Cutting heating costs and water heater

I have a woodstove that came with my shop. It's a 55-gallon drum on it's side, legs welded on, stack at one end, hinged half-lid at the other with a handle and a place for a pin to keep it closed. There is also a stub of 4x4 square tube below the door, with a cover on a piece of allthread to adjust the air intake. Works great. I have added a steel rack above it for storing bulk steel. The heated steel also stores the heat from the stove. This thing works well to burn any shop waste, including oil-soaked newspapers and whatever scrap wood or brush I don't want to bur in the LR fireplace. My next project is to add waste-oil feed to this. I inted to run copper tubing from my WO barrel to a point below the heater access door (half-lid). I'll also run shop air, and combine fittings so the oil tees into the shop airstream and makes a venturi suction. Ball valves to adjust each. From there a short piece of steel tube in a hole drilled in the barrel so it sprays atomized oil lengthwise and up into the barrel. Start the fire with the usual scrap and shop waste, then add in air and oil according to how much heat you want to generate. It's still 94 degrees here, so I'm not pressed to get on with it
Rex B Fort Worth

wrote: (clip) Does anyone have any plans or ideas on building such a thing? ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Have you considered solar?

"Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire. Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us) off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give them self determination under "play nice" rules.
Think of it as having your older brother knock the shit out of you for torturing the cat." Gunner

That would not work for inside a house though would it?

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Dunno which of the posts you meant to reply to, so I will assume it was mine--re: solar water heater. The solar panels are placed on the roof. The rest of the system can be distributed where it will fit. I have two 80 gal holding tanks in the walk space under the house. Water comes from the main line to the holding tanks, and then to the gas-fired water heater. Any temperature rise the solar panels can create is that much less gas I have to use.

I found a reference to using waste oil somewhere on the internet. The specifics were in a book an pottery. I don't remember the name of the book off hand, but our local library had the book. If you can't google it up from that, let me know and I will find it.
Dan

I used to have that book. It was on building kilns. Instead of spraying the oil they used a hot plate burner. The oil dripped on what became a red hot steel plate and vaporized. Might be three plates as that's what comes to mind. I used that book and my physics book to design and build and electric furnace to melt brass. It worked very well. Karl