I've an old cast iron oil furnace, which has a fuel control similair to a carburetor(with needle/seat, float, bowl, and fuel rate adjust screw). It operates by bleeding the fuel to a chamber/rail too burn. I use it for heating the garage. It operates in a very simple way, with no pump or electricity needed for combustion, although it does have a fan for the forced air. I've also 20 gallons of used hydraulic fluid from my loader, which is fairly clean. I was thinking about dumping the hydraulic fluid into the fuel oil tank, and burning it. It would end up at about a 30% fluid mix. I would think it would be cut fairly thin, and flow alright. Is it a bad idea? Should I just throw the fluid into the waste oil drum instead?
Chapter 23 of the truckers manual titled "Free Heat for Life" says its cheaper just to burn broken grade stakes and stolen lunch sacks in a wood stove. :lmao (Chapter 24 says - "Know when you've driven a joke into the ground!") Sorry Jeff, I just had that one grade stake joke left... I feel better now But about the oil - Is there a way that you could mix up a little in the same ratio and see how well it flows/burns etc.? Or maybe just not dump it all in at once like a 15% ratio instead of 30% if you aren't sure?
Now you're just being plain silly!!:nono The grade stakes would get stuck in the fuel line for sure. I could try that too.:yup Just add it alittle at a time. I know they used too pour our old engine oil into our fuel tanks back when I was a company driver, and that didn't give us any problems, that I knew about. But that was 10 gallons oil/300 gals diesel, so much thinner. I'll try it like you said, maybe just 5 gallons for starters.:beatsme Thanks Orchard!
Watch out when burning hydraulic oil it burns hot you may melt down your furnance. We use hydraulic oil for burning stumps and brush because it burns hot. There are furnaces that burn used oil 4 shops in the area have them they can be a little tempermental but they are designed to burn any kind of used oil. Old gear oil you need to thin it out with some diesel fuel but everything else goes. The hot air coming out of the furnance doesn't have any kind of smell and the heat is fairly consistant. Good luck and when adding the used hydraulic oil into the oil tank that feeds your furnance a good idea would be to use a filter in your funnel. What weight of hydraulic oil if its 46 don't add to much if its 10w it shouldn't be too bad.
well if your looking for free oil i can give you probably over a 55 gal drum of # 2 that was cleaned out of some tanks when i put clear in the tanks.
The furnace has a rod which is attached to an adjustment screw for the flow rate. I can turn that down to control the heat, or open up if it flows too slowly from being too thick, if needed. I'd certainly take it, but our distance makes that idea prohibitive. I'm suprise you can't find anyone who'de gladly take it from you, close, if it's good enough to burn? It seems like throwing atleast $100 away by letting it go to waste. Are you worried it may be contaminated with water or something, or don't you burn fuel oil for heat at all?
Well it be good for a waste oil system I have oil heat but this is stuff cleand out of all my tanks and mostly pretty good but i would not want to chance the filter on my house with it
if its in the garage, just pour some on the floor and throw a match on it when you get a little chilly. :thumbsup
Well that big idea of mine sure stunk!! The correct response to my post should have been: "Throw the hydauilic fluid away ya damn dummy, and quit being such a tight-wad!!" Or maybe do what Tyler said.:yup I fired the stove up and added 5 gallons to the tank. Waited 1/2hr and everything was still groovy so I throwed in another 5 gallons. Then the fire started going down, and down, and then down some more. I opened up the fuel flow wide open and it picked up about 0%. Now wide open is only about 1/3rd as much heat as before. Now I'm gonna have to slowly thin it out whenever there's more room in the tank. So, this one get's two thumbs down!!
Well Jeff, you can chalk it up to a learning experience. Also it taught all the rest of us never to try that. Gotta love this forum Thanks!
The first 5 gallons was ok, then you got a little greedy and added 5 more and that was the leason learned.
Those waste oil stoves are an awfully tempting idea. I always have 50-100 gallons of drain oil, etc. around. It would be nice to get something out of it rather than carting it to the recycling place and getting nothing for it.
Thanks, Jeff...