Kerosene Wick Stoves

[greentwin]

I have always tried to be prepared when the power goes out, because this city is a huge forest, and ice and wind storms can cause extreme power system damage.
We had one ice storm, maybe in the 80's, and power was out for many for 2 weeks, right in the middle of winter.
We used our fireplace to keep the den warm, and there was no shortage of fallen wood/trees to burn.
Our bedroom was about 32/33 F, which was a bit chilly, but I don't like to be hot when I sleep anyway.

And about 12 years later we had this straight line wind, and the power was out again for a week.
This time it was a bit warmer.

We have had 18F weather for two weeks at a time, but luckily that is rare.

I have some propane backpacking stoves, and I like those, but they are very lightweight.
I have a propane turkey cooker that I use to heat up quenching water, but I have not actually cooked on it.
And I have the propane equivalent of one of those old Coleman double-burner stoves.

I purchased a lot of diesel after the last power outage, with the intent of buying a diesel generator.
I actually ordered the generator, but thanks to the COVID supply chain problems, I never received it, and finally cancelled the order.

My nextdoor neighbor recently got a natural gas Generac installed, and it seems to work well.
I considered buying a natural gas unit, but I really want something portable that I could use anywhere, and I did not really want something permanently tied to my electrical service and gas service.
There is a long distance between my gas and electrical services, and so there would either be some expensive plumbing, or expensive feeder.

I run my furnace off of diesel, and so I can use my 75 gallons of diesel for that, but I am considering some off-grid type uses for diesel.

I found a wick-type stove, and so I purchased an aluminum version of that, along with an oven that sits on top of it, if desired.

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[greentwin]

These are the propane packpacking stoves I have.
Very nice and light, but too small to support or heat a larger pot.

And also a nifty little alcohol stove that works very well, but has no adjustment, and is a real problem if you accidently kick it over in very dry backpacking country.

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[greentwin]

I have one of these, but I don't recall where I put it, and the propane bottles always seem to be empty when I need one.
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[greentwin]

I was on a camping trip one time, and some boyscouts had a gizzmo hooked up to make hot water.
It was a charcoal starter with a 3/4" coil of copper in it, with potable water hoses connected to a cooler.
The hot water in the coil would surge about every 30 seconds, and even without a checkvalve, it would flow into the cooler.
Both ends of the coil were piped into the cooler.
The cooler had something like a beer tap on it, to dispense the hot water.
I am not sure about the logistics of using hot water in a plastic container, but the rig did work very well, in spite of its simplicity.

So that got me thinking about something like that to heat my house with diesel fuel, in the case that there was no power.
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[greentwin]

I started researching old wick ovens and stoves, and found quite a few on ebay.
I would really like an old wick oven, but I want something more portable than that, and would prefer two or more individual wick ovens instead of one large dual burner with oven stove.

These may be wood-fired ovens, but they make an oil-fired oven that is ver similar.

Apparently they use diesel-fired stoves/ovens in boats quite a bit, since diesel may already be available for the main engine.
These units use a small fan, and so require electricity, and from the reviews, can be somewhat unreliable.
Diesel boat stoves are also extremely expensive.
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[greentwin]

Here is a wick stove I found on ebay.
Linear-style wicks.

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[greentwin]

I ran across the "Butterfly" brand of wick stoves, made in Aisa somewhere.
The modern wick stoves seem to operate like this one, ie: they have what they call a catalyst, which I think is actually just a piece of sheet metal with holes in it, that gets red hot, and changes from an old-style yellow flame to a more complete combustion blue flame.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmhWu06TzSY

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[greentwin]

I have played around a lot with oil foundry burners, using kerosene, diesel, and waste oil.

I currently use a siphon nozzle delavan with a pressurized fuel tank, and it is a rock solid burner that does not need adjustment, ever.
But it does require an air compressor, and of course a combustion air blower.

I am making a pressure nozzle type delavan burner, since it uses a small fractional horsepower motor, and no compressed air (work in progress, but not complete). I intend to use this for foundry displays at shows, where compressed air is not available, and where a small generator could run the gear pump.

The kerosene was quite a bit volatile than diesel in a spray nozzle burner, which was not really a problem, but kerosen is 4 or 5 times more expensive than auto diesel around here, so I don't use kerosene for the foundry.

I tried waste oil, but it is quite black and dirty, and messy to handle, so I don't use it.
Sometimes it has contaminants in it too.

So the idea behind purchasing this stove is to have something to cook on in an extended power outage, and to learn about wick burner technology, with an eye towards building a large enough wick burner to heat at least one room of my house.

Here is the unit I purchased, and it has 21 wicks.
There was a package deal to include an oven, so I bought the package deal.
The stove is aluminum, so no rusting.
It is about 12" cubed in size.
I have not fired it up yet.
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[greentwin]

I am considering a copper coil heat exchanger mounted over the stove, and piped into a radiator in the house.
I have to see what sort of btu output would be reasonable to heat perhaps one room in the house.

Another option would be to use this stove in the fireplace to heat a steel plate that is over the stove, to radiate heat into the room.

I started researching using diesel in things like oil lamps, and stoves like this, and many folks say that diesel works fine in these stoves, but it is not recommended for indoor use in stoves or lamps due to the automotive additives.

I could use the stove in my fireplace, which would give it a vent.

I researched kerosene, and "kerosene alternate" is was recommended in wick-type devices, since it has a higher flashpoint, and thus not subject to some overheat/runaway situation.
I purchased two gallons of kerosene alternate, just in case I had to cook or heat indoors without ventilation.
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[greentwin]

I also researched the vaporization-type stoves, like these.

The old Cretors popcorn and peanut roasters use white gas burners, with a fuel vaporizer to gasify the pumped up fuel.
I am not keen on the white gas equipment because I don't like to store the volatile white gas; white gas is expensive; and the white gas backpacking stoves either coked up, clogged up, or had the pump seals go bad, usually at the worst possible moment (smart folks carried white gas repair kits, but repairing a stove in freezing weather is no fun at all).

This stove does not use electricity, but one video discusses how it can puddle fuel in the lower tube.
This type of stove has a good clean and significantly high output, but I would be worried about it coking up.
The tube that runs through the flames has a solid displacer inside of it, and so the area that the fuel passes through is very small, and that is how it vaporizes well.
I will play around with one of these, but I don't quite trust them, and would be afraid of getting into a runaway situation with one.
I think if watched carefully, it would be a good stove.
I am not sure if I would want to use it in the house though.

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