My gas grill died a while ago, and I like cooking with charcoal better anyway, so i pulled the propane tank off of i and decided to make a wood stove out of it.
Long story short, It's heating my shed right now until I get the pot-bellied stove completely "refurbished." It's not doing a great job at it either, but I threw it in there more as a "proof of concept" type of thing. Yesterday it raised the temps to about 55-60 which is 30 over outside temps. Today is much cooler with more wind, so i'll see if it can do that again. Shed is a 12x20 that's about 12 ft at the peak (Gambrel roof). Construction is frame with plywood siding, so NO insulation. Sits on a concrete pad.
I think that if you have a smaller shed you'd have better luck with this propane tank wood-stove idea. Wood be fun to use as an ice shanty stove or something like that.
The door I made for it doesn't even come close to sealing it and the door doesn't latch. holds very tiny amounts of wood at any one time. realistically speaking, it holds three small splits that, if put together, would amount to one small 18-20" split. I get a solid 30-45min burn like that. Maybe could get an hour if the door sealed better. I'd like to cut a door off of another propane tank sometime. Might be interesting to try to make it a waste oil heater.
Chimney is 4" stove pipe rises 6ft then 90 degree bend to 4 ft horizontal (ish) run through the wall. I used the jigsaw to cut a hole that's about a square foot through the shed wall, then made a 4" hole in some 30 gauge sheet metal and nailed that up.
Ran it all day long yesterday and checked temps all over the place about a million times because I was concerned with the horizontal run and the crappy through the wall design. The metal sheet never got over 100 degrees, in fact, unless I was at the high point in the burn it never really got much above 50 or so. remember that it's freaking cold outside and this is thin steel.
When the potbellied stove is completed then I'll probably put it in the same spot and use actual chimney and thimble.
(I'll try to take some cell phone pics sometime today)
Long story short, It's heating my shed right now until I get the pot-bellied stove completely "refurbished." It's not doing a great job at it either, but I threw it in there more as a "proof of concept" type of thing. Yesterday it raised the temps to about 55-60 which is 30 over outside temps. Today is much cooler with more wind, so i'll see if it can do that again. Shed is a 12x20 that's about 12 ft at the peak (Gambrel roof). Construction is frame with plywood siding, so NO insulation. Sits on a concrete pad.
I think that if you have a smaller shed you'd have better luck with this propane tank wood-stove idea. Wood be fun to use as an ice shanty stove or something like that.
The door I made for it doesn't even come close to sealing it and the door doesn't latch. holds very tiny amounts of wood at any one time. realistically speaking, it holds three small splits that, if put together, would amount to one small 18-20" split. I get a solid 30-45min burn like that. Maybe could get an hour if the door sealed better. I'd like to cut a door off of another propane tank sometime. Might be interesting to try to make it a waste oil heater.
Chimney is 4" stove pipe rises 6ft then 90 degree bend to 4 ft horizontal (ish) run through the wall. I used the jigsaw to cut a hole that's about a square foot through the shed wall, then made a 4" hole in some 30 gauge sheet metal and nailed that up.
Ran it all day long yesterday and checked temps all over the place about a million times because I was concerned with the horizontal run and the crappy through the wall design. The metal sheet never got over 100 degrees, in fact, unless I was at the high point in the burn it never really got much above 50 or so. remember that it's freaking cold outside and this is thin steel.
When the potbellied stove is completed then I'll probably put it in the same spot and use actual chimney and thimble.
(I'll try to take some cell phone pics sometime today)
