Mother's Waste Oil Heater

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As you can imagine, this whole "pre-heater, 4-inch stovepipe, funnel" assembly—once completed—is pretty much free to move up or down as it sees fit . . . unless you lock it into its optimum operating position (the mouth of the funnel should be just about an inch above the top rim of the flinch steel frying pan). No problem. A small sheet metal collar-which rests on top of the furnace and which can be clamped tightly around the 4 inch stovepipe after it has been raised or lowered as necessary—fills the bill nicely as the only locking mechanism you'll need.

THE FINISHING TOUCHES

The oil burner's door rests against a frame bolted to the inside of its opening and is secured by a lip bolted to the inside of one of its edges and a window latch bolted to the outside of the opposite edge. A short piece of angle iron attached to the door for a handle makes the whole assembly a trifle easier to remove and replace on the rare occasions when you'll want to take it off. And a half-inch hole drilled through the center of the door and covered with a little flap of sheet metal hinged on a small bolt serves as a peephole (through which you can check on your furnace's flame if you ever have questions about its color, height, etc.).

Paint your finished stove with Thurmalox 270 flat black paint (see sidebar), set the unit in place and bolt it down, fill its burner assembly with crushed asbestos (or, better yet, Insblock ... an asbestos brick manufactured by the E.P. Green Company and sold all over the country), and fill the bottom of the furnace with sand. You can even add a decorative metal eagle to the new heater, if you want to really spruce it up for the living room! Then hook up a gravity-feed oil line in and the chimney stack out according to approved fuel and vent practices . . . light up, sit back, and enjoy the warmth!

YEP! IT REALLY DOES WORK!

If MOTHER's extensive testing of this furnace is any indication, you're going to have to go a long, long way to beat the unit for both economy and heat output. The prototype you see here cost us the grand total of $36.14 to construct .. . and we bought almost everything that went into the stove except the scrounged water heater tank that makes up its guts. You can probably cut that figure in half quite easily if you have even a halfway decent selection of stovepipe, scrap metal, screws, bolts, etc., lying around the shop. Either way, though, it shouldn't take you much longer than one good day to put this whole project together . . . and any time you can add one long day to $36.14 or less and come up with a $500 stove, you ain't doin' bad!

But, of course, that's only the beginning! Because the only thing less expensive than constructing MOTHER's incredibly low-priced waste oil burner . . . is operating the unit once it's put together!

In the first place, the furnace throws out an awful lot of Btu's (no, we don't really have any way to accurately measure its heat output directly . . . but, as near as we can calculate, the burner produces 21,000 usable Btu's an hour, which is enough to heat a well-insulated small house).

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