Thrive Off Grid

This stove with the piggy back and flew pipe even if set up out doors should get plenty hot. That top plate should be able to get to around 500 to 700 f but the flew pipe would be needed. If you need it hotter there is a blower option to boost its output. Only thing is this more designed for wood pellets. You could run stick fuel or maybe even chunks but I think run times will be short and more fiddling.

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I agree with the responses. Since it is a gas water heater burner, itā€™s a shoe - in for plumbing to a natural gas water tank. (Not indoorsā€¦ !)

Pros

Clean burn, only burn the fuel needed for the job, power on tap, fast start up, simple as could be, really low power required to drive the fan, long reliable run times without refueling.

How about a gas bbq, running on charcoal? Great ventilation, the gasifier would fit where the tank goes, wouldnā€™t even look differentā€¦

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Don, I take it your nozzle is 1/2" gas pipe, is there a cap on the end with a drilled hole, or running wide open? Or is the pipe capped with perforations or slits? If so, what size?

Also, how long is the nozzle?

How about clean out?

Did you run it much? What was your experience with run time, and how many pounds of charcoal per run?

It has been a while since I made this but if I remember correctly I welded a coupling in the tank bottom a couple inches from the bottom and screwed a short nipple with the ceramic shield on the end so it ended just short of center. No slits or perfs - just open pipe.
Cleanout is through to top cover on this short tank.

This was one of those crazy projects when you walk past the junk pile in the shop and see the burner laying there and even though you should be doing something else you just are drawn guiltily to fuss with it until you get it burning. That is what happened here. I let it burn for 45 minutes or so and took the video and then shut it down and went on to what I should have been doing in the first place. It is still sitting on the shelf waiting for another one of those playtime moments.

Sorry Matt Ryder for filling up your thread here.

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For a water heater i was thinking of circulating the water around the burn tube of a regular wood gasifier, and burn wood gasified, no char needed but should be clean burn after 2 minut warm up time. Thanks for posting your cooker, i am on the look out for a pressure cooker pans now, thats a good portable unit allso.

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Are you kidding this is the most action this thread has has in a long time. You guys are welcome here :slight_smile:

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So with Mattā€™s blessing yes Pete I make syrup not 50 gallons more like 5ā€¦ That is the problem. I do batches and have to finish 1 or 2 gallons at a time. I do it outside on a propane turkey fryer or inside on the propane cook stove. A charcoal burner should be a good replacement for the fryer.

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Ok. I can see faster light up as a benefit. Probably doesnā€™t really save any time. It actually uses more wood, but you can put your time in all at once making char, then get it back lighting over and over. Same concept on the ā€œcleanerā€ idea. I like blue flames myself.

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I am wanting to build a water heater but I want mine to make charcoal not eat it. I am thinking tlud, kinda a Keystone with a gas water heater on top.

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Im sure you guys prolly seen this. But here in Engineer775ā€™s video pretty simple hot water heater. To make it easier I would not use the copper coil pain in the butt. Just go and get the SS flexible NG hose for hooking up gas appliances. Just wrap it around no fuss. KISS

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Hi rusty i agree make charco while heating some hot water.just insulate the burn barrel and draw the hot exit gas from makeing charco through a heat exchanger water heater or a searies of tubes with hot water going through the tubes like most boiler heating units.This way would keep the charco bunning good and hot and steady.Rather than putting the water jacket around the char makeing barrel is what i was thinking any way.

Most of the time our bathroom warm water comes from a solar water heater and is stored in a 50 gallon insulated tank in the basement. In June of 2011, I put a large pot of water on a stove, and hooked a coil of copper tubing into my solar lines. The coil sat in the water on the stove, and a Taco 006 pump circulated the water. I threw the fire to the pot, but the water stayed the same temperature as the water in the storage tank. No sign of boiling. The stove was based on the Anila. I made a YouTube slide show that you can see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmjfXDdEU48&t=302s
Eventually (months later), I ended up setting the whole loaded Anila on top of my 55 gallon charcoal retort barrels to use some of the heat while making charcoal. The biggest drawback to that little stove is the size of the loading port. (It was too small.)
BTW, it takes about 4 hours for that setup to convert the biomass into good char. Any less creates torrified wood. Putting the excess heat into the bathroom water tank is a good use of that energy.

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I love that little green rocket stove. I never saw another one. Dr Larry helped that company design that thing. He gave me one years ago. We love it. There have been some times during moves etc. when that was our only cooking deviceā€¦They work greatā€¦

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Almost thirty years ago I scavenged an oil fired hot water tank from the local dump.
Back then no one wanted oil fired hot water because it was not cost effective.

So my father, grandfather and me made this little fire box that fit where the the oil burner had been.
Grandfather discussing the great war as a kid, the depression and how they made things and made do, father discussing how much the depression and the second war rationing sucked, and me doing the actual work of making the fireboxā€¦

This rig has lasted no word of a lie almost 30 years service having water at the family cottageā€¦
The video shows a man with some junk rigged with stove pipe and copper coils and burning a lot of wood to heat water.
This is a waste of time and effort.

Years before I built this water heating system out of the oil fired tank I was enlightened by the oldest man I knew at the timeā€¦
Big Aldo, a man who lived threw two wars in Italy and had a lot of ideas on a lot of things.
He showed me his rig at the cottage up the lake from ours.
He used gas fired water tanks because the fire box was smaller and he figured it would burn less wood that way.
He also used a raw water filled cast iron radiator in his cottage as a heat dump if there was too much fire and supplementary heat for his dacha if things got too warm in the tank ( this is an important part to refer back too ).

Aldo suggested two fires a day were all any campers might need and claimed this could be done with squaw wood ( scraps that fall off the trees you collect around an encampment when you do your daily walking routine or morning constitutional ).
I listened to non of this adviceā€¦

I built a mighty fire box that could hold about as much wood as the video showsā€¦
Within 20 minutes of lighting the fire I had boiling hot water of about 30 gallons.
Within an hour I had a further 150 gallons of steaming hot water in the water tower near the heat as the gravity based system over heats and withing an hour and half all the PVC pipe was softening and starting to leak around the dacha.

So in conclusion:
If you want to heat water off grid use an old gas fired hot water tank ( with a short stack I also must add because you do not need much draft )
Use small pieces of scraps you collect around you and not firewood or kindling.
Re-fire late in the afternoon with another small fire and this will supply you with showers and hot water for dishes all day and all night and have something rigged up as a thermal heat dump to blow off excessive heat like a radiator up hill gravity fed if you over stock the fire.

Its very very easy to overstock the fireā€¦

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Great direct experience advice.

A quick Google search will show similar commercial units, mostly made in India it seems.

How about charcoal for a fire in such a unit? It will be a slow burn, easy to vary the size, wonā€™t foul the flue.

If you find the right tank that makes a big difference.

I am not sure who made my tank, but in its former life it was a Gulf oil rental unit.
It has a stone lined tank and the large firebox is now full of stone and fire brick.

Like I said though you need very little fire, these things when you think about your home unit have small burners and fast recovery times.
Think about how easy it can be to over fire this!
You really only need to walk around and pick up sticks.
Two possibly three fires a day that burn for around 15 minutes is all you need to have enough hot water for most of our needs ( unless you have a wife and children they use a lot more per person ).

Another thing:
When you are walking around picking up all this dead fall around your cottage you are also reducing the risk of fires by removing fuel.
This fuel is not good to us in gasification because often its a bit dry rot.

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Sight glass is not in yet, so I have a tesr pipe in its place. I have the blower set up and worked great for lighting and turned it off and this thing is drafting away happliy with out it or any intervention. Its very responsive to the flue damper control. I throttle it right down and it will still sustain draft or I can open it wide open and she will just roar. I think I got a good product that needs put in front of an investor. 009 (2)005 (2)![019
019 (2)022

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Looks great.

Would be nice to see it designed to be used as an insert for a gun type oil burner.
Then you could use this as a retrofit to a conventional furnace system.

Can you get me an example. Im already trying to figure a way to integrate this into a stove like the old days but a more modern concept that lights fast and shuts down fast like any other modern stove using NG. Im thinking RV market possibly manufactures could be of interest. Could be an option to shed those pain in the butt LP tanks.

Kinda like this but smaller more refined

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Hello Matt:

I think you are talking to meā€¦
Most medium efficiency oil furnaces ( and NG conversions ) use this type of burner.
I f you designed a gasification burner that fit in place for some people this would be a great product.

Example:
A fellow who has an old oil furnace and install in his shop but does not want to pay for inspections and oil tank replacement may want an insert that allows him to burn pellets in his furnace for that odd time he wants heat in his shop.

Such a system would need a high turn down ratio so it can idle and run the blower on low to keep the char bed hot but still ramp up for high demand heat.

I think this would be a great product myself.
I know guys that buy cans of diesel to fire their furnaces in the shop because TSSA has made it a living hell to keep an old oil furnace and tank in operation

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