work well with a buffer tank with a check valve and you could team it up with solar to keep tank hot - free heat - pressure test everything and have relief valves to prevent too much pressure - pls do an update on this idea
Redneck is a style! A good one👍 imho anyway. I have been told that this whitewash, bleached wood, beat it up with a chain stuff that’s popular these days is called “farmhouse” style. I have been in more farmhouses than almost anyone because of past jobs, across all of western Canada. Farmhouse style is someones invention, it doesn’t come from farmhouses.
Redneck, on the other hand, is rooted in invention, recycling and cost consciousness. It’s the most valid design style out there.
Couldn't have said it better myself!
Great job
Thank you!
That's very clever
I think it’s a cool concept, but I don’t think the efficiency is great. I definitely understand the safety concerns with wood stoves, I run one in my house and shop through winter and would be lying if I said I was never nervous about it. Although modern technology has better options today, pellet stove and oil monitors are great alternatives for wood stoves and push really good heat.
I do really like the build though, it’s like a back yard built hydrotherm outdoor furnace. Have you thought about adding in a hot water heater and using rv anti-freeze?
There is no doubt about it, it is not a very efficient option in comparison to a woodstove on the inside. I am not nervous about it, it is more the fact that the insurance would be very expensive since our area is not covered by a fire department. So before I spent hundreds of dollars per month for the baseboard heaters I just spent a couple hundred bucks in this system and burn all the excess wood I have on my property.
There is antifreeze running thorough the lines. I do have allready a very efficient hot water system installed in the house, so there is no need for me to change anything, but I have a friend who uses a very similar system to heat his water on his off grid property, so there is for sure potential under the right circumstances.
After watching this video i think i will buy a diesel heater to suppliment my garage heating. Although i may experiment with this idea as a pool heater. Maybe use some larger copper pipe flowing through the firebox and out .
After years of using this system I get tired of maintaining a fire. There is quite some work involved on a daily bases. I recently bought a chinese dieselheater for our greenhouse and I am very impressed with the heat output for a $200 unit! Long story short, I decided to take down my system this year and install a dieselheater for convenience as well. So I think you are on the right track! Cheers!
@@adrianwoodworm can't go wrong for the price.
Put another looser coil inside the pipe inlet on the top outer , inside use 1/2"k copper , flatten it with a twist so the water tumbles the hotter flue gas may require a step up in size of copper , or smaller fires , as well as drive another heater core , maybe plumb a few underground for floor heat . Would be more interested in placing more circuits inside the pipe. Does the barrel pull air from a duct and not burn inside hot air?
Great explanation!
Great idea ! 🥶🔥👍
What coolant are you using in it?
If it’s water, can it burst due to high pressure?
I just used Prestone antifreeze. It can't really burst because there is not enough pressure that can build up. The return line is just open-ended, so any significant pressure would just push the fluid out in the bucket that holds the pump. The problems start when the pump fails for whatever reason. Then, the temperature of the coolant increases, and it starts to soften the pex pipe. Once soft enough, even a little bit of pressure is enough to burst the pex pipe, and you are in for a very uncomfortable repair in the middle of the winter😄
@@adrianwoodworm thank you for the reply. I wanted to make a closed system. But I don’t know how to deal with the pressure increased by steam in the closed system. And doesn’t your open system cause loss in heat?
Adrian, you are what people years ago would call "a very useful neighbor" :) Did you use coolant vs. water in the pipes just to avoid rust or did you have another reason?
No, I am not too concerned about corrosion, the reason for coolant is its freezing point. Water would just freeze up here in the winter and burst the pipes.(For example, we had around -25c° at night the last couple days here and the coldest months are still to come.)
Hi there, My name is Dale, from BC, Canada i have a small youtube channel and i want to build a wood/waste oil burner similar to the one you have in your youtube video
(Outdoor Wood Burning Garage Heater - Heat Your Garage For Free Using a Car Radiator!)
I have watched your content over and over on building a wood boiler it’s just awesome info!
My question is would you be ok with me using some of your video content clips in my next youtube video about waste oil boiler build?
I would also link back to your channel
Thanks Dale. :)
Absolutely, go fly at it brother! I appreciate your approach and I am looking forward to watch and learn from your video!
Thanks partner! Will post a link when i have it all complete!@@adrianwoodworm
I’m wrapping outside bottom in copper to heat water for greenhouse and ibc poor man’s hot tub and top barrel fence pipes all around exterior and 4 intake pipes for fresh air to fire and hoping to incorporate old cast iron radiator as well radiant heating under my plant beds to keep semi warm I used it for a year and I could take my spray foamed shop from 55 to 95 f in about an hour had to open door to cool it down so much waste as well straight out chimney going to try and take my flew vent pipe the longest I can as to milk as much heat as I can
nice attempt 😇. Remove pipe around heater. Outlet pipe should be in upward flow only! add header tank with a heat trap ( 'S-trap'). Tank volume should be greater than outlet total volume. This eliminates pump. Be sure to bleed system and eliminate all air. Top of outlet pipe to be filled just before tipping point... hot water will rise if the header tank volume is heavier. circulation starts around 80C. this system works in slab heating too! tricky part is getting your water levels correct...good luck!
The outlet pipe IS in upward flow.
What you describe there is a thermosiphon. One of the problems with your suggestion is that this would require a massive amount of coolant due to the holding tank which is not cheap, let alone buying and building the tank. Also, as you said yourself, it would be very tricky to adjust the coolant levels just right to make this actually work. Thermosiphons are known to fail due to air in the system. As mentioned in the video, I tried to build a cheap and quick system with materials that I had kicking around for the most part. Considering that my garage is nice and toasty right now I would argue that my "attempt" was successful the way it is. Under different circumstances this might be an interesting solution, it just wasn't in my case.
@@adrianwoodworm appologies for my delayed response I'm super busy..!! I have been tinkering with my own hot water circulator for around 4 years... thermosiphon only works if the heat source is at the bottom. I live above my garage. My woodstove is upstairs. I circulate my water from the stove to the garage floor and up again without pump (4 meters height difference). I have used copper pipe (note: all pipe sloping in one direction) and a brass cistern from an old toilet to hold my water. All up system holds around 80 litres of water... and starts circulating at 80C. My way enables me to eventually inbed the pipe in my garage concrete slab and create mass heating.🙂
@@plumbrose1 sounds like you got a nice setup going on! Would be interesting to see a video about that! 🙂
@@adrianwoodworm where I am winter is not as rough as yours so I have limited reliance on my wood stove. That's why it's taken so long to develop....... watch this space and I'll send u a tingle once I've made my movie. hopefully we can help save the world with the knowledge 🙏
What if you adapt it to oil drip if you had old used oil
Excellent idea. I probably would get into that if I would plan on staying here long term, but our plan is to move in a couple of years.
22x60 shop were the dimensions are rather and green house about 8x35 ft and have everything at least 1and 5/8 thick 4x23 foot long foam board insulation like they use in chicken houses and 72 cases of caulk I don’t mind fresh air coming in I just want to control when and where
Is the installation fire proof
Nothing burned down yet, so I say yes🙂
Honestly, though it just makes more sense to have a pellet stove in this man’s garage if he’s really worried about having a wake up extra early just to heat his garage because a pellet stove runs all day until it runs out of pellets and also the I have a wood furnace that is outside and it only takes me an hour to heat our housebut guess what it only takes me five minutes to put 3 to 9 logs in it and it will last longer than 10 hours. That’s why I don’t understand why people bitch and complain about how hard it is to keep your woodstove running. It’s not.
Again, I am not interested to spend a lot of money in a pellet stove or a proper wood furnace setup. My cheap setup needs more time and attention during the day than your standard woodstove. A simple fact that has been pointed out..
How about you use an other radiator to heat the water more efficiently?
I guess it could work as long as it is not exposed to the fire directly and as long as the radiator would be placed flush against a flat surface for optimal heat transfer, like the back of the drum. That being said, efficient heat transfer is not really a problem in my setup, the coolant does get more than hot enough with the copper pipes.
Anyways, It is always good to think about alternative solutions, and I believe your idea would work! Thank you for commenting!
Very interesting
What if you used a tractor trailer radiater
So coolant goes through the copper pipes into the bucket then through the radiator?
Yes, it is coolant that flows through the pipes, same stuff you would use for a car. It gets pumped from the bucket towards the stove where it heats up, and then it flows through the radiator where the heat is beeing extracted and cold coolant returns to the bucket/pump.
@@adrianwoodworm that's cool been wondering for a long time how to heat our ground level floor since a wood stove wouldn't fit anywhere this could probably work if I could guarantee no coolant spills in the house lol
@@johnnyversaci7091 I can see this working in a basement. You could put a catchpan under the radiator, big enough for a couple gallons of coolant. That way you don't have a big mess in the unlikely case of a leak.
Proper wood store in garage best
0:53-1:30
can a radiator handle a fire pit want to connect a solar mat to it
Not sure what you mean, but if you are thinking of putting a coil in a fire pit and pumping the coolant with solar power, then I would say it could work. In the end you still have just hot coolant running through your radiator, which is what it is meant for.
@@adrianwoodworm toasty floor mat and i should sub
👍
If you value you your time at $20 an hour, that extra hour to wake up, start the fire and then be less productive adds up to $5000 per year. That doesn’t include time working on firewood, repairing this system, or setting it up in the first place. Are you sure the electricity to run the baseboards is that expensive?
If I value my time, most of my projects don't make much sense😆 but I agree, the big drawback is the time investment. This year I actually won't use the system. I am going to try a Chinese dieselheater. I used one with great success in our greenhouse and hopefully it works for the garage as well.
I liked the idea of burning my excess wood and making good use of it, but as you correctly noticed, it is very time intense, and I get really tired of fixing a busted pipe at -30 and starting fires with my fingers turning to icicles each morning.
En vez de usar leña puedes usar aceite de vehiculo es gratis
That is a good thought and I was thinking about that myself. However, I decided to install a Chinese diesel heater this fall. I am tired of babysitting the fireplace. I purchased one for our greenhouse this spring, they are cheep (200$canadian), efficient and very convenient. Not as cheep as a waste oil burner or a woodstove, but more convenient overall.
This guy says that baseboard heaters are too expensive because it takes a lot electricity well they make baseboard heaters that are not run by electric and they run by a water boiler so why don’t you just use a water boiler style heat register if you’re one of those people that would rather live without electricity just so you know we have come along way so you don’t need to waste a lot of electricity just run your water boiler if you have a electric water boiler run it on a battery and an inverter but like for my instance, I only have a 12 V battery running my recirculation pumps on my water boiler so I am not using any on grid electricity I am using all 100% off grid 12 V car battery and an inverter box and the inverter box, the water boiler, and the battery is protected to buy an EMP
You missed multiple points. I am not interested in investing a bunch of money in a water boiler, solarpanels, inverter and batteries. I needed a cheap setup that works for a couple years. Also, water freezes if not taken care of, where I live that's a problem at -40C at night. Not sure where you got the idea from that I want to live without electricity but it couldn't be further from the truth. By the way, the electricity I am using in my setup is minimal compared to a baseboard heater. A fan doesn't consume much, and neither does that little pump. Also, I am not afraid of an EMP nor am I off grid.