Re:Of Shops and Heat

Maybe some one is interested in my setup?
I work full time in an old converted stable block at the side of my old
1900 victorian house here in the UK.
The shop is about 17' wide by 54 ' deep brick built, no cavity wall and a
single skinned room. Half is tiled and half is felt covered. Added to this
I have a wooden single skin annex about 12' by 17' again no insulation.
In this shop I have all my machines and metal store, I estimate a total of
40 tons.
Needless to say it gets frigging cold in winter.
I tried propane wall mounted stoves but they threw out that much water
everything went rusty. If I could have got above a certain heat threshold
and HELD it there I think this could have worked but the cost was too much.
I then tried what we call space heaters, the paraffin [ kerosene ] thing
that looks and sounds like a jet engine.
Too noisy and kicked out too many fumes.
I then found this mad professor type guy down the road from me who had
developed a stove that burn sawdust. Not wood and sawdust mixed but pure
sawdust. There are sawdust burning stoves on sale in the Uk but speaking to
people who have actually bought them they won't burn pure sawdust, it has
to be mixed.
I saw a small one he had built and it works. No moving parts, no fans and
it really chucks some heat out.
I bought the rights to build these in a larger format.
My stove is octagonal in shape about 24" across flats and about 4' high.
It stands off the floor on 4 legs about 3" and has a solid bottom, no
grate, no air vents at the bottom, just solid welded up. The secret is it
burns from the top down with air louvers in the sides.
The top surface of wood burning heats the wood underneath causing it to
give off gasses and these rise up through the side air vents to burn on top
of the wood in a kind of heat loop. You can actually see the loop of
burning gasses in the four corners.
I load it up in the morning with a full plastic bag of sawdust and shavings
that comes from these industrial dust collectors in a local chair frame
company. I get this for free as it's beech wood and no good for animals.
In fact in summer when I don't need any they have to pay to tip it so in
winter they welcome me with open arms.
I drop an oily rag on top and light it and with 5 minutes it's roaring away
and you can't get near it. This bag last 4 hours so I get through about 3
to 4 bags a day as I run it out of hours to keep th chill off.
Since having this about 4 years ago I have never had rust problems and we
never oil the beds etc.
So all in all I get free heating and we are as warm as toast.One of these
days I'll get round to putting a water jacket round the chimney and a
radiator in my office - one day.
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Regards,
John Stevenson
Nottingham, England