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Forum Index : Other Stuff : How to heat my shed via wood fire
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| greg199 Newbie  Joined: 03/11/2015 Location: AustraliaPosts: 39 |
I have an old steel cylindrical tank (ex water pressure vessel) about 400mm diameter by 600mm high. I'd like to heat my 6mx9m workshop by building a small free standing (central) wood heater inside the shed using this tank. Internet searching has revealed a few thousand options but I've yet to find some details on safe and efficient (and simple) wood heater design using a tank like mine. Since it will be inside the 6mx9m shed I want to ensure it will be safe and I'd like it not to send all the heat up the chimney and outside. I envisage just fueling the heater with scrap wood. Consistent and low heat is all I'm after and it will only be used while I'm in the shed - never if I'm not there. Does anyone have any suggestions or links to plans? |
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Tinker Guru  Joined: 07/11/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1904 |
I remember seeing something called a 'pig', used for a camp wood heater, for sale at 4WD shows. Perhaps you could google that and get an idea how to adapt your tank. These pigs were made from old 9kg propane cylinders, they looked very simple to make. If you make the inside part of the chimney pipe long then it will radiate heat into your shed as well. Klaus |
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Grogster Admin Group  Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9306 |
There are home-made ones all over YouTube, such as these ones here: LINK 1 LINK 2 I am actually going to build something very similar to these ideas, for my tiny house project. A tiny stove, for a tiny house.  Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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rustyrod Senior Member  Joined: 08/11/2014 Location: AustraliaPosts: 121 |
I have a small wood heater in my shed and deliberately made the chimney pipe cross from one end to the other, to heat the air space before exiting through the apex of the wall. You will need a 'damper' or butterfly valve in the chimney tube to control the fire. Using damp wood results in condensation inside the chimney pipe which will drip black yucky from joints over things I have an elbow on top of chimney outside facing away from prevailing winds. LOL Shed filled quickly with smoke when wind back flow previously Always Thinking |
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| Warpspeed Guru Joined: 09/08/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 4406 |
Some good advice there. I have not had success with a damper valve fitted into the flue. Close that off and the wood stove will smoke badly out of every tiny leak in the stove. You definitely do need an "air" control adjustment to slow down the rate of combustion once the room heats up sufficiently. Best place to fit that is the air intake into the stove. Many commercial wood stoves have some kind of slider or rotary valve fitted to the base of the door or into the ash pan space below the fire. The hot rising flue gas creates a lower air pressure within the stove, and air tries to leak into the stove, rather than the smoke trying to leak out. Cheers, Tony. |
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| greg199 Newbie Joined: 03/11/2015 Location: AustraliaPosts: 39 |
After much searching I finally found a great document explaining some research on wood fires. It is called: Design Principles for Wood Burning Cook Stoves. That should cover almost anything people need to know. I designed and then came close to building a "rocket" type wood heater (not a stove) but I decided to simply buy a small fan heater. The bit of electricity I use will be much less than the cost of building the wood heater. Building the wood heater can wait until I build my next house and shed. |
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| Georgen Guru Joined: 13/09/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 462 |
Yes, there is always dilemma should we go ahead with our project or not. I have my abandoned project of building 12V battery desulfator. Bought some components, then got battery rejuvenator. Tried rejuvenator for a while, but didn't see any improvement. As to wood stove it is bit different and probably its value increases dramatically when there is no power available. George |
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| bitdog Newbie Joined: 13/11/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 15 |
My neighbor has an upright 55 gal drum. The top has a hinged half for loading, and the 6" stove pipe comes out the other half. Flawed design I thought, but wood standing upright leaning against the sides gives it the air space needed to burn real well. The burnt wood falls to the bottom coaling bed by the air inlets. He could have had the stove pipe come out the back top so he could cook on top. His long stove pipe adds a lot of heat to the shed. To keep creosote condensation from dripping out of the pipes, he puts the seam up and the upper pipe inside the lower pipe. Like shingles keep water out. Bitdog |
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| George65 Guru Joined: 18/09/2017 Location: AustraliaPosts: 308 |
I can't for the life of me understand why more people don't do this! I see heaters all the time with the flue going up a foot from the heater and straight out the wall. the amount of wasted heat would have to be more than they are keeping inside. Straight up chimneys can't be all that much better. Angling the flue and making it as long as possible must give so much more heat it wouldn't be funny. I read of a guy that put a long length of twisted gal iron down his sloping chimney like they have in gas water heaters to create some movement of the flue gasses and break up the cool boundary layer so the hot gasses could better radiate heat to the pipe. the other thing to aid efficency is having forced air on the burner. the greater the difference between the air temp and what it comes in contact with the greater the efficiency. having a fan blow down to push the hot air to the floor where the people are instead of going to the roof like smoke then working it's way down is also a lot more efficient and comfortable. I'm looking for an old wood stove atm to convert to oil burning. Might go a big gas bottle if I can find one. Wood is too much of a hassel to me. Oil you can meter with a pump on a PWM controller and it will run the same untouched all day. If you do a forced air design you don't have to clean the things either because they burn hot enough to turn everything to fine wood like ash which for the most part blows out with the flue gasses. You can also crank the things up and down as you want or even couple them to a thermostat and switch between idle and heat modes for some temp regulation. Even with a wood fire you can do an oil drip and as long as there is enough air the oil will burn clean and give a huge amount of extra heat. |
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