Post by Sammy on Apr 1, 2005 13:55:34 GMT
I made a big mistake with mine. You may already know this, but just in case....
The longer the flue, the better. My stove was/is on top of a cupboard, only about 2 ft from the ceiling. Did the whole thing with insulated flue, so it didn't ignite the roof. Then, 1 year later, it was pointed out to me that at least half of the stoves heat goes straight up the chimney. In fact, with such a short flue, on stormy nights with house coal (Northumberland, in the countryside) flames 3 ft high would come out of the chimney!
Anyway, the way to go is to have the stove on the floor, and if possible, to put a corner in the flue just above the stove, and run it horizontally or at a low angle for a foot or two or more. That way, it radiates the heat INSIDE the bus. And you can hang your smalls on it to dry.
In Turkey, the mechanics make their own oil stoves out of biscuit tins. Basically, you have a tin box with a flue, and a piece of rag in the bottom. Then you rig up a bucket or barrelly of used crank case oil, and put a tap on the end of a tube running into your stove. You use that to regulate the drip of the oil onto the rag, and it heats up a whole workshop! On the downside, it's horifically environmentally unfriendly.
I have to admit that in the depths of the Turkish winter, I tried this. We were at the side of the road, middle of nowhere, on the way to Iran, no coal or wood, no money, and it was about -15 outside. I'd changed the oil in Istanbul, and couldn't find out how to dispose of the old (the local wisdom was "just dump it". Wasn't going to do that). In the end, we decided that burning it was probably better than chucking it, and we were flaming freezing, but of course we didn't have their fancy drip drip system. I got to throwing plastic cups of it into the stove and shutting the door real quick! It created a quick burst, but that was all. Better than nothing though.
The longer the flue, the better. My stove was/is on top of a cupboard, only about 2 ft from the ceiling. Did the whole thing with insulated flue, so it didn't ignite the roof. Then, 1 year later, it was pointed out to me that at least half of the stoves heat goes straight up the chimney. In fact, with such a short flue, on stormy nights with house coal (Northumberland, in the countryside) flames 3 ft high would come out of the chimney!
Anyway, the way to go is to have the stove on the floor, and if possible, to put a corner in the flue just above the stove, and run it horizontally or at a low angle for a foot or two or more. That way, it radiates the heat INSIDE the bus. And you can hang your smalls on it to dry.
In Turkey, the mechanics make their own oil stoves out of biscuit tins. Basically, you have a tin box with a flue, and a piece of rag in the bottom. Then you rig up a bucket or barrelly of used crank case oil, and put a tap on the end of a tube running into your stove. You use that to regulate the drip of the oil onto the rag, and it heats up a whole workshop! On the downside, it's horifically environmentally unfriendly.
I have to admit that in the depths of the Turkish winter, I tried this. We were at the side of the road, middle of nowhere, on the way to Iran, no coal or wood, no money, and it was about -15 outside. I'd changed the oil in Istanbul, and couldn't find out how to dispose of the old (the local wisdom was "just dump it". Wasn't going to do that). In the end, we decided that burning it was probably better than chucking it, and we were flaming freezing, but of course we didn't have their fancy drip drip system. I got to throwing plastic cups of it into the stove and shutting the door real quick! It created a quick burst, but that was all. Better than nothing though.