Barrel stove for shop

brockel

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Anyone built a barrel wood stove for their shop? Was it worth it or am I just better off not being cheap and buying a legit wood stove. It’s a non insulated dirt floor pole barn but I’m just looking for something to knock the chill off in there
 
My brother had one in his garage and it heated the place wonderfully.
Very inexpensive way to set up a woodstove. Throw a little sand in the bottom for added protection of the thin barrel sidewall material.
 
I went with a 50000 btu electric. Not very efficient but provides instant heat in a pinch. I think they even make them so you can control them from your phone so you could turn it on prior to going out to the shop.

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Anyone built a barrel wood stove for their shop? Was it worth it or am I just better off not being cheap and buying a legit wood stove. It’s a non insulated dirt floor pole barn but I’m just looking for something to knock the chill off in there
While it's tin walls, barrel stove will work just fine to knock the nip off. Once you decide to not be cheap and insulate your walls, then go for a legit stove.

For the price of a couple barrels, some 2" tube, and a box fan you can at least keep your fingers from freezing.
 
I have built 2 of them. Worked great. Used old racing fuel drums. Make sure they were dry, eh.
Bot a kit at one of the farm supply type stores. I put the vent in the bottom of the feed end and the exhaust
at the top pf the other end. Air flow was phenomenal.
Used old fire bricks out of someones old wood stove to line the bottom. Otherwise the metal will not last long.
put some sand in first.
Put it at a cabin on a concrete floor so we did not check with insurance. If you want to see if they'll accept it
you'll prob need a concrete pad and nothing even close.
Best working stove we ever had in there
 
Had one in a 30x40 with nothing but poly on the ceiling. It was comfortable at 20 degrees with a box fan for circulation. At -20 it was worthless. @Tradewind has good suggestions about intake and exhaust. I screwed up the intake on my first go round. Insulated the structure the next summer and barely needed a heater the next winter. I’ll put my money and effort into insulation first, going forward.
 
Yes lve built several. And have 2 now. They work very well. I used the forge cast kit that is sold. It looks nice and it does a good job. As wrote sand n 2"x8"×16" cement paver blocks on the bottom. I put one barrel on 8x16 blocks. 4 cement blocks about a foot apart the barrel set into. Distributes the weight well and I broke the leg freighting it to our cabin.
It's nice to weld in a flat piece of steel to cook on but a piece of steel welded to the top works good too. Also nice that longer wood can be used.
 
That was all we used to heat our house. 55 fallen barrel. Can take 40” wood pieces with ease. Issue is finding an old school double wall or thick barrel. Not the cheap ones today. We would get about 10 years out of ours. Massive heat. We would literally turn barrel red hot and it glowed at night. My dad welded legs up to top so we would put a flat piece of steel like a table. We could cook on it. Great for keeping coffee and water hot.
 
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