The garage is not always used only as a place to store a car. Many spend a large amount of time in it, including in the fall and winter. It is financially impractical to equip a full-fledged heating in a garage room, therefore, various wood stoves are used. In our material you will familiarize yourself with the most interesting options for home-made heaters and learn how to make a metal oven for a garage with your own hands.
Which heater is best for a garage
The easiest way is to heat the garage with an electric heater. But if you are there for several hours daily, then space electricity bills cannot be avoided. It is better to put a potbelly stove in the garage and switch to heating with wood or use the used oil drained from the units of cars.
One cannot but mention such a type of fuel as diesel fuel. But using it to heat a garage will be expensive and troublesome. It makes no sense to buy a diesel heater on purpose, because homemade waste oil stoves can also burn diesel fuel.
Taking as a basis heating for mining and firewood, we list the possible options for home-made heaters:
- brick heater;
- metal wood stove for a garage;
- waste oil furnace.
The most difficult option to implement is a brick oven, and you can’t build it in any garage. Take at least tight iron cabs, where only a compact heater can be placed, but not a brick structure. And laying out a good brick stove is not an easy task and deserves a separate topic for describing the process. Therefore, the most “running” are metal stoves for a garage for wood and mining.
We make an economical wood stove
In order not to waste attention on the reader with all the well-known designs of simple wood stoves, of which there are so many on the Internet, we suggest that you familiarize yourself with the drawings of a more serious heater. Its peculiarity is the presence of two chimneys (strokes) organized inside the body of the furnace for the best heat transfer. After all, what is the main disadvantage of an ordinary potbelly stove? That's right, low efficiency, since the lion's share of the heat released immediately flies into the chimney.
In a do-it-yourself two-way metal furnace, incandescent products of combustion pass through special channels in two directions before going into the chimney.
Thanks to this design, a significant proportion of the heat is successfully transferred to the room, which contributes to more efficient heating with firewood and leads to their savings. Although in order to evaluate this savings, it is necessary to compare different furnaces in practice, which is not always possible. But be sure that you will definitely get more heat from the two-way garage stove shown in the diagram above.
For the manufacture of a heat source, the following materials will be needed:
- Sheet metal with a thickness of at least 4 mm, optimally 5 mm. From it you will weld the body, chimney sweeps and doors.
- For the arch of the firebox, experiencing the greatest heat load, it is better to take a sheet with a thickness of 6 mm.
- A piece of pipe with a diameter of 100 mm to the chimney pipe.
- Rebar fittings with a diameter of 16-18 mm for the manufacture of a grate.
- Corner No. 4, a pipe 40 x 40 mm or other metal rolling for legs.
- Finished handles on the door.
Note. In order to weld a garage stove with your own hands, it is necessary to use low-carbon steel of the St10 or St20 brand. High-carbon or alloy steel is pinned by heat, the body can crack at the welds.How to approximately determine the grade of steel is described in the instructions for the manufacture of a bath stove.
About useful improvements to the iron stove
There are several recommendations on how to make the above construction even better. First of all, it will not hurt to strengthen the junction of the chimney pipe to the upper stove, since this place burns out most often. The reason is not only in the high temperature, but also in the load exerted on the weld by the chimney pipe. Usually, the owners of garages are not concerned about the separate fastening of the chimney and it weighs on the top panel of the stove with all its weight.
A wood stove with 2 smoke circuits cannot boast the size of a firebox, and hence the duration of burning. On the other hand, self-made long burning stoves of the Bubafony type are not the best option for a garage. They require a chimney with a height of at least 4 m with good draft, which is not always feasible.
The firebox of the two-way stove can be increased by arbitrarily changing its height or adding 10 cm to the width of the casing. That makes homemade heaters good, because the owner of the garage can change their sizes depending on the free area of the room.
The heat transfer of a wood-burning stove can be improved if several vertical fins are welded to the side walls, as shown below in the photo. A strip with a thickness of 4 mm or the same corner is used, thereby increasing the heat transfer area and increasing the efficiency of the heater.
Tip. A potbelly stove can be adapted for cooking or heating food by cutting a round hole in the top panel for a burner.
Solid fuel heat gun
Any stove burning wood or coal suffers from one significant drawback. Being in the corner of the garage, which is usually not insulated, the heater warms up only part of the room. The opposite corner (usually at the very gates) remains cold and uncomfortable working there. The problem is partially solved if a chimney is laid obliquely through the entire room, which is practiced by many garage owners.
The construction proposed by one of our experts in the manufacture of solid fuel boilers and stoves Vitaliy Dashko boasts a more thorough heating of the garage. The unit is an old gas cylinder mounted vertically and equipped with a separate chamber for heating the air supplied there by force. The design of this furnace for a garage with an indication of the dimensions is shown in the drawings:
The stove operates on the principle of a heat gun. The algorithm of work looks like this:
- A portion of firewood is loaded into the firebox and ignited.
- After warming up, the fan turns on, connected by a corrugation to one of the pipes of the heating chamber.
- Since the horizontal partition between the firebox and the chamber receives the greatest heat load, the air passing over it quickly heats up.
- Hot air, leaving the second nozzle, is supplied with a corrugated pipe to anywhere in the garage. The angle where the unit itself is installed warms up from the side walls.
Intensive heat transfer inside the chamber is carried out thanks to steel fins that increase the heat transfer area. The figure below shows a longitudinal and transverse section of a wood stove, where the location of these ribs is clearly visible.
The advantage of a potbelly stove is that it does not need a high chimney, although natural traction is indispensable. An air blower will be any suitable low-capacity fan. In a small room, a cooler from a computer power supply may be enough. For a medium and large garage, household duct fans of 50 m³ / h are applicable, they are put on hoods from bathrooms. A supercharger from a car stove is also suitable, for example, a “snail” from a VAZ 2108.
How to make a garage oven from a cylinder
To make a wood stove in the garage, you need to perform a series of preparatory work.To begin with, the upper part of the weld is cut off at the cylinder. First you need to unscrew the valve and fill it with water so that the remaining propane does not explode when working with a grinder. Then you need to cut a circle with a diameter of 300 mm (on the partition) and a strip of width 80 mm (on the frame of the doors) from sheet metal 4 mm thick. From the residues, strips can be cut into heat exchange fins.
Tip. If you want to increase the thermal power of the stove, you can cut off the upper part below the seam, thereby increasing the volume of the air chamber. But remember that then you reduce the capacity of the furnace and the burning time from one bookmark of firewood.
We carry out further work in this order:
- The next step is the cutting of reinforcement and the manufacture of a grate. There are no strict requirements, follow the model in the photo, trying to adjust the length of the rods to the size of the seam protruding inside the balloon. After that, install the grill in the lower part of the tank.
- In the cut off cover, 2 holes must be made for the installation of threaded elbows DN50. This size is optimal, but it is not necessary to withstand it, as well as the selection of threaded drives. You can take pipe sections of suitable diameter, but do not make it smaller than 40 mm. Then weld the pipes in place, as shown in the photo:
- Further, in the container body, in accordance with the drawing, it is necessary to cut openings for the loading door, and the chimney opening will be blown out. It is necessary to insert door frames welded from the prepared strip into the openings and scald them in a circle. Before mounting the frame, you need to make blanks of the doors themselves, welding loops and purchased handles to them.
- The next stage is the formation of an air chamber. A prepared circle with a diameter of 30 cm is laid in place of the cut off cylinder cap and is welded tightly. After that, heat exchange fins are attached to it by welding. Their number and placement can be arbitrary, but do not overdo it, otherwise you will have to select a more powerful fan that can overcome the aerodynamic drag of the camera.
- The last step is to weld the cover with nozzles into place and install the doors with locking devices. At the very end, a chimney pipe of the required length is installed. Instead of a nozzle, a ready-made elbow under 90 ° is also suitable.
Note. The same wood-burning stove for a garage is made of a large diameter pipe - 300 or 400 mm with a wall thickness of 4 mm or more. Only the work will be a little more, the cover and the bottom will have to be made separately.
Connection to water heating
The previous design of the garage furnace is quite capable of heating water or antifreeze circulating along the water heating circuit instead of air. In total, it is necessary that instead of DN50 run-offs, fit DN25 pipes into the chamber cover and purchase a low-circulation circulation pump (marking 25-40). The pump is necessary, because the volume of the water circuit of the furnace is too small and without forced circulation, the coolant will boil quickly.
Then everything is simple: the stove pipes are connected to heating radiators or home-made registers, whose total heat transfer does not exceed 3–3.5 kW. The connection is recommended to be carried out by metal pipes, in extreme cases - metal-plastic ones. The pump is installed in front of the furnace in the return pipe, and a closed expansion tank must be placed in front of it. In the registers you need to install Mayevsky taps to remove air from the system.
Tip. Since the heating of the garage is periodic, the system should be filled with non-freezing liquid.
Waste Oil Garage Oven
Despite the fact that the miracle oil stove burned many garages, its popularity is not declining. This is the most common design of a metal stove, consisting of two tanks connected by a perforated pipe - afterburner.It can work on almost any liquid fuel, provided that it does not contain water. Otherwise, the heater begins to shoot flame through the holes in the afterburner, which causes fires.
For reference. In addition to the fire hazard, this unit also has other disadvantages, for example, it emits a burning smell and is characterized by decent “gluttony” (consumption - about 2 liters of used oil per hour).
The popularity of this kiln at working off is explained by its simplicity and cheapness, therefore it is impossible to ignore it. The heater operation algorithm is as follows:
- Waste oil is poured into the lower tank and ignited using any flammable liquid.
- After heating, the mining evaporates and begins to burn.
- The liberated pyrolysis gases are mixed in the afterburner with secondary air and burned in the upper tank, which has a baffle.
- Combustion products leave the stove through the chimney.
Assembling a miracle stove is extremely simple and is done according to the drawing:
Dropper at workout
The principle of operation of this safer and more efficient furnace is the metered supply of oil to the combustion zone located above a special bowl. The bowl is installed inside the pipe with a welded bottom, and a steel fuel pipe is supplied to it from above or from the side. Dripping into a preheated bowl, the liquid fuel immediately evaporates and burns, releasing heat and pyrolysis gas. The latter is burned by supplying secondary air through a vertical pipe with holes or slots (afterburner) located above the bowl.
Most heating oil gourmets prefer to provide forced combustion air through a fan. But in the presence of a chimney with good draft it is not necessary to do this, although it can be difficult to set up the combustion process in this case. Dosing is carried out by a simple valve installed in the gap of the fuel stream outside the stove, as shown in the photo:
Note. Fuel supply can be arranged by gravity, fixing the oil tank higher on the wall, or through a special pump.
Final conclusion
Homemade metal stoves for garage heating have many advantages, the main of which is low cost. The second plus is the ability to upgrade the design to fit your conditions without changing the principle of operation. If you make the furnace soundly, of thick metal, then it will serve you for many years. But during operation, one should not forget about fire safety, especially when it comes to used oil. Do-it-yourself heating units require constant supervision.