Burn barrel ventilation holes

[Windmill]

Seems all my original holes are too small; I'll have to enlarge but hopefully still keep most of the ash inside.

Impressive. Farm wedding?

[Windmill]

Branches on the bushes above are due to be lopped off anyway. Very green and damp so won't easily burn.

[Thomas Prufer]

Get yourself a posh stainless-steel incinerator with factory-punched holes!

(Never tried it myself, but a chap I know swears by old washing machine drums...)

Thomas Prufer

[Andrew Mawson]

Wife's 60th !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

AWEM

[Andy Dingley]

IMHO, they're a good start but they need work and aren't perfect. Their great advantage is that they're stainless, so they're allowed to be visible and don't have to be hidden away all the time....

An incinerator needs draught and this ought to be natural draught, not faffing about with a fan. So that means height. Barrels good, washing machine dums too short. A washing machine also has holes in the side, not in the base, so the draught is top air and largely robbing any useful draught you might get, in favour of just being a convector heater. The side holes are also on the small side, so there isn't really enough air through them.

So for both barrels, your main air supply needs to be pickaxe holes in the base, or at least the bottom of the sides below a mesh burn platform. With a washing machine drum, this is enough for burning with secondary air for a clean burn through the side walls. More height wouldn't hurt though, so if you can get a second WM drum, cut the base and stack that on top (twisted fence wire loops will hold them together).

If you're lucky, the drum spider can be used as a support to raise them off the ground. Mine's welded to a bit of old pipe and spiked in.

[andrew]

Natural gas is a sight easier to burn than wet biomass and most of us expect to have fans in boilers. Fans provide turbulence, one of the 3Ts needed for good combustion.

Have a look at air curtain burners, one way of burning tonnes of waste wood fast, I have built several, including using a 45 gallon drum and an Earlex vacuum with thyristor speed control.

AJH

[Bill]

In message , Tim Lamb writes

I make a lot of use of mine for garden clearance and certainly hope they are never banned. It is essential to get good air flow and a hot burn otherwise there is a lot of smoke. I have been tempted to run a couple of lengths of 20mm steel electrical conduit into the bottom of the barrel and pump air through to liven it up a bit. The idea of raising the material up on a mesh is interesting, must remember to blag some stainless mesh off my dad next time I visit.