Advice On Building a Arch From an Old 265 Gallon Fuel Oil Tank

[Studhauler]

Hungry Beaver, would you care to give me any advice on building an arch from an old 265 gallon fuel oil tank?

[optionguru]

just search oil tank evaporator and you'll get a ton of info. A bunch of us have built them. Pretty easy, especially if you have basic welding skills.

[Craig Lewis]

I'm going to build a oil tank evaporator for a couple of years now. And now that I have a tank, there are a lot more designs out there.

Now I have to figure the best design and built it.

It seems that there are a couple of important things

Surface area. (Larger is better) So is it better, to have the stack, position on the end of the tank?
How close the heat is to the pans. 1" to 4 "
Pans Flat, or with or without raffles/baffles?
The size of the fire box (Does it matter if wood, or Oil (Maybe smaller?))
The length of the stack for drawing.

If you made one today, what would your design look like.

Cheers

[psparr]

https://youtu.be/whRR8BlfocY
Here's mine, and I'm very happy with it. I extended it for a 6' pan. 8" stack 12' high. Only 1" - 1-1/2" under the back of the pan. The fire box is about 18" deep and about the same for height.

[backyard]

if you have not built one yet, and are south of the cities, gladly show you the one I made. just pm me if you want to see.

[Gissert]

I built one 5 years ago. I started with angle iron on the bottom and mounted some pneumatic wheels from grainger on it so it stays mobile. I have it set up for a 2 x 4 pan. Firebox is about 16 -18 inches deep. The ramp starts at the end of the firebox, about 5 inches below the pan, and tapers up to 1.5 inches from the pan on the flue end.

6 inch exit, and I run 8 to 10 feet of pipe and it draws very well.

I lined the interior with hi temp insulation and then fire bricked everything.

Added a small blower on the front, and that helped a lot.