Part 1 - The Heater

As mentioned in previous instructables my main complaint about living in Canada is the weather.I have no other complaints about Canada other than the weather. Nothing to do about it except complain even after living here 44 years. I live in Toronto. I can't spray paint or use glues with solvents inside the house in winter. My garage is not insulated and is away from the house. I have built the pot heaters to warm my paint booth, I have made the styrofoam cutters, to cut the foam I will need for my upcoming greenhouse projects. The paint issue is taken care of but my feet get cold even in winter boots, need to warm the garage up a bit so in comes the garage heater. It is basically a rocket stove with one modification. The fire heats up a 9 inch stainless steel frying pan. Would have loved to use a cast iron frying pan but wasn't able to find one at Value Village (thrift store) same as Goodwill or Salvation Army.

Step 1: The Build

The building of the heater involves the putting together several cans of different sizes to create the heater.

Materials Used

2 - big tomato cans (same size as coffee cans)

several cans of different sizes for exhaust, gravity feeder, and air intake

1 - 9 inch stainless steel frying pan

1 - big metal can for the outside container picture 7

1 - 3 inch HVAC 90 degree elbow

quick setting cement, perlite

screws, wire, several pieces of tile, fiberglass insulation, associated ducting to exhaust the smoke

some sheet metal, the kind used in HVAC

Tools Used

safety glasses

pair of gloves

metal shears

cordless drill, drill bits,

screwdrivers, side cutters

I started by removing the bottom and rim of one of the cans so that it would fit into the other picture #2. Once inside the other can i attached it with screws and flattened one side picture #3. Marked the location of air intake on flat side as well as the gravity feed can location picture #4. Pictures 5 and 6 show the cans attached. I also cut a hole for the exhaust can on the opposite side and attached it.

Step 2: Attaching the Central Core

Picture 7 shows the central core being set into the outside can. I used a mixture of perlite and quick set cement. Picture 8 shows several pieces of tile being used to line parts of the central core. The bottom and the side where the fire will be. Picture 9 shows a piece of cardboard braced to be filled with cement. Picture 10 shows insulation on the sides of core as well as wires to support the cover for the insulation. 11 shows the cover in place with wires to support the stainless steel cap.13 and 14 show the perlite and cement in place and the metal cap being set in place.

Step 3: Test Burning

I took several pictures of the test burn as well as several videos. The pictures and videos of the project will be on my google drive. Since I didn't know what to expect i fired up the heater. Well it light up but i started to get back-draft from the feeder pipe. I grabbed a 3" 90 degree metal elbow and placed it on the exhaust pipe. This solved the problem of the back-draft. Since I had a fire going I decided to recover the left over wax from tea candles picture 15. It was windy so I covered the pot and put a heavy one on top of everything . NO THESE WERE NOT FROM MY FLOWER POT HEATERS!!! LOL.

Link to pictures and videos

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1yXxMqJ3wxa...

In Part 2 I will show the heater and the exhaust attached.