55 gallon barrel evaporator how to.

[needmoremaples]

Ive been asked by a few to show my steps on making my rig so hopefully others can learn from this. Mine is by no means perfect and everything I did didn't work out perfectly but this will give you a good idea of the direction you want to head.

Finished product
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Buy beer. You will need alot to finish this project. I prefer leinenkeugels! Find a barrel stove kit. I found this one at northerntool.com for like 50 bucks. Yes you can just cut a hole and add some hinges and Walla a door. I used the door from the kit because I'm fire bricking and adding a blower.
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Attach the feet. If you do like I did and insulate the he'll out of it you probably could set this sucker on a wood frame as it barely gets warm on the outside. Make sure the door and legs are square and level. You don't want a wobbly stove or one with an un level door. You could try and do the feet first but mine has bolts and need the nuts attached so I crawled inside thru the door.
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Cut a line down the center and then back down the front and back edge of where the pans will sit. I cut out the ribs so it was flat on the sides but honestly I wish I had cut sections off and rewelded them back on. I'll show an example of someone else doing that in another post at the end.

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I picked up two of the full size 6" deep buffet pans online. Two of them fit well sideways with enough room for the stove pipe adapter in the back. I might move the pipe to the very backside wall of the stove someday so I have room for a preheater pan. The flue pipe adapter came with the stove kit. I bought 1" angle at farm and fleet to make the top edge for the pans to fit in. I believe they were 4' and 2 of them barely made enough to make a rectangle big enough for the pans to fit into. I got lucky.

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[needmoremaples]

I wish I had done it this way to save alot of welding.

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If you have metal laying around or want to just buy some this is another way to save welding time.
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I used scrap barrel metal to enclose the corners and ends. This was the most labor intensive part. I burned up alot of rod trying to weld the thin pieces together and it still looks like crap.
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Ceramic blanket cut to fit and used high temp silicone as adhesive. I also took off every nut from the stove door and flue adapter that I could and added a fenderwasher to keep the insulation held in place. Worked pretty good.

[needmoremaples]

Added an air under fire intake boot. From Here any air fan could be used but i went with a 4x10 boot like you would use in your house house heating vent. I used a bathroom fart fan as my blower. I think I either have too much air or not enough. I added a rheostat but I don't think it's too good for the fan motor tho. I will pay close attn. As it's in use so I don't burn the fan or switch up

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Fire brick time. I bricked around the air intake boot and about half way back. I may someday make this a full stove Firebox but wanted to check out this way. I figure most stoves are only half way full of wood. I added some grating for the wood and coals to sit on but this takes up too much room. I may just cut out the mesh and leave everything to set on it. As long as the air still gets under fire figure it should be fine. I also added the ceramic gasket to the rail to seal out the smoke. Because my pans overlap a bit a little bit still got out.
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Tig welded stainless handles on my pans that I scrounged up from work. The pans are real thin and I've also NEVER TIG WELDED BEFORE lol. It was another battle but I made it work. MY trade is a #pipefitter so I've seen alot of stainless welded before. And here you have it. We are boiling.
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[needmoremaples]

Here's my test boil today with a flat pan using water. Glad I did it before season because I have a pinhole leak near my valve.



Just a few pics of some other rigs that I liked and copied bits and pieces of

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[needmoremaples]

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[sappytapper]

Great info and thanks for posting, as I need to get off my butt and do some upgrades to my barrel from last year. A quick question on the ceramic blanket, even though I know this has probably been rehashed a hundred times over the years here. Thickness and effectiveness? Looking at ordering a roll this week, since it looks like it's most cost effective to order way way more than I need (maybe give away the excess to someone else who needs it) and am curious about what thickness you used and how effective it is at keeping the heat on the inside.

Wondering if i'm better off ordering 2" or a bigger roll of 1" and doubling up if i need to?

[Cjadamec]

1" thick blanket should be plenty for lining the inside of the barrel. To protect the blanket from being hit with firewood use 1" thick firebrick on top of the blanket as needed. If needed you can add layers of blanket to tighten up the space between the bottom of the pan and the ramp if you need to.

As a point of reference double wall insulated class A chimney for wood stoves has a 1" thick layer of ceramic insulation between the layers of metal.

[sappytapper]

Great info. Thanks!

[zburton]

Just to add to the styles of barrel stoves and for those who are looking at various options I figured I would add to the list of pictures with my own barrel evaporator.

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It is a bit of work to build it the way I did but it came out pretty well. I have ruffly $150 into it so far but still looking at getting a pan and doing some insulating. The options for a barrel stove are pretty well endless just matter of deciding how much time you want to spend on it.

[jrm]

Great info and thanks for posting, as I need to get off my butt and do some upgrades to my barrel from last year. A quick question on the ceramic blanket, even though I know this has probably been rehashed a hundred times over the years here. Thickness and effectiveness? Looking at ordering a roll this week, since it looks like it's most cost effective to order way way more than I need (maybe give away the excess to someone else who needs it) and am curious about what thickness you used and how effective it is at keeping the heat on the inside.

Wondering if i'm better off ordering 2" or a bigger roll of 1" and doubling up if i need to?

I came back to this post today thinking I should try out ceramic blanket in my barrel (much cruder design than many I've seen here as I don't weld) this year. I haven't priced out blanket, yet. But, seeing your post, I'm not that far from you. If it's cheaper to order a larger roll, and you'd like to split product/cost, let me know.