The Listeroid Chronicles-WMO and Other Listeroid Modifications

[ajaffa1]

Hi Oldtime, more information on the type of oil burners, please. A web link would be great.

Hi Glort, your oil burner has got me thinking, WVO has a much higher calorific value than LPG, has anyone ever tried using it to fuel a hot air balloon? You regularly see these things take to the skies with the basket half full of large LPG cylinders. How about a smaller tank full of WVO and a small compressed air cylinder to pressurize it?

Bob

[ajaffa1]

Hi Glort, you might want to have a look at trying to find information on Kidd boilers. We used to install these for farmers in the UK, they ran well on heating oil, kero or diesel and were 90% efficient, I`m sure they could be converted to run on WVO perhaps with the addition of a little RUG to increase flammability/decrease flash point. All of these were what you call wet back systems. The heated water was pumped to a manifold with thermostatically controlled solenoid valves which delivered the hot water to the areas/hot water cylinders to be heated. The boilers had an adjustable built in thermostat that heated the water to around 80 degrees centigrade, once they reached the set temperature they would shut down. when the boiler cooled due to returning cooler water, the thermostat would kick in and the boiler would fire again.

I`m not sure of the setup you have in your home regarding heating/cooling so it is very difficult to give any more advice.

Yes, take your experimental burner out into the middle of nowhere to test it, preferably at least 10 Kms from anything mortal! 

I agree entirely with your idea to use a water cooled diesel engine to heat, dry and filter WVO. As soon as Narelle has recovered from her hysterectomy (surgery tomorrow) I will be pouring a concrete slab and building the shed for the Lister CS with exactly that concept in mind. Love the idea of an engine setup that cleans, drys and filters it`s own fuel, while also providing me with heat and electricity!

Sorry the balloon idea is not a goer, would probably have produced too much soot anyway. Not sure petroleum would be a suitable replacement, remember the Hindenburg? Hope your Wife had a really good time, hot air ballooning is a wonderful experience.

Bob

[BruceM]

"I am planning to heat water, pass that through a heat exchanger and then use that to heat air going into the house.  I want to introduce air into the house rather than recirculate it to keep out drafts and reduce the cold air coming in when doors and windows are opened. "

I suggest you reconsider this.  A small amount of air added to the house is good, as it compensates for lost air in leaky ducts, and helps keep the house near neutral pressure instead of negative.  Something like perhaps 200 cfm for your big house.  Much more than that pressurizes the house substantially, with in winter drives warmer wet air into the wall cavities and ceiling through leaky outlet boxes and this might cause mold problems.  The upside of slightly positive pressure via fresh heated air would be improved air quality. So adding some fresh air to your return airflow is the standard procedure for better air quality homes.  The fresh air intake can be closed via motor damper for air quality events like wildfires.

[BruceM]

If you get tired of dusting, the SpaceGuard whole house HEPA filter is worth looking into.  I used them on both my homes in the Phoenix area.  With the fan on low most of the time, dusting was a thing of the past.  They helped with allergies greatly also.  SpaceGuard media is pretty long lasting and quite cheap.  Like most HEPA filters they are spun polyester, but SpaceGuard has massive area due to it's 5+ inch deep pleats and are low enough resistance to air flow that no boost fan is needed.  I did the install on both- piece of cake.

Home Humidity is ideally 40-50%, the lower being better for winter to avoid sweating at and around windows in colder climates.  Moving air always makes you feel cooler and dryer, which is why forced air heating sucks.

Good thing electric floor heating was so expensive.  It's a great way to have a high EMF home unless the wiring is coaxial or otherwise run as a pair, preferably twisted for better self canceling.  Also, heating a concrete slab floor that's not insulated from the earth and stem wall is power bill masochism, so I assume your floor is on a crawlspace. 

The only way to have a warm floor, is to have a terribly badly insulated and leaky house, so that you must have a massive boiler and run the in-floor hydronic heating system all the time.  In a well insulated home, the floor is room temperature plus a degree or two, obviously.  The floor won't feel warm until it is over 100F!

If you feel cold all the time, get some generic Cytomel pr Cynomel (Grossman Labs)25mcg tablets and start with half in the morning and noon. TSH is not a valid indicator of thyroid function; free T3 and reverse T3 are fairly good, but basal temperature and how you are feeling for energy and warmth are also valuable indicators.  Low thyroid also notoriously causes depression and fatigue, and yes, doctors sadly ignore it or get it wrong. Getting it right means the difference between struggling to survive or having a bit of energy (and enthusiasm) for some projects for me.

One last thing-  air to air heat exchangers are a great way to improve indoor air quality without a huge heating or cooling bill.  That plus a small amount of direct outside air- to compensate for duct leaks would be ideal.

[EdDee]

Hi Guys...

A brief report back for the copper coil heatex addition....

Did the first run with it yesterday afternoon, the previous day's installation was cancelled due to lack of interest, and a mate arriving from a neighboring city... He needed some wheel blanks cast for a belt grinder he is starting to build... Needless to say, the attraction of playing with the furnace and sloshing around a few liters of red hot, molten aluminum won out over cutting slots in pipes with an angle grinder in the midday heat.... The casting went well, no toes and fingers incinerated, a half dozen or so 80mm wide blanks of varying diameter were produced, he was a happy chappy at day's end...

Back to the heatex... After about an hour of cussing, sweating and climbing up and down ladders, I had the unit installed in the flue. It wasn't a major task actually, just awkward, most of it ladder and angle grinder work, with a tiny little bit of drillery, tappery and weldery to fix everything into place... At the end of the job, I have a pretty mundane looking stack with a bolt on square inspection cover type of thing... The coil resides behind the cover and can be pulled out of the system by loosening a couple of 1/2" pipe fittings and reconnecting what is there... Strangely, and quite impressively, there is not much need to install the cover over the 4"wide by 2ft odd slot in the up-pipe... for tits and pickles, I wound the burner up with the cover open to see what it looked like, expecting gouts of flame and general mayhem... Nothing happened... It was as if there was a glass cover over the slot, flames passed the rather long opening in a neat spiral, following up the riser... Kinda spooky, to say the least... Needless to say, I wound it up a couple more times to show the ladies of the house, all were most impressed, so it wasn't a fluke, clearly there is plenty of draw on the old pipe chimney to do the job!! But as usual, I digress...

As to the actual heating side of things, it was also quite interesting... We started with 350L or so of 20 to 25C water, hit the on button and I took some measurements and readings...I was amazed...

The little circulation pump is whipping the water through the system at quite a rate, to get a nice even heat up of the storage tanks.... If I set it to "low" volume setting, I tend to get a large "plug" of hot water moving through the system, making it difficult to estimate turn off time (there is no auto control on this thing, its fully 100% manual)...

Back to the readings... into and out of the original heatex, I am getting a temp gradient of 1 to 2 degrees C... from there, it flows into the coil which is in the path of the exhaust flame from the original heatex. Normally, a heat run would take between 1.5 and 3 hours, between 1.5 and 5L of fuel, depending on type fuel, residual temperature of heat store, air temperature, phase of the moon and how many black cats were sacrificed to the dark engineering arts.... The previous days run used around 3 hrs and 4L of waste gunk to get it to the target temp of 50C...

Day temps were similar to the previous day, start temps only a few degrees different, run time was DRASTICALLY reduced... Inlet/outlet to the copper coil had a gradient of around 10C, way more than I was expecting.... The total run was only 45mins and consumed only a little over a L or so of fuel... Target temp ended being 10% higher, 55C, just because I took me time turning off the system while I picked up some of the tools I left strewn around..... I LIKE IT!!

This does of course bring up another problem....with this amount of heat recovery (if it carries on like this and it wasn't my senile imagination), I will need to put some sort of rather large, obnoxious, intrusive siren type temperature alerting mechanism on it... Lest I meander thru life placidly to return to a little molten pool of copper......

Keep it heating...

Cheers
Ed

(Of course the crappy quality mandatory pair of cell phone pics follow...)

[EdDee]

Hey Glort,

The numbers do indeed seem quite a bit higher than I expected, agreed.... But only reported on what I saw.

Errors have undoubtedly crept in, the second run yesterday took around an hour or just under, starting at just under 30C with the heat store and ending up at just over 50C, which was target. Still way faster than before...

A bit of explanation is also due to visualise the burner functions... Initially, with around a 700mm burner tube/heatex, flame was attempted to be confined to the exchanger body. While it worked well, changes in visco as the oil warmed up a bit would cause richer running with flames entering the stack, not a problem, just a waste of fuel...

I now overfuel the main burner/heatex slightly, encouraging a wisp of flame to lick the coil section. Once that is accomplished, I then open a secondary air inlet at the bottom which then results in a pale yellow/white/blue flame in the immediate centerish area of the copper coil... The heat loss to the far side of the coil from the flame in the center results in a stack temp of around 400C plus in the immediate area of said coil... Above and below it, the temp is way lower, by hundreds... (the stack is in a sheltered alcove, so unless there's a gale force wind on the loose, temps remain quite high.)

The heat store is split into 2 separate but serially joined tanks, with the input to the store first feeding one tank, then from that the other secondary tank (which has a temp probe)... Doubtless there could be a spot of warmer water in the first tank that is not accounted for, this would skew readings.... (This would average out after a few days running of course.)

Further, I am not metering fuel into the tank by the ml... I brim fill it, from a loosely graduated container (read that as 5L plastic oil can) and guestimate the approximate consumption, seldom am I more than  a 100ml or so out, particularly after dosing around 10 000L this way...(or it feels like it anyway when I fill up a tank!)

Fuelling errors might come from having residual fuel in the top gravity fed tank, but I leave the system to drain down after a run, so this is unlikely.

One thing that may "skew things" is the rate of heating... The longer I take to heat the system, the more the piping acts as a very inefficient convection radiator. Hammering heat into the system in as short a time as possible might just be a bit more effective than trickling it in slowly, who knows?

After a bit of measuring yesterday, I found that DT on heatex #1 was 4C at an average, on the coil around DT of 17C, but, as mentioned above, that would be expected as the major/high temp flame front is after the exhaust of heatex #1...

I have just filled up the fuel tank, and, again, a little over 1.25L was needed, around 1350/1400ml at a rough guestimate....

Who knows, maybe I've inadvertently discovered cold rediscovered hot fusion on a home-hack basis.... Next is the flux capacitor I suppose.... Marty, Marty..... Now where has that damn boy got to now....?

But enough of my burner for now....

Last night I managed to have some welding fun... Wound up the old TiG and stuck together another bunch of 25x25x3 stainless angle for yet another battery frame/rack... Each rack holds 4x 638SMF car batteries, I have four set up at the moment, this is the fifth... This will bring the chem power store to around 350AH..

Glort, if I remember correctly, you were designing a "different" burner... C'mon, spill the beans... Tell me more!!

Enough rambling...Time to do some boring paperwork....

Keep it burning...

Cheers
Ed

[EdDee]

Hey Glort,

I occasionally take it up to around 70C, mostly when I get involved in the workshop and forget to check the temp, one thing that counts as a plus for sterilizing the system is that the main heat store and all of the piping right to the taps is copper.... I did have a mate do a bacterial check on the water a long while back, months after we went onto the water harvesting binge, and the bacterial levels were lower than our monkeypality supplied water....

For the burner, I am free running oil over the babbington ball, catching it in a scavenge tank, then pumping it to about 1.5m above the burner to a supply tank... Previously, our runs were between 3 and 5 hours, pretty much unattended, depending on how many guests we had staying over.. Sometimes this place is like Grand Central Station....

I like the ideas for your new burners, please post some pics when and as you are building things, in fact post some pics here of the one you have completed, I am keen to see!!!!

Hmmmmm...... Time for a new welder you say.... One for lighter gauge stuff..... I think its time you graduated to Tig, me china!!

Keep it cooking....

Cheers
Ed

PS...

Just finished another heating run on the burner - 1 hour, 27.1C start, 51.5C finish, about 1.6L oil used... I must admit, it was rolling a bit of coal for about 20mins, I was involved on a tele call placing an order and couldn't get to it to trim....

[EdDee]

G'Day Y'all....

Despite a long absence from posting, I haven't written myself off, lost any limbs or even more than the usual number of weekly (weakly) brain cells.... That I am aware of anyway... (Kinda reminds me of a saying I heard some time back.... Being dead doesn't bother you, it bothers those around you....Same as stupid..... Well, not being dead means I probably belong to the latter group, I suppose...)

I have had tele lines stolen twice, extended periods between replacements, and, as such, have been a bit out of the "loop" to put it mildly.... What this has done has allowed me, or rather forced me, to go and do something different for a while... Well, so i did!!

In the last 4 months or so, I re-learnt 3d Cad (Damn.... Things have changed a bit since I last used it 20 years ago...) I have gotten myself into a bit of "Freecad" to support a couple of pet projects that I have had on the bucket list for, well, eternity it seems...

Project#1: 3d Printing - Got myself set up in a tiny way with a nice little Creality dual spool printer - Looking at making replacement grips and plastic bits for the "older" firearm restorations that are all but impossible to come by parts-wise these days, as well as maybe a bit of burnout casting in bronze/brass/ali for parts that need to be molded, and, well, maybe a few toys too!

Project#2: 3d Router - Managed to to pick up an Ahdunno based self-assembly-crappy-chinesium router that has a shit-fit when it sees anything more than a point buggerall cut in soft balsa wood... but this is more of a "school-fees learning tool" - What I re-learn here, I will scale up for my somewhat larger 4000kg Kondia mill to do some real interesting stuff... This should be entertaining!!

But, as usual, I am about as far south of Lister territory that I could possibly be!!

Anything happened of interest in the interim 4 month's I've been away?

I am now on a Celcomms based internet, that costs the earth, barely holds together, and.... well... still no tele lines that I am willing to trust yet! (So browsing the internet and boards takes way more time than what I have patience and funds for, please bear with me!!)

Keep it spinning....

Cheers
Ed

[mikenash]

Excellent Ed

I'd like to own a small lathe for similar reasons and maybe one day I will . . .

I can't see any reason to remain seriously "on topic" Lister-wise.  Where's the fun in that?

Cheers

[dax021]

Welcome back Ed.  I've been wondering where you've been.  Santa's little helpers been visiting you again? 

[EdDee]

Hi Mike & Dax...

I've had a smallish lathe for many, many years, and a few biggies too over the time... Unfortunately, all the work I have done with them have been pretty much one-offs, nothing wanting cnc type things... but... I might just retrofit one for S&G... If I ever get the time...

On topic...Well... My scatterbrain has enough dealing with keeping organs functioning to worry about staying on track....
Typical - ADHD - Highway to, Oh look, A squirrel....

Yep Dax, Satans' little helpers are at it flat out.... I'm getting tired of 2am patrols around the plot to scare the sh!t out of them... Time to hire a big dog, methinks.... I'm so "over" doing my own barking!!

Keep it spinning....

Cheers
Ed

Oh.... Add Project #3 to the latest list.... My second "little" 3d printer arrived yesterday... Assembled it and tested it out...Very "Cute" ... Creality Ender-2... For tiny stuff....

[EdDee]

Hey Guys...

And now for something completely different.... A (mostly) "on subject" Lister based post....

Without hoping to jinx the winds of fate, one of my minions is en route to go and pay for a Lister "Barnyard Find".... Hoping to take delivery of it early to mid next week...

So far, all I have seen is pictures, but it seems pretty much intact... It's an original 6/1 with original (as installed) alternator/genhead... The paintwork is non-existent, there's a lot of surface rust, but according to the chap that looked at it for me, a weekend or two of tinkering should get it up and running... Apparently it was mothballed a few years back, read that as about 30, when the premises went onto the grid and has not been used since... It was running till the day that it was shut down, no mech failures to note, that he is aware of, anyway...

Picked it up for a song, at worst, I will have a large driveway ornament that didn't cost too much... Lets see what transpires...

As usual, please excuse the crappy quality pics....

Keep it spinning....

Cheers
Ed

[EdDee]

Hey Glort...

Glad to see I haven't broken your sense of humour yet....

TM3 is arriving, delivered, at around AUD450 at today's exchange rate.... plus, with it, is about 150L of mildly water contaminated diesel that will go through the 'fuge and get burnt in one of the whirling dervishes.....

TM1 is still staring at me dolefully minus his lid, lid's done, just need to find the time to pop him a new barrel and rings, also waiting.... Life has got beyond me!

TM2 is running fine, taking the brunt of the longer outages, the little autostart and solar are doing the shorter stuffs...

As to the MG42.... I wish....

What I have gotten quite deep into is the cad/cam side of things, unfortunately the grey matter takes a while to charge up nowadays and the things that used to seem quickly "grasp-able" take a wee bit longer now..... No matter, I am not slower, just more deliberate and thorough.....

One thing that has been interesting, with the 3d printers that is, is the interest from the happy hippy home-maker crowd in some lithophanes that I 3d printed... Take a look into it, it would go hand in hand with your photography side of things, and, even me who is less impressed by a scenic panoramic view than the tech involved with making a box of matches, finds them pretty damn awesome!

But, enough rambling.... Gotta go and clear the path for the honeysucker that's en route to alleviate another minor irritation... but that's another saga entirely....

Have a gr8 weekend...

Cheers
Ed

[veggie]

OH MAN !

Ed, I'm green with envy

Somehow members here keep coming up with these "barn finds" for very little cash.
Here in Canada I have never heard of a barn find lister CS.
I suspect there's only 3 working genuine Lister CS units in the whole country.
It would be nice to run across a deal like that.

Rebuild her well and keep the CS legacy going. 

[vdubnut62]

Tote up another fellow green with envy.


Keep it smoking!
Ron.