BUILD A "PAP-O-FIRE" IN YOUR FIREPLACE ... AND SAVE ON HEATING DOLLARS

Image Gallery Dwight Mills ... and the Sol-R-Grate, Pap-O-Logs, and soaker vat (right) which make up his Pap-O-Fire system. BUILD A ""PAP-0-FIRE"" IN YOUR FIREPLACE...AND SAVE ON HEATING DOLLARS

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Soak rolled up newspapers in old crankcase on burn them in a specially designed "Sol-R-Grate" log-holder, and what do you get? "Lower heating bills ... that's what," says Dwight Mills of Fredericksburg, Virginia.

Mills—a 72-year-old retiree who's worked in the petroleum and heating fields most of his life —has devised a neat, simple method for transforming old newspapers and used automotive oil into "free" heat for his home. It's called the Pap-O-Fire method, and it goes like this:

First, Mr. Mills hand-rolls several "paper logs" (each one about 12" to 14" long by 3" or 4" in diameter and held together with a single piece of reinforced packaging tape). Next, he places the logs—which he calls "Pap-O-Logs"—in the 20 welded-together 46-ounce juice cans that make up the "rotating wheel" part of his special oil-log processor (see photo). Then Dwight fills the processor's soaker vat with 25 gallons of spent crankcase oil (which he obtains at no cost from a local service station) and turns the half-submerged "fruit can" wheel so that each roll of paper soaks In the oil for two hours and drains for two hours.

"Before I designed this setup," Mills explains, "I came out looking like a grease monkey every time I tried to soak newspaper logs in oil. Now I can load, soak, and unload the logs in my Sunday best!"

Far more important than how the logs are made, however, is the method by which Dwight Mills burns them. For this operation, Mr. Mills has designed a special two-level grate—the "Sol-R-Grate" (see photo)—to provide plenty of air for complete, clean combustion of the oiled newspapers. The vertical spacers of Mills's log-holder are arranged in such a way that they allow air to reach the paper rolls' burning surfaces quickly and evenly ... but not all of the "logs" that Dwight Mills loads onto his Sol-R-Grate are of the "burning" kind: For greater heat radiation, Mills puts as many as four steel logs (or cylinders) on the grate's upper level, in addition to the three oiled-newspaper logs (one on the upper level, two on the lower level) and one or more "real" (wooden) logs that he usually loads onto the holder.

Thus, as the fire burns on, the steel "logs" become hotter and hotter ... and as they do, air entering the fire Is "super heated" before it begins combustion. The result is a hot, clean, nearly pollution-free blaze that—according to Dwight Mills—leaves practically no ash residue. (What little ash is left over goes directly to Mills's compost heap.)

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