Travis Johnson
Member
- Messages
- 2,369
Kind of a crazy idea, but you guys are used to that by now...
I have a 35,000 btu propane powered clothes dryer that is pretty much doing nothing. Its been rebuilt and is perfectly fine in every way, but my wife wants to keep her electric one for now.
So I got to thinking, what if you made a sheet metal box for this thing, mounting it to the front of the clothes dryer, remove the door and then load wood in it. If the thing works so good for drying clothes, why wouldn't it dry lumber? The big kilns often use natural gas or other fossil fuels to create the heat, and the internal blower would distribute the air flow...
The only problems I can think of is the timer. These things are made to run for 60 minutes max. Defeating the timer would be easy enough, but all the safety features for the burner tie into the timer. It would not be so easy to defeat as one would think??? The door shut off would be another safety kill switch to defeat, but that would be easy.
I don't know if turning the kiln on twice a day for 60 minutes (before work and after I came home) would be enough to dry the lumber or not. I supposed I could stick a dehumidifier in there to dry the lumber inbetween "firings", but I could do that without a 35,000 btu burner unit too though?
Just a wild idea I had...
I have a 35,000 btu propane powered clothes dryer that is pretty much doing nothing. Its been rebuilt and is perfectly fine in every way, but my wife wants to keep her electric one for now.
So I got to thinking, what if you made a sheet metal box for this thing, mounting it to the front of the clothes dryer, remove the door and then load wood in it. If the thing works so good for drying clothes, why wouldn't it dry lumber? The big kilns often use natural gas or other fossil fuels to create the heat, and the internal blower would distribute the air flow...
The only problems I can think of is the timer. These things are made to run for 60 minutes max. Defeating the timer would be easy enough, but all the safety features for the burner tie into the timer. It would not be so easy to defeat as one would think??? The door shut off would be another safety kill switch to defeat, but that would be easy.
I don't know if turning the kiln on twice a day for 60 minutes (before work and after I came home) would be enough to dry the lumber or not. I supposed I could stick a dehumidifier in there to dry the lumber inbetween "firings", but I could do that without a 35,000 btu burner unit too though?
Just a wild idea I had...