Spike

After 11 years of use I have finally been shamed into giving my heater a "birthday" and implementing the improvements I was telling others to try. This is the testing done prior to moving it back inside. And here it is in use.

Cresylic acid, a by product of coal distillation will probably do it. This is the basis of many professional dips. Its a heavy oily brown liquid that smells stongly of creosote or phenyl. (Don't stick your nose near it, if it's the real thing you'll smell it from afar) I don't have any idea where you may purchase it in UK, probably a chemical distributor, but be careful, it's nasty stuff and can only be removed with organic (carbon based) liquids, dieseline on your skin or thinners/turps to prepare parts for painting. Use out in the open air, apply it as you would paint stripper. Wear goggles or better still a visor and plastic apron at the very least, and wash off any splashes immediately!

Here it is in it's finished form. Cheap heat! This is NOT my heater, but an improved version. It is owned by, and all of the work was done by a New Zealand Policeman. I think the standard of work is a credit to him.

Here's the next progression, still quite crude but getting a few of the rough edges knocked off. Using two worn out truck sized brake drums, which can be obtained free at your nearest trucking company.

Here's a photo demonstrating how simple an oil heater can be. I have had a drip fed waste oil heater heating my house for eight years now, and although it is not pretty, there is a very good trade off between looks and costs. Prior to fitting the heater, I used to cut and burn 25-6 tons of firewood every winter, the cutting and splitting of which severely cut into my leisure time. The photo above was sent to me by a gentleman in New Zealand who has since built and installed a modified and much prettier version of my own. He assembled this in his back garden just to test the principle because as he admitted later he did not believe that it was so simple. The lower end of the flue is made from an old cylinder liner from a Mack truck and being cast iron, is easy to drill, highly resistant to heat damage and cheap and easy to replace if you need to. I have not replaced mine in eight years and it is not showing any signs of burning out. There are four versions of my heater now in use that I know of. One heats a lap pool used by a paraplegic, the others are heating homes and a workshop. Regardless of what you may have been told, they can be made to work very successfully without smoke or unpleasant odours, although they can take a bit of mucking about to fine tune as they do not have a great range of clean burning temperatures and need to be set up to burn cleanly at or near the temperature best for your purposes. As for licenses, there is no provision for licensing here in Australia, but if asked I would say, "Don't ask and don't tell" what the authorities are unaware of is obviously doing little or no harm. A bit of history on mine can be found here: http://www.geocities.com/senojekips/shed.htm