The Bubafonya stove is a long-burning stove. The operating principle is based on the slow burning of one fuel pack. Combustion in this design does not occur as in traditional ones - in the entire volume of the fuel chamber, but goes from top to bottom, which allows you to achieve a long operating time from one load of firewood or other solid combustible materials.
This combustion is due to the design features. Air is supplied to the upper part of the firebox in small quantities, in the center of the filling through special holes in the middle of the piston, and exhaust gases are discharged from its edges in a gap with the walls of the fuel chamber.
The air supply is regulated by a damper installed at the upper end of the supply pipe. Optionally, the stove can be equipped with an additional damper at the exhaust gas outlet for more convenient adjustment of the draft force. As the fuel burns, the piston moves down the chamber, pressing down the combustible materials, this prevents the fuel from burning throughout the entire volume of the firebox and combustion occurs at a very slow pace.
With minimal air leaks, the stove goes into smoldering mode. Burning in some versions reaches sixty hours or more. The peculiarity of “Bubafoni” is that everyone can choose the optimal design option that is necessary for them. This stove has many upgrades and additions.
Advantages:
Flaws:
- Impossibility of working on low-quality sintered coal.
- The need to use fuel of approximately the same moisture content in one load to avoid the piston hanging in the firebox.
- Low thermal power in very long burning mode.
- Impossibility of reloading fuel until complete extinction.
- Difficulty cleaning from combustion products (Solved by additional upgrades).
- Formation of a large amount of condensate in the chimney during operation.
- Low heat transfer area in the basic design.
- The need to have some ignition skills to avoid smoking.
- Low service life of models with a firebox made of thin-walled metal.
Bubafonya from a barrel
Most often, barrels or cylinders are used as the basis for making a stove. Options made from ordinary gas cylinders have the longest service life due to the thickness of the walls.
Such a stove can withstand difficult temperature conditions of use longer and does not burn out. Instead of a cylinder, you can use any pipe with a wall thickness of more than one and a half millimeters.
Various steel barrels are excellent for making Bubafoni. An important point is that the seam of the barrel must be welded and in no case soldered. Soldering does not withstand high temperatures and inevitably breaks down after the first use.
Two-hundred-liter barrels of fuel and lubricants are best suited. It’s even better if this barrel is from the times of the Soviet Union - the walls of such containers are much thicker than modern ones, and the quality of the steel itself is higher.
Before making your sample, you should decide on the size and basis for the future stove based on what needs to be heated, in what climate zone the heated room is located, what temperature needs to be maintained in the room.
For an ordinary potbelly stove, the square-cube law applies. The same applies to Bubafon. The essence of the law regarding stoves is that the size of the fuel chamber of a stove should only be increased to a certain size.
A further increase will lead to excessive fuel consumption, since the surface area giving off heat increases in the square, but the volume of the combustion chamber will increase in the cube, i.e., much more fuel will need to be loaded, and the heat will be received disproportionately to the increase in the load.
For “Bubafoni” this law applies only in terms of diameter; any height can be made. It depends on how much continuous operation time is required and is not related to power. To maintain a comfortable temperature in winter in utility rooms, change houses, greenhouses, garages, from eighty to one hundred and fifty, two hundred watts per square meter of room area is required.
If the ceiling height is non-standard, then you should proceed from the volume of air heated by the stove. In this case, thirty - sixty, eighty watts of thermal energy should be allocated per cubic meter. The volume of air is calculated simply - you need to multiply the area of the room by its height in meters.
The more insulated the walls, ceiling and windows of a building are, the lower the furnace required and the less burning intensity. The power of the unit can be calculated using the formula e=M*e, where M is the mass of the fuel loaded, and e is the specific thermal output of the type of fuel being loaded.
To make Bubafoni you will need the following tools:
And materials:
- Barrel or cylinders, or sheet steel with a thickness of at least one and a half millimeters.
- Pipes of various diameters.
- Channels or angles made of steel.
- Mineral wool (optional).
- Ball-type condensate drain valve.
Making “Bubafoni” should begin with choosing a base. The most common option is cylinders and barrels. Below we will consider an example of assembling a device from a propane cylinder:
"Bubafonya" can be subjected to various upgrades:
- To increase heat transfer, you can weld ribs of any size and shape to the furnace body.
- To improve convective heat transfer You can wrap the body with a profiled sheet.
- To reduce condensation, insulate the vertical section of the chimney with mineral wool.
- Instead of the adjusting cap, you can install round magnet of suitable size.
- To organize air intake from the street, you can put a corrugated air duct on the supply pipe and lead it into a hole in the wall of the building. The corrugation should not interfere with the free movement of the piston in the chamber.
This stove can be equipped with a water jacket and connected to radiators. To do this, you need to weld a sealed casing to the full height of the body and cut into it two inch pipes for water distribution fittings. The casing should be made with a gap of 4-8 centimeters to the furnace wall. The difference in the height of the exit and return should be at least forty centimeters.
Furnace fuel
Almost any solid fuel is suitable for Bubafoni:
- Standard firewood or logs.
- Fuel and .
- High-quality coal that does not form caking combustion products.
- Waste fiberboard and chipboard.
- Brushwood, straw.
When firing a furnace, preference should be given to less ash fuel. This will allow you to clean the unit less frequently and will help avoid the piston getting stuck in the firebox during the combustion process.
This is what “Bubafonya” looks like from the inside when the fuel in it is smoldering Operating rules
In order to light the stove, perform the following operations:
- Load the chamber with fuel just below the bottom edge of the chimney.
- Place sawdust or wood chips and paper in the upper part. You can add a small amount of used motor oil or special lighter fluid.
- Light the top layer.
- Place the piston into the firebox.
- Close the lid.
- After making sure that the combustion process has started, adjust the air supply depending on the required power.
In case of attenuation, you need to repeat the procedure. The stove should be cleaned when a layer of ash accumulates more than twenty-five centimeters.
- Do not use volatile liquids (gasoline, ether, alcohol, etc.) for ignition.
- If the fuel has different moisture content, it should be sorted to avoid piston jamming.
- When the required room temperature is reached, the air supply should be reduced to save fuel.
If the oven is used for cooking food, then one important problem arises. There must be a surface where food will be placed. At the same time, the heat flow in this place should be sufficient for high-quality cooking.
During the warm season, intense heating during cooking can create unbearable heat in this place. In this situation, it must heat the food properly without getting too hot.
If, first of all, the tasks of heating the room are important, then other features come to the fore. Here the following are of particular importance:
- long burning;
- fuel economy;
- high requirements for fire safety.
The last requirement plays a vital role in the operation of various types of furnaces. However, when heating, the stove, in fact, can be left without direct supervision for a long time. And this greatly increases the risk of an accidental fire. Another important issue is the possibility of legalizing a self-made stove. This process is not simple or easy.
Cylinder selection
The first and main requirement is that the cylinder must be made of all metal. If you take a composite one, it may not withstand constant high temperatures. A household five-liter cylinder is too small. It heats up quickly, but cools down just as quickly.
The amount of heat loss here is very large, and the use of additional thermal insulation is not justified. Two other types of cylinders - 12 liter and 27 liter - are suitable for use as an additional stove “just in case”. The dimensions and efficiency of their operation allow them to be stored in a city apartment.
The best option would be to use a regular fifty-liter propane cylinder. Its dimensions allow it to produce heat efficiently. It has two main varieties:
- with valve,
- with valve.
The first option is more practical. Its use allows you to regulate the flow of air, thereby regulating the intensity of the combustion process.
There are also 40-liter industrial gas cylinders. They are durable, made of strong metal, but are heavy and bulky and too narrow.
Pyrolysis
When talking about stoves, one cannot help but recall pyrolysis. When burning, the fuel breaks down into lighter and simpler chemical components, which, in turn, burn better and burn almost completely. Without the use of pyrolysis, it is almost impossible to build an effective structure. It allows you to burn everything that can burn completely. Another important feature is that this process does not occur immediately, but is multi-stage.
What implications might this have for the design? This process requires a certain amount of time. For pyrolysis during the combustion of machine oil, 10 - 15 centimeters are required. When burning wood, the distance will be greater - about one meter. This imposes requirements for the length of the cylinder. The gas flame path must be of sufficient length so that the pyrolysis products can burn.
There are usually three main pyrolysis zones:
- main combustion zone;
- primary pyrolysis zone;
- zone of final combustion of pyrolysis products.
This must be taken into account when designing.
Sauna stove from a gas cylinder - diagram Balloon oven options
There are several main options for such designs:
The simplest of them is. It is customary to use a 12-liter or 27-liter cylinder for it. For efficient heating, it is advisable to use a horizontal elbow for the chimney. The most difficult part is attaching the door for the opening through which the fuel is loaded. Convenient for storage in a city apartment. It is short-lived due to the gradual burning out of the walls of the cylinder.
Special long stoves. They work as . The basic principle of operation is that the fuel burns continuously with only a small amount of fuel. Pyrolysis products are then formed, which burn in a separate combustion chamber. To ensure combustion efficiency, it makes sense to preheat the air that enters the furnace. The oil garage stove requires vertical installation. Used engine oil is used as fuel. Adjusting the combustion temperature The design looks something like this.
"Rocket". Its name comes from the fact that it sometimes makes a noise similar to the roar of rocket engines. However, this can happen if the oven is not adjusted. A properly functioning structure makes only a quiet rustling sound. Its design is not particularly complicated and a 50 liter gas cylinder is very convenient for its manufacture. This type has many important advantages. They heat the room well, are economical to use, and relatively simple to manufacture. They can be adapted to heat a bed. But, on the other hand, they must be done accurately and carefully. If the furnace is poorly adjusted, it will be ineffective. The fuel is firewood (usually thinly chopped chips or branches). It comes through a pipe from above. Air enters through the hole at the bottom left. Combustion occurs in the lower pipe. The blowing here is very strong. The combustion products rise upward and exit through the pipe on the right, heating the room. Let us tell you what a stove called “bubafonya” is. It uses a special principle of working with pyrolysis products. The combustion chamber is located vertically. Pyrolysis products are contained by a special metal “pancake”, which limits the combustion space from above. The efficiency of this design can reach eighty-five percent. This stove is not designed to use wet fuel. Humidity should not exceed 12 percent. The stove is very economical in fuel consumption. Convenient to use for heating garages or other utility rooms.
A rocket stove can be made not only using gas cylinders, but also using barrels, cans and other means.
Self-production of a balloon furnace
We take a medium or large cylinder, but it should not be too small. In addition, we will need:
- a small curved pipe (diameter approximately 15 cm);
- a long pipe of the same diameter for making a chimney;
- material for making the door handle;
- door hinges;
- box needed for making a ventilation hole;
- long rod to regulate air flow.
Tools:
- angle grinder;
- welding machine.
The furnace manufacturing process begins with emptying the gas cylinder:
- To do this, in a well-ventilated place, open the cylinder valve and let the gas escape. But that is not all. Then you need to unscrew the valve and release the gas. Then you need to fill the cylinder with water, which will finally displace the gas from the cylinder.
- Next, cut off the top of the balloon. The resulting edges need to be sanded. We mark a hole in the side for the door and on the opposite side for the chimney. Next you need to cut out the door and attach it in place on the hinges. It will be closed using a special latch. The cut is made using an angle grinder.
- Next, a hole for the chimney is made in the same way and a pipe that was prepared in advance is welded. The chimney pipe is made by welding two pieces of pipe: a curved one and a long one.
- Next, a third hole is made - the air duct. It is made below the door. This is a rectangular hole 5 by 5 centimeters. A rectangular box without a lid is welded there. There, a piece of metal is welded onto the central axis. By rotating it using a small lever, you can adjust the airflow for the oven.
- In order to get rid of gaps on the door, small steel strips can be welded around the perimeter. This completes the furnace manufacturing process.
The shape of a long-burning stove made from a gas cylinder is spherical, which means it is optimal. This design ensures long burning. It can be installed in the house or in the country. It is possible to assemble it with your own hands, since it is made without any particular difficulties. The main part of the stove is the gas cylinder. Firewood or other material is used as fuel.
Types of gas cylinder stoves
For the furnace to operate efficiently, it must have high efficiency and ensure long combustion of the fuel contained in it.
Such designs come in the following types:
- a three-pass stove created from 2 propane cylinders;
- pyrolysis stove with 2 chambers;
- Bubafonya stove.
To manufacture such structures, at the first stage, drawings are developed. Then materials and a welding machine are purchased and the assembly process begins.
The stove is made from 2 propane cylinders with a volume of 50 liters. They are welded at an angle of 90 degrees.
Operating principle:
The power of such a heater is 10 kW. Efficiency -55%. One load of firewood lasts for 2 hours. Heated area - 100 sq. m.
The benefits include:
- simplicity of design;
- quick heating of the room;
- low price of the product;
- large logs are placed in the firebox;
- The device can be used as a hob.
In addition to 2 cylinders, sheet metal, pipe cuttings, angles and a steel channel are prepared.
Assembly order:
Pyrolysis Design Overview
The stove made from a long-burning gas cylinder was named “Pyaterochka”, based on the number of air heat exchanger pipes. The chamber volume is 24 liters.
The operating principle is as follows:
- The cylinder is laid horizontally. An ash pit is made in it. The cut holes serve as grates.
- There are 5 pipes extending from the top of the structure in a vertical direction. Smoke moves through them. Heat is transferred to the room through the pipes.
- Then the combustion products enter the second chamber, where heated air enters through a separate pipe. In this chamber, the resulting flammable gases generate additional heat. Then they exit through the chimney.
The compact stove can heat a room of 30 square meters. m. Stacking firewood is enough for 2 hours. Power is 5 kW.
The beginning of production is similar to a furnace made of 2 cylinders. The assembly order is as follows:
- Holes are cut for the heat exchanger and the door.
- The ash pan is made, the door is installed and the supports are welded.
- The heat exchanger is being cooked. The pipes are cut in a checkerboard pattern.
- The secondary chamber is welded to the chimney.
Top combustion principle Bubafonya
In such a heater, the burning time of 1 load is 6-10 hours. The principle of its operation is as follows:
- The propane tank is installed vertically; it is a firebox. From above, a pipe is inserted through the holes to supply air. It ends with a metal disk on which steel strips are welded. They are needed for uniform air distribution.
- Ignition is carried out from above. A sheet of heavy metal presses on the firewood, and during the combustion process it sags.
- The supplied air is regulated by a damper at the top of the pipe. Smoke comes out of the side hole into which the pipe is embedded.
Despite the long burning time, such a stove has significant disadvantages. These include:
- Until the fuel burns out, it is impossible to reload the equipment.
- Secondary air constantly enters the firebox, so the stove does not go out when the damper is closed.
- The heater smokes a lot if there is no good draft.
- When the slow burning mode is set, the heating of the room is weak.
- While the stove enters its operating rhythm, ¼ of the fuel is consumed.
Assembly of the structure is simple. The upper part of a 50 liter cylinder is cut off, and then the following steps are carried out:
Correct installation of the chimney
The temperature of the gases at the outlet is 200−400 degrees. Therefore, the chimney options can be as follows:
- a steel pipe with thin walls is used;
- sandwich - chimney.
The draft should rise to a height of 4 m, if the reference point is taken from the grate. A properly made chimney increases the efficiency of the stove.
If you need to heat your house or cottage, a good option is a stove made from a gas cylinder. Its optimal shape gives maximum combustion effect. Made with your own hands, it will not cost much. Assembly of the structure does not take much time. The only thing you need to have is skills in working with a welding machine.
A potbelly stove is a small homemade metal stove that became widespread in the first half of the 20th century. Later, with the advent of centralized heating, its popularity fell. The second wave of its mass use occurred during the Great Patriotic War, and the third - in the 90s of the same century, for heating country houses. Today, potbelly stoves are more often used in garages or utility rooms. In their pure form, without modifications, they are uneconomical: they “eat” fuel like bourgeois, and if you stop “feeding” them, they quickly cool down. The easiest option to make is a potbelly stove made from a gas cylinder. The body is already ready, you just need to cut holes for filling the fuel and ash pan, attach doors to them, weld the legs and the chimney (diameter 150 mm and no less).
The cylinder in such a stove can be placed vertically or horizontally. It heats up quickly, but also cools down immediately after the fuel stops burning. However, in order to quickly bring a garage or cottage out of sub-zero temperatures or to heat it in autumn/spring bad weather, this is an excellent option.
Which cylinder should I take for the stove?
It is clear that a gas cylinder will be used for the housing. But they come in different sizes. The smallest 5-liter ones should not be used for making stoves: the volumes are too small and they won’t be able to heat anything. There are also 12 and 27 liter cylinders. They will make a low-power unit for a very small room: you cannot get more than 3 or 7 Kilowatts of heat from them. In principle, this can be a hiking option, but the weight will be considerable.
The best option for a stationary stove in a garage or country house is a 50-liter gas cylinder. Height 850 mm, diameter - 300 mm. The volume and wall thickness are large enough for any fuel to burn. At the same time, it is not very heavy, you can work with it alone. A potbelly stove made from a 50 liter propane cylinder is the best option.
Industrial 40-liter gas tanks have approximately the same volume, the diameter is smaller - 250 mm, the height is larger, and the walls are thicker. It will be more difficult to make a stove from a freon cylinder, with the same power that can be obtained from it: the mass is large, and it is long. By shortening the height to about 700 mm, you can make a small, thick-walled potbelly stove, which will take a little longer to warm up, but will also “keep” the heat a little better.
Important! When working with gas cylinders, follow safety precautions!
How to safely disassemble a gas cylinder: watch safety precautions in this video.
What and how to make doors from
Doors for potbelly stoves can be purchased cast. You will need a small height for the ash pan and a larger one for storing fuel. There are ready-made blocks - a flow door with a blower in one design. In this case, a frame made from corners welded to size is welded into a hole cut to size, and the casting is already bolted to it. To prevent air from blowing out of the cracks, a small edge is welded around the perimeter of the cutout under the door - a 1-2 cm strip of metal.
You can not buy doors, but use a cut piece of a balloon wall. Then you will need some kind of hinges or replacement parts. It’s clear with the hinges: mark the places, weld them. There is an interesting version of homemade loops: several links of a thick chain.
A latch will need to be welded to such a door.
With grates or without?
In the simplest version, no grates are provided. If the cylinder is small or stands horizontally, then selecting a part inside is problematic. In this case, the design of a potbelly stove made from a cylinder is quite simple: the body is placed on legs, one door, and a pipe for connecting the chimney is welded in the upper part. All. The whole stove.
The photo above shows examples of such simple ovens. In order to improve heat transfer, metal strips are welded to the outside of the body. In the upper part, in addition to the smoke pipe, there is another outlet - a lid is installed on it, and this outlet is used as a stove for cooking food and heating tea.
If you still want to make grates in a potbelly stove from a horizontally installed cylinder, you will have to weld a tray for collecting ash from below. Below there is a drawing and photo of the practical implementation.
In vertical versions of potbelly stoves made from a cylinder, grates are most often installed. In this case, it is easier to allocate space. Usually, thick reinforcement bars are welded inside: a cast iron grate of a suitable size is difficult to find. But this option is bad because the reinforcement quickly burns out, and repairs are complicated: remove the old reinforcement and weld in a new one. You can weld pieces of thick corners or reinforcement inside (as in the photo), separately weld grate bars from the reinforcement and lay them on the corners.
This video tells you how to make a stove from a gas cylinder with your own hands - the grates are made of reinforcement.
We improve heat transfer
The biggest problem with potbelly stoves: inefficient heat consumption. Most of it literally flies into the chimney with flue gases. This disadvantage is effectively combated in top combustion furnaces with afterburning of flue gases according to the type (also, by the way, can be made from a gas cylinder) and.
A variant of a potbelly stove made from propane cylinders with secondary combustion - the efficiency is higher than that of “conventional” models.
Another way to improve heat transfer is to make the chimney longer, thereby increasing the amount of heat that will remain in the room. When designing such a broken chimney, it is better to avoid horizontal sections, and even more so areas with a negative slope.
This gas cylinder stove runs on wood. We increased heat transfer by making a long broken chimney
Another option to use the heat of flue gases is to weld a vertical cylinder-smoke pipe to a horizontally located cylinder-housing. Due to the larger area, heat transfer will be higher. You just need to create good draft so that the smoke does not go into the room.
You can do it the way they do in sauna stoves: put a mesh around a metal pipe and pour stones into it. They will take heat from the pipe and then release it into the room. But. Firstly, until the stones heat up, the air will warm up slowly. Secondly, not all stones are suitable, but only the round ones that are along the rivers. Moreover, they are uniformly colored without inclusions. Others cannot be filled in: they can explode from high temperatures no worse than a fragmentation shell, or emit radon, which is very harmful in significant concentrations.
But this solution also has advantages: firstly, the pipe will not burn. The stones produce even heat. Secondly, after the furnace goes out, they will maintain the temperature in the room.
Often you need to quickly heat a room. To do this, you can use a regular fan that will blow through the body and/or pipe of the furnace. But the same idea can be implemented with a stationary version: weld through pipes into the potbelly stove cylinder in the upper part. On one side, attach a fan to them (heat-resistant, preferably with several speeds, so that you can regulate the temperature).
Another option that allows you to achieve active air movement along the walls of the case and not use a fan: make a casing around the case at a distance of 2-3 cm, but not solid, but with holes at the bottom and top. Metal sauna stoves also work on this principle.
One of the options for such a casing around a horizontally located cylinder is visible in the photo below. Through the gaps at the bottom, cold air located near the floor is sucked in. Passing along the hot body, it heats up and comes out from above.
The principle is not new, but it is no less effective. Look at the photo below to see what the finished stove looks like with such a casing.
Here is another implemented casing, around a potbelly stove made from a horizontally located cylinder. Please note the non-standard door fastening.
A homemade boiler from a gas cylinder for water heating can be made using the same principle: weld a water jacket around the cylinder and connect it to the radiators. Just don’t forget that the system must have an expansion tank with a volume of 10% of the total displacement.
You now know how to make a potbelly stove from a gas cylinder and how to improve it. Watch another video about an interesting option for a combined stove for a summer house or garage made of brick and a gas cylinder.
Stove heating is most often created in such structures that cannot be connected to another heating system. If you wish and have time, you can carry out all the work on forming the structure with your own hands. It can run on wood or other types of fuel. A stove made from a gas cylinder is considered the easiest option to create. The very shape of the cylinder ensures the formation of the stove with a spherical firebox. The result is . It is suitable for both a private home and.
Types of gas cylinder stoves
Can be organized immediately several types of stoves, differing in their operating principle and features. They can use different types of fuel.
There are several types of stoves:
- heating and cooking structure used in residential buildings;
- heating stove, which serves to heat a room or several rooms;
- a home-made cooking structure, which is usually used only in the summer;
- The emergency stove is universal, compact and portable, therefore it is used when the main heating breaks down or any malfunction occurs in it.
Positive and negative parameters
Using a gas cylinder to form this design has certain advantages:
- Available long-burning stove without spending a lot of money, since you will need standard and inexpensive elements and materials.
- Do all processes you can do it yourself.
- You can use the received equipment for home, bathhouse or other buildings.
- You can find it on the Internet video instructions for creating a structure.
- Use these stoves Just, there is no danger.
- Can be done different types of ovens.
The disadvantages of this equipment include the fact that all work must be carried out according to the drawings. Without them, you can violate the basic principles of stove design and make serious mistakes.
Which cylinder to choose for work
To create a long-burning stove, you need to choose only suitable and high-quality materials. Therefore you need to choose all-metal cylinder. Explosion-proof elements that are not resistant to high temperatures are not suitable. It is also not suitable for household use, since such elements are usually too small in size.
Another type is considered to be, which is most often installed in garages. It is much more difficult to form such a structure with your own hands than a wood-burning element. The operating principle of this equipment:
- In a special fuel department occurs burning oil. Oxygen is supplied here in small portions by a special air throttle.
- As a result of combustion, vapors arise that rise into a unique reactor with reshaped walls.
- Air from outside penetrates through the existing holes, which intensifies the existing combustion of oil vapor. This leads to an increase in temperature, resulting in pyrolysis, therefore the temperature rises even faster. This leads to the formation of nitrogen oxides, which prevents the oven from overheating.
- Gases from the reactor enter the afterburning chamber, which has two sections separated from each other by a partition. Pyrolysis gases burn out in front of the partition, which leads to maintaining a high temperature. After the partition, all the oxygen is consumed, but the temperature is still very high.
- A chimney is connected to the afterburning chamber, through which combustion products are discharged.
