See 30-sec video YouTube link if anyone is interested
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrPAqyuBNcIThis is a Mk2 version of the prototype and it seems to do the things I'd like it to do:
Burn clean-ish and consistently with no energy input other than oil. Start and run pretty much without smell or fumes. Put out lots of heat and provide a "cook-top" with hotter and cooler surface areas. Use a reasonable amount of oil
Pictures & short video tell the story, really
It burned 1.2 litres of oil in an hour and eight minutes. I got it warmed-up, filled the little oil reservoir, set the flow to a pencil-lead sort of cross-section, set the timer on the phone and wandered off to do some other work. It ran steadily and consistently for an hour and eight minutes without any intervention from me
I have made the "up-draft" burn chamber thingie with a 100mm BSPTM thread on top so it can just come off to be tinkered with
The flue thingie is on a flange so I can change it at will. I put in a TEE with an 80mm drain bung on the bottom to facilitate cleaning. It's 100mm flue atm - I'd anticipate going to conventional 6"/150mm flue sections if it works well-enough to end up in the shed
My observation, fwiw, is that this thing and its ilk are basically just one big draft/flue - it doesn't like interruptions such as a baffle I trial-fitted; but I have been starting it by tipping in about half a coffee-mug of a 50/50 diesel/petrol mix & lighting it with the butane torch. It lights with a bit of a "whump" and the expanding gases shoot through and up and out the chimney with an immediate "roar" and it establishes a solid draft which continues as I turn on the oil a couple of minutes later; and it just burns happily away
Next step is to try it on various dilutions of the heavy oil of which I have tonnes - and then tinker with a Mk3 that might look a bit "nicer". Might
Cheers
