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Home-Built Furnace Cost Only $100
A homemade wood-burning furnace that cost $100 to build, using mostly salvaged materials, eliminated the need to buy a $1,200 manufactured furnace for Nebraska farmer Harold Witulski, of Beatrice.
He's been using his home-made furnace for 3 years and says it does an excellent job of heating his 1,200 sq. ft. ranc
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Home-Built Furnace Cost Only $100 ENERGY Miscellaneous 4-5-30 A homemade wood-burning furnace that cost $100 to build, using mostly salvaged materials, eliminated the need to buy a $1,200 manufactured furnace for Nebraska farmer Harold Witulski, of Beatrice.
He's been using his home-made furnace for 3 years and says it does an excellent job of heating his 1,200 sq. ft. ranch style house.
The guts of the furnace is a 26-in diameter heavy. steel tube 40 in. long that serves as the burning chamber. It's welded inside a square "box" made of plate steel through which air circulates, pulling heat off the outside of the burning chamber and distributing it through ductwork throughout the house.
A unique feature of the airtight furnace, according to Witulski, is a baffle welded inside and at the top of the combustion chamber. It provides a secondary burning area where gases that otherwise would go up the chimney are burned. The result is a highly efficient system, obtaining maximum utilization of the wood burned.
"Wood in the tube burning chamber burns from front to back - kind of like a cigar," explains Witulski. In the morning, when the fire has consumed most of the wood, hot coals glow at the back of the chamber. He cleans ashes out the front, then moves the hot coals toward the front and fills the chamber with wood logs. The wood ignites from the coals and the heating process resumes. It'ss necessary to refill the furnace with wood only about twice each day. It can hold a fire for up to 12 hrs.
All heat for the Witulski house comes from the wood-burning furnace, except when the family leaves for longer than a few hours. A propane furnace then takes over.
The Nebraskan says it is handy having the furnace in the garage rather than basement because he can check the fire when he happens to be walking through the garage doing other things around his 700-acre farm. He has drawn up plans and illustrations of his home-made furnace. They sell for $10 a set.
For more details, contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Harold Witulski, Route 2, Box 181, Beatrice, Neb. 68310 (ph 402 228 063).
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