Home-Built Corn Burning Furnace

Home-Built Corn Burning Furnace FARM HOME Building Techniques 18-6-29 When Doug Weber's heating oil bills began to go through the roof a couple of years ago, he began investigating all the corn-burning furnaces on the market. Prices, Weber decided, were unjustifiable. "I figured I could build a furnace that worked just as well for a lot less money," says Weber, who farms near Alma, Ontario. "The oil furnace my home-built unit replaced was rated at 180,000 Btu's and this keeps right up, heatwise." Weber built his furnace for about $300 and put it in his basement. It heats his big two-story brick house better than his old oil furnace, and does it cheaply using corn and other inexpensive materials like wood chips, chaff, cobs, even soybean pods. "I started with the combustion chamber out of an old gas furnace," Weber explains. "Then I used an old coal stoker to feed material into the bottom of the combustion chamber. The coal stoker's auger has a slow-turning gear box, perfect for delivering corn into the combustion chamber without overfeeding and smothering the fire. I put a 6-in. dia. auger in the coal stoker rather than its original 3-in, dia. auger so it'll handle the variety of materials I burn." Weber built a double-walled stainless steel firepot out of pipe. It's positioned at the end of the auger. The 10-in. wide by 10-in. deep firepot allows air to enter the combustion chamber from the bottom and the top, stoking the fire much like a bellows. A furnace fan forces air around the combustion chamber, which is totally enclosed, through the existing duct work in his house. Weber's furnace is 34-in. wide by 4-ft. high by 6-ft. long, with stoker extending about 4 ft, to the side. The hopper for Weber's stoker holds about 3112 large feed bags full of whatever he's burning. 'I've been blending dry field corn with wood chips I get for free from a disposal guy," Weber says. But with the bigger auger I can also burn chaff and soybean pods. When burning corn, "you get a few clinkers," Weber says. To make it easy to clean them out, he installed a 4-in. dia. piece of pipe that leads out of the bottom of the furnace. The pipe has a plug that Weber removes when he cleans out the clinkers. "I just use a scraper and shove the ash into the pipe. It falls into the ash pan beneath it," he says. You don't even have to shut off the furnace to clean it." Weber doesn't know exactly how efficient his furnace is, but knows it ranks right up there with most energy efficent commercial corn-burning units. "You can rest your hand on the exhaust pipe and it's only warm," he says. Plus, it's saved him a lot of money. "Last year was the first full heating season I used it," says Weber. "I used 2 40-yd. containers of wood chips and about 6 tons of dry shelled corn that would have sold for $130 to $140 per ton," he says. "Oil would have cost in the neighborhood of $4,500.,, If Weber were to build another corn burner, he says he'd put only one fan on it instead of the two he used to simplify maintenance. A few neighbors have asked Weber to build furnaces for them, but he says old coal stokers are extremely hard to find. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Doug Weber, R.R.1, Alma, Ontario, NOB lAO Canada (ph 519 846-9263).

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