Principles of making a stove from car disks for a bath

The most expensive part of building a steam room is heating and heating, so craftsmen are always looking for a way to reduce the cost of construction, for example, making a sauna stove from the wheel rims of a car, truck or tractor. Despite the seeming adventurousness of the idea, a stove made from spare parts heats a bathhouse no worse than a branded one, if, of course, you approach the assembly with all diligence and accuracy.

What is good about a sauna stove made of disks?

A strange, at first glance, idea to build a heater from steel wheels in practice results in quite decent cost savings and a huge firebox resource. Of course, provided that most of the work on the construction of a sauna stove from wheel rims is done with your own hands. But even if the most critical part of the work is performed by a professional welder, this will only slightly increase costs. And the amount spent on assembling a stove from wheel rims for a bathhouse according to your own design will not be comparable to the 6-8 thousand rubles that a factory potbelly stove will cost.

To be precise, using spare parts from heavy vehicles with rims larger than 19 inches to make a stove provides serious advantages that are not even found in factory models of potbelly stoves:

• The huge wall thickness in different wheel models is 7-11 mm. As a result, a sauna stove made from wheel rims turns out to be heavier and more massive than a factory steel or cast iron structure. A wheeled stove cools down in two hours, while branded sauna stove designs made of 3-4 mm thick steel cool down in 50-60 minutes;
• A stove made from disks for a sauna is not afraid of thermal shocks, as in the case of fireboxes made of cast iron, and does not burn out or deform due to thermal stress. With proper maintenance, a wheeled firebox can last in a bathhouse for a couple of decades without a significant decrease in heating efficiency;
• High quality stamped metal. After processing, the discs have high strength and rigidity, so that the steel rim ring, even when heated red hot, can withstand a load of 2 tons of weight.

For your information!
A sauna stove made from truck disks has one unique property. To ignite and quickly build up the required heat, you can use a coal briquette or washed anthracite in limited quantities. Any other stoves with a closed firebox in the bathhouse are heated only with wood. After combustion, coal ash acts as a heat accumulator, so one stack is enough for 2-2.5 hours of heating. During this time, the owners have time to steam and thoroughly dry the walls and floor of the bathhouse.

Among the disadvantages of the idea of ​​​​using wheel rims to make the body of a firebox in a bathhouse, we can only recall the not very convenient shape of the crown, which makes it difficult to assemble sealed containers for heating water. In some cases, the seams along the joint line of the disks have to be welded using an autogenous welding machine or an intermediate transition belt must be installed.

Preparation of working tools and necessary materials

To make a homemade sauna stove from disks, you need to prepare working tools and materials:

• grinder with circles for cutting metal;
• welding equipment;
• personal protective equipment: glasses, gloves;
• chimney pipe (wall thickness 5 mm, cross-section - 16 cm);
• metal sheets (thickness 8 mm);
• door hangers;
• red fire brick;
• channels;
• clay, sand and cement for masonry mortar.

In addition, 4 truck rims will be required to complete the job. From the disks of a truck, you can make a furnace structure with a diameter of 50 cm and a wall thickness of 1 cm.

Important! To make a homemade stove, it is not recommended to use passenger car rims due to their small diameter.

Each disk in the finished design is designed to perform a specific task:

• The first disk is the firebox hood. The finished stove is equipped with a brick firebox with a door. To simplify the design, the firebox is installed inside the first disk.
• The second disk is a heater. It is used to place stones to ensure sufficient volume of pure steam in the steam room.
• The third disk is a heat exchanger for reliable heating of the room.
• The fourth disk is a container with hot water.

What to choose from disks for assembling a sauna stove with your own hands

Any construction of a firebox made of steel rims begins with the selection of material. For production you will need at least 3-4 pieces of wheel rims without damage or visible defects. It is clear that it is best to build a stove from the rims of a heavy truck. The wheels from the Gazelle, Bull, LAWN, mini-trucks of the Chinese automobile industry are simply small, the firebox turns out to be small, heats weakly and ineffectively. Such discs make excellent potbelly stoves for temporary shelters and change houses.

Several wheel options can be used as the starting material:

• Standard 8.5-20 wheel rim from tractors based on KRAZ 65101. The convenient shape of the rim will require a minimum of alterations, and the wall thickness of 11 mm will make the stove in the bathhouse eternal, even if you burn it with coal;
• Wheels 5425-3101012D or 4310-3101012 for KAMAZ, diameter 503-508 mm, with rim width 310 mm and 216 mm, respectively.

All of the above options are found in both very worn and satisfactory condition. There is no point in buying new disks for equipping a stove in a bathhouse, it is too expensive. For example, a new Krazovsky disk costs up to $100, and they last a very long time. There is a chance to buy a pair of old rims from a mining equipment driver, although they are extremely reluctant to part with the rims.

It is best to plan a sauna stove using KAMAZ wheels. Firstly, the rim itself is almost 20% lighter, and secondly, KAMAZ wheels are much more affordable, so the chance of purchasing them for almost nothing is much higher than looking for wheels from a tractor or loader.

Advice! Ideally, it is best to find a flangeless or discless wheel model 5320-3101012 to build a furnace in a bathhouse from KAMAZ disks.

This is a relatively new model designed to use tubeless tires. Essentially, it's just a rim with a width of 179 mm and a diameter of 508 mm. Installation on the stove does not require any additional trimming with a grinder, and in addition, the disc is almost twice as light as a classic rim - 26 kg, versus 48 kg for a regular KAMAZ model.

Design Features

We have looked at one of the features of constructing a furnace of this type, let’s move on to others. In the vast majority of cases, a disk furnace is configured as a combined furnace. The key reason for this decision is that the steam obtained from the stove, made up entirely of disks, is quite harsh and uncomfortable. For a sauna, with its low humidity, this is not so important, but in a Russian steam bath, this circumstance is certainly worth paying attention to.

To obtain high-quality soft steam, you must have a stove with a brick firebox. The discs are used as a container for laying closed stone backfill and as a mounted hot water tank for heating water. The use of an open heater is very limited due to the impossibility of burning the fuel in the stove to its fullest extent, so soot fragments will settle on the stones, which will cause them to enter the steam room atmosphere the first time you try to add steam with a ladle of water.

When making such a sauna stove, you should not weld the hub hole, since the convex shape of the disk initiates the formation of a gas cushion in this part, which, supporting the flue gases, causes them to be evenly distributed throughout the entire volume and flow around the bottom of the heater.

Important! It is advisable to make flame cutters and struts from steel similar to that used in the disk itself. For example, fragments left over from cutting similar disks. The closer the coefficient of thermal expansion of the steel of the body and the cut-off valve welded to it is, the less likely it is that it will warp and tear off over time.

If it is not possible to build a stone firebox, then it is worth making a full-size stove from cargo disks, which are much larger than passenger cars and have a main seat diameter of about 20 - 22 inches. To reduce the overall height and laying of the disk segments, the design should be made with an embedded-type grate, made of a steel circle with a thickness of 6-10 mm along the diameter of the internal fit and reinforcing rods with a thickness of 12-16 mm.

A hole with a diameter of 150-170 mm is cut in the center of the circle onto which reinforcement sections are welded at intervals. The air passage of such a grate is enough to accelerate to a power of 25-27 kW. When installing the grate, it is necessary to provide a thermal gap within 8-10 mm; a metal ash pan with a diameter of about 200 mm is placed under the grate hole.

Again, taking into account the fact of the formation of hard steam in conditions of high humidity in a Russian steam bath, it is better to use a stove of this type for arranging a Finnish dry steam sauna.

In general, step-by-step instructions for making a stove of this type can be viewed in the attached video.

Bath stove designs

You can build a good firebox for a steam room from any 20-inch KAMAZ wheels. When choosing, you need to pay attention to ensure that the rim is not deformed, without traces of impacts or flaring of the bead. It is almost impossible to straighten bent metal 7-10 mm thick in a garage, but a crack can be welded.

To build a stove in a bathhouse or steam room, two firebox options are used:

• Vertical combustion chamber type. The discs are stacked and welded at the joints, resulting in a compact, durable and stable structure;

• Barrel type combustion chamber. The furnace body is welded from three rims and mounted in a horizontal position. This model is convenient for loading equipment from a dressing room or any other utility room.

The third option, combined, involves arranging an ash pit and a combustion chamber in the bathhouse made of red and refractory bricks. Discs are used on the stove only for the roof, heater and hot water tank equipment.

To build such a stove in a bathhouse, you will need the experience and skill of a professional stove maker. Otherwise, the load of 150 kg of disks and 50 kg of stones may cause cracks in the brickwork of the furnace walls.

The optimal option for making a “barrel” from disks

A horizontal stove is no different from sauna heaters and potbelly stoves made from large-diameter water pipes or propane cylinders. To make the simplest stove from disks, you need to select three KAMAZ rims.

Two are left unchanged, the third is subjected to additional trimming and the flange wall is removed. Simply put, you need to cut out the bottom of the disk with an oxygen cutter or a powerful grinder, leaving only the rim. A metal grid of grates is placed inside the rim and welded to the walls of the disc.

The ends of the two remaining wheels are welded with thick sheet metal, at least 5 mm thick. Canopies are welded onto one of the disks and equipped with a door; a hole is left in the lower part for cleaning the ash pan of the stove. Typically, a pull-out metal tray or a sector valve is used for these purposes. A sauna stove must be equipped with a damper damper.

A flange for the chimney is cut into the third disk, after which all three elements are stacked on a metal stand, aligned and the joints between the rings are welded. The most valuable thing about this design is its simplicity and ease of installation. The stove can be installed in a bathhouse without any foundation. It is enough to lay a sheet of steel on the floor on a heat-insulating substrate, and you can install the stove.

This scheme is ideal for installation in a small bathhouse in the country. At the end of the season, the structure weighing just over 100 kg can be taken away or stored.

From the metal science course

What is attractive about a stove made from used car rims? Several significant points:

1. Sufficient fuel combustion efficiency and heat transfer. There is a rule derived from the practical use of furnaces of this type: a unit of the size of the seat diameter of the disk is able to effectively heat 1 square meter. m of usable area with a conventional ceiling height of 230 cm. That is, one of the most common and affordable seating sizes in the R13-R14 class of passenger cars. A design made on the basis of such disks is capable of heating 14-15 cubic meters. usable space in the bathhouse.
2. This stove is made from available materials. At the beginning of spring, as the asphalt melts along with the snow, a mass of broken wheels accumulates at tire workshops. If in some cases the geometry of a damaged disk can be restored by rolling, then cracks in the body of a steel object are reluctantly restored by responsible craftsmen, for a number of objective reasons. We will talk about this in more detail below. In any case, you can get suitable disks for the price of scrap metal.
3. The wheel rim is made not from simple structural steel, but from alloy steel, that is, which contains elements that increase its performance characteristics: strength, wear resistance, resistance to various types of deformation. It is clear that the alloy of such steel does not include additives that increase its heat resistance, in particular nickel, but the presence of the same manganese puts such steel in terms of heat resistance several orders of magnitude higher than conventional structural steels presented at metal warehouses.
4. The disk shape implies the use of a minimum of technological operations to transform it into a furnace body.

On the principles of using welding in the manufacture of a furnace from disks

A disk sauna stove, like any other, is a source of increased fire hazard, so its manufacture must be approached with the utmost responsibility. Before moving on to a description of the manufacturing technology, let us dwell on a very important and fundamental point. Application of welding. To manufacture a furnace of this type, a large range of tools is not needed.

The disk has already been formed into a cylinder; all that remains is to prepare the segments by removing unnecessary elements from them and welding them into a single structure. For such work, you need an angle grinder, better known as an angle grinder with a range of cutting and grinding wheels with a diameter of 125 mm, a welding machine, preferably an inverter type, and a mechanic’s hammer weighing 0.75 - 1 kg. A plasma cutting machine will be a very good help. It allows you to produce clean radius cuts incomparably faster and more conveniently than an angle grinder. But in the absence of fish, the angle grinder is also a pike.

Now directly about welding. In the mass production of wheel rims, the hot or cold stamping method is used and the properties of the steel are optimized specifically for this technology. Steel has a sufficient degree of plasticity that is inaccessible for a weld, therefore, when carrying out welding work, we adhere to the following rules:

1. We strictly observe fire safety when carrying out hot work.
2. In one approach, only two mating parts are welded.
3. The current strength and the speed of electrode advancement are adjusted in such a way as to obtain the most correct and high-quality seam. Bubbles, cavities, cracks, and splashes are not allowed.
4. Upon completion of the weld, the joint is allowed to cool, after which the slag is carefully knocked down and the seam is inspected for visual defects.
5. The continuation of the seam can be made only after balancing the temperature of the seam and the body of the part being welded with a temperature close to the environment.
6. The internal stresses of the seam and welded parts that arise in production conditions are removed by annealing, which can also be done at home and the use of which we will discuss below.

A word from Experienced! You can check the seam for solidity at home using kerosene tinted with printer ink. Due to its high penetrating power, kerosene seeps through the smallest cracks, and the ink pigment makes the effect visual, naturally on a previously cleaned and dry surface.

Another very important circumstance. A disk stove can only be used as a simple flaming solid fuel stove, in our case a wood stove.

Important! It’s not for nothing that we paid so much attention to welding work. This design has a large number of connections made using a weld. Through poor-quality seams, carbon monoxide can leak into the interior of the bathhouse, which is fraught with fatal consequences. High-quality construction and good ventilation are the key to safe use.

The modern market and technology provide a sufficient selection of materials for welding work. Undoubtedly, it is worth using this circumstance and selecting electrodes with the necessary or as close as possible to the necessary parameters.

A few words about disk dimensions

When starting to design such a stove and selecting materials for it, it is important to know the overall dimensions of the disks in order to fit them properly into the overall heating design and into the interior of the bathhouse as a whole. For better understanding, we present such data in table form:

It is very important to take into account the dimensions of the disks when setting up the furnace. A small example. The rules for the design of combustion furnaces operating on wood and solid mineral fuels stipulate that the distance from the grate to the hearth must be at least 600 mm. This is subject to the use of dry conditioned fuel.
If raw firewood is used, this distance should be increased to 800 mm. This circumstance will prevent the sedimentation of pyrolysis gases on the furnace bottom, which will lead to the formation of soot deposits, and as a result, a decrease in efficiency and an increased risk of uncontrolled ignition of the soot layer. Knowing the width of the disk, it is easy to design the required number of segments to obtain the specified height of the combustion space.

The classic version of a vertical heater

The idea of ​​using rims from heavy trucks appeared quite a long time ago, almost half a century ago. In the first heavy trucks serving trucking companies in the cold season, it was necessary to warm up the water before pouring it into the radiator. Therefore, drivers and mechanics came up with a design for a stove made of disks, which later migrated to cabins and garages, and was then used in the bathhouse.

The vertical stove made from wheel rims could be used anywhere. Moreover, with the help of a mobile stove it was possible to turn even a tent or a light wooden shed into a bathhouse, even without a chimney. In a properly welded stove made of disks, a fire was lit on oiled rags, then coal and firewood were used. After the walls of the disks heated up to a crimson color, the fire was extinguished, the room was ventilated, covered with blankets, and the change house was turned into a bathhouse.

What is required for production

It is possible to obtain a homemade stove after preparing the necessary components and additional devices.

The manufacture of a sauna stove involves the use of the following materials and tools:

1. welding machine with electrodes;
2. a grinder on which a cutting wheel for metal is installed;
3. metal sheets (optimal thickness 8 mm);
4. smoke exhaust pipe, diameter 160 mm;
5. door canopies;
6. channel;
7. fireproof brick;
8. clay, sand for preparing a solution;
9. gloves and glasses for personal protection.

The main component for the furnace is 4 rims from a truck, for example, ZIL-130. They allow you to create a firebox with a diameter of 50 cm. This design will have walls 1 cm thick.

Before you make a stove from disks, you need to know why exactly 4 pieces are used.

Each element plays its role:

• The first one contains a brick firebox. The fuel is placed through a door that is mounted on it.
• the second is intended for stones. The hot rocks help produce steam once water hits them.
• the third – exchanges heat between the stove and the room. Thanks to this, it is possible to maintain the desired temperature.
• the fourth one heats the water.

Furnace diagram

We build a vertical stove from disks

The design of the furnace, its structure and principle of operation are clear from the photo below.

The stove body is assembled from four disks from ZIL 131, URAL or KAMAZ. The stacked set of steel rims reaches a height of almost 90 cm, and given the weight of the water in the upper tank and the stones, it becomes clear that the structure is quite unstable.

To protect the bathhouse from fire, it is necessary to make a classic concrete foundation with thermal insulation for the stove, and for the lower ring, which acts as an ash pan, use a disk model 43118-3101012 with a maximum rim diameter of 560 mm. The wide part is welded with sheet metal, the head of the ash pan is trimmed to make it easier to connect to the combustion chamber.

The next two rings are cut off on one side and welded together into a solid cavity. This is the furnace firebox. As in the ash pan, so in the combustion chamber, it is necessary to cut a hatch in the wall of the disk for loading firewood or briquettes.

The upper part of the stove consists of a water tank and a heater. It, like the ash pan, is best made from high-speed rims with high sides. A thick-walled metal pipe is welded into the central part of the structure, to which the chimney trunk will be attached.

Features of making a furnace from disks

Before assembly, all parts of the stove must be cleaned mechanically, without firing, preferably with a sandblaster or a brush with metal bristles. The metal of the body is quite thick, 6-9 mm, so the welding line will need to be cut at an angle of 60°.

The joint is welded in three passes; if possible, it is better to weld the stove from disks using a powerful three-phase welder of an industrial model. It is impossible to qualitatively weld metal for a sauna stove with a 2.5 kW garage inverter. In this case, the furnace body is only tacked by welding points, and the entire seam is made with an acetylene torch. This is the only way to make the firebox safe for use in a bathhouse. No putty or grouting of welded seams with clay or liquid glass is allowed.

After welding, the seams are cleaned, and the furnace body is painted with heat-resistant paint. All furnace structures made from wheel rims are classified as very hot; after heating, the walls can burn even at a distance of up to a meter from the surface. Therefore, after installing the stove in the bathhouse, you will need to make a removable screen from aluminum foil glued to a galvanized sheet.