Heating battery using wood from gas cylinders

Heating garages and workshops is a big problem, which is usually solved by purchasing a factory solid fuel boiler. I propose a different solution - making a wood-burning heating battery from four gas cylinders. Such a stove will be able to provide heat to a room of 70 square meters.

Materials

50 l gas cylinders – 4 pcs.;
reinforcement 12 mm – 5 m;
square profile 15x15 mm – 1.5 m;
square profile 20x20 mm – 8 m;
construction pin 8 mm – 0.4 m;
decorative steel balls for fences and gates – 2 pcs.;
galvanized metal profile 2x1 m – 2 sheets;
thick-walled steel pipe 120 mm - 30 cm;
thick sheet metal from 2 mm – 90x15 cm;
M8 nuts – 20 pcs.;
M8 bolts 70 mm – 4 pcs.;
washers 32 mm – 4 pcs.

Cylinder preparation

Working with gas cylinders requires strict adherence to safety precautions. This is not the first time I’ve sorted them out, so I have an idea of the sequence of actions. First you need to make sure that the gas has run out.
Next you need to unscrew the taps. To do this you will need an adjustable wrench.To ease the effort, I place the tube on the handle of the key. This results in a long lever that allows you to twist the taps without any problems.

It happens that the faucet is stuck, and it is impossible to unscrew it. In this case, you will have to tinker a little. I clamp the tap in a vice, placing the cylinder horizontally, with the bottom facing me, and drill 2 through holes opposite each other in its lower rim. I insert bolts into them and clamp a piece of steel chain. After that, I hook the construction scrap into the chain and unscrew the cylinder from the tap.

Afterwards I drain the gasoline from the bottom of the cylinders. This liquid substance burns no worse than gasoline, so it must be removed before work. I just turn the cylinders over and pour the gasoline into a basin.

For a heating battery, you will need to cut off the neck of all cylinders, and additionally separate the bottom of two. In the future, the cylinders will be welded into 2 long pipes. To ensure the safety of the process, you need to fill the cylinders with water up to the neck. This will prevent the formation of explosive fumes.

Additionally, I always check for the presence of a thin flammable film of gasoline on the surface of the water. I take the paper, dip it into the neck of the cylinder, move away to a safe distance and set it on fire. If wet paper catches fire, you need to drain the water and fill it with new one. If it doesn't burn, you can cut it.
Before cutting, I mark on two cylinders. The cut off lid will later be used as a door, so symmetry must be maintained. I take a white marker and a piece of wire. Temporarily I lightly screw the tap into place to fix it, after which I attach a wire to it and use it as the arm of an improvised compass to draw a circle for cutting.

To avoid flooding the floor in the garage, I place the container in a basin before cutting.I take a grinder and carefully cut the neck along the line. Afterwards, I drain the water and continue trimming along the lower factory weld.

In the remaining two cylinders I make a cut only along the top weld, leaving the bottom as it will be useful.

Battery making

Having prepared the cylinders, you need to make doors. For them I take the top covers, which I cut off using a marker. Since they do not fit very tightly to the walls of the pipe from the cylinder, you need to weld a steel rod around the rim of the battery in a circle. I used 12mm smooth reinforcement. He took a whole piece of wood, bent it and cooked it in place, then cut off the excess.

For the door locking mechanism, I first prepare a piece of a 15x15 mm square, 32 cm long. I make a through hole in the center to secure it with a bolt to the mounting socket of the unscrewed tap.

I weld an M8 bolt on one side of the end of the segment. Since this unit will be subject to load, and considerable temperature effects, so I boil it carefully. On the second edge of the square I weld a massive door hinge from the gate.
I fasten the workpiece to the door with a bolt. To prevent it from falling through, I put thick washers. Thin ones won't work because they will burn out.

I take a thin square and make marks on it, at a distance of 10 and 19 cm from the edge. On the first one I do not make the cut all the way through. I bend the square along it as long as the cut allows. Next, I cut the workpiece along the second mark.

I take the weld again and weld the notch on the bend. I weld a steel ball for the goal onto the end of the larger half. On the short arm of the bend I weld a small rod bent at 45 degrees. The angle of the rod is opposite to the bend of the square itself.

I make a through hole on the resulting workpiece from the side of the rod at a distance of 3 cm from the bend of the square.Next, I attach the workpiece to the welded bolt on the door.

I weld the second part of the loop onto a piece of a thin square 8 cm long and weld it to the cylinder itself. The door can now be held in place without any problems.

To fix the locking mechanism, I also weld 2 short pieces of 6 cm round timber to the cylinder. The one parallel to the curtain post on the cylinder serves as a guide, and the perpendicular one secures the hook of the mechanism.

After preparing the two doors, you need to make an ash pan on one cylinder. To do this, I make markings on the sidewall, which will later be the bottom of the battery. First, I draw a central longitudinal line from the top weld to the bottom, and then with an indentation of 7 cm, 2 more side lines. All the lines are a few centimeters short of the bottom weld. Next, I cut them out with a grinder. I get 2 strips of metal.

I use the resulting strips to make an ash pan. I just weld them at 90° along the line of the old cut.

Next, I take sheet metal and weld it to the bottom of the resulting ash pan. I also cut out 2 blanks from the same sheet to cover the ends. I weld the back end of the door tightly, and weld the front piece into small hinges, creating doors.

Having dealt with the ash pan, I make grates. For this I use 12 mm reinforcement. First I prepare a rectangular frame. To do this, I take 2 pieces a couple of centimeters longer than the ash pan window and 2 15.5 cm each. To fill the frame, I cut 13 cm pieces of reinforcement and weld them in 2 cm increments.

Now I weld the cylinders into 2 pipes. I simply place the bottle with the bottom vertically and point the one with the door at it. I cook thoroughly without skipping.

On the far side of the pipe with the ash pan at the top, I cut out a hole for the chimney. In the second pipe I cut opposite, but from below.I make a spacer from a 15 cm pipe and weld it in, connecting the two chambers together. I also make a hole for the pipe in the upper chamber 20 cm from the door. I weld a 15 cm long neck into it to connect the chimney.

Now I weld the legs onto the sides of the cylinders. I make them from a 20x20 mm square. I cook 4 vertical legs of 90 cm, with a pair of spacers of 5 cm at 90 degrees. I attach them to the top of the legs and below, 19 cm from the floor. Between them I already weld 4 large squares for rigidity. My length turned out to be 137 cm. They will also be used to secure the deflector.

I attach galvanized metal profiles for fences to the sidewalls. It will ensure more efficient mixing of hot and cold air in the room.

In the end, all that remains is to solve the problem with adjusting the blower. I simply welded an ordinary M8 pin to the hinge of its door. Then he bent it 90 degrees near the leg, threaded the washer through and welded it at the beginning of the leg, having previously screwed in 2 nuts as a limiter between the loop and the washer. Then I put a spring and a washer on the stud and tightened it with nuts. The compressed spring prevents the door from twisting on its own. I screwed the remaining nuts onto the edge of the bend of the stud, making an improvised handle.

It turned out that the grate bars were failing. Simply by welding tendrils of reinforcement 2 cm long at their corners.

Now there seems to be nothing to improve, so we can move on to testing. To light the stove, you need to open the bottom door, load wood and light the fire. They burn and heat the lower cylinder. The smoke flows through the lower chamber to its rear part, passes through the spacer into the upper cylinder, and from it is drawn into the vertical chimney. Ash from the firewood ends up in the ash pan. I tried throwing firewood more than a meter long, it burned without any problems.The result is a battery for the lazy, into which you can load unsawn logs and branches.