Home made heat exchanger

So I was reading how guys are making their own heat exchanger. Have you guys ever built one? Can we build one? Will you help me? Suggestions?

for blower heat or engine heat?

technically you could get some piping from home depot and coil it around your exhaust and your blower exhaust.... wouldnt give you really great temps but it would get up there.

what machine is it for? if its the TNT its not really worth it.

you need an oversized engine and pipe it down to create load which will give you heat.

I would just buy a new 3/4ht LG if you want good temps... once you go fuel fired heat youll never want a heat exchanger again

Blower peheat hx for blower exhaust no engine exhaust you could use a vehicle heater core blower exhaust can reach 350 degree but that shouldn't melt the solder joints. Put it in a box with blower blowing through it.

ACE Services wrote:Blower peheat hx for blower exhaust no engine exhaust you could use a vehicle heater core blower exhaust can reach 350 degree but that shouldn't melt the solder joints. Put it in a box with blower blowing through it.

I thought about using an auto heater core ACE. I had an extra one too when my son totaled his car. I wanted to use the engine exhaust

God Danggum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boomhauer what you be sayin!?!?

Thanks for your help bro.

Most hx that use engine exhaust are so close to the exhaust that they are SS to be able to stand up to the heat. Even if you mix blower and engine exhaust solder joints should be silver solder to handle the heat.
Engine exhaust can be over 900 degrees unrestricted.

So I would need to enclose the heater core in a stainless steel box.

Just a metal Bx shouldn't need to be SS but if you have the SS on hand it will last longer. Or aluminum will work. Just make the inlet and outlet the same as the blower exhaust is so you don't have back pressure on the blower.

Mo wrote:Thanks for your help bro.

He's useless when it comes to HX, I would just pretend he doesn't exist when you're talking about HX

Mo wrote:So I would need to enclose the heater core in a stainless steel box.

Yes Mo you need to make a box and then set two or three heater cores inside then run them in a series. That being said, there is NO WAY the heat cores are going to hold up to any amount of pressure.
Also you are not going to be able to build to much heat out of them as the more heat you build the water expands building its OWN pressure by itself.
I designed a heat booster for my PC legend and it HAS CHANGED my performance out of her. So much so I am NOT going to by a new rig. I will just rebuild her.
The thing is my heat booster pre heats incoming water and is 100% low pressure. Never boils the water and never will, not enough btu's being introduced to the booster to do so.
I am cleaning with 200+ degree water at my wand at all times now, and it is costing my no money to get it, we simply used the left over btu's coming out of the engines HX so my incoming water is about 110-120*. This is just enough to let my PC Legends existing system get the water up to better heat levels.

MO you need to call BEN of AMTEX EQUIPMENT he will sell you a SS coiled HX system that he uses on his machines, I know Todd took one and added it to his old PC 100A and it worked great.
You could totally mount it a top of your Judson easily and plumb engine exhaust to it, I think you would get good heat out of it because it would be very close to the motor not much ex pipe to get it to the hx.
Also if you did do this to keep it on the safe side you would need to add a BYPASS ON YOUR WAND, this way you can just crack the valve open just a tad and keep the water moving while your wand is not being used.
I am still working on HX for my VW TM but I am leaning more and more to just call Ben and get one of his already done.

Mo,
One other thing, a heat exchange unit circulates the water in a loop, so MOST HX truck mounts that rely on HX all have water boxes, the water box acts as a storage so the pump can keep circulating the water through the system....building more and more heat, because of this design the high pressure water pumps MORE THAN LIKELY have higher heat seals in the pumps to handle the higher temps, my water box has a thermal valve rated at 180* so that just tells you the pump is going to be subjected to pumping hot water.
Some argue that the seals don't last and so on, in 7 years I have replaced my seals ONE time that's it.
Now being you have a Judson you may need to think about temp and seals if you add a loop to your system and pre heat your water box if you have one, this is where a bypass will also help you, as the bypass keeps the water from going back to the pump to much....the bummer is you fill your waste tank faster if you bypass a lot.

Great info Tom thanks.  I rarely fill my waste tank in a day of cleaning so bypassing to the tank is an option.

I know the little giant will give you consistent heat but I think I like the convenience of just being able to turn on the machine to get heat.

Mo, Are you thinking about trying to make this to use instead of the LG heater, or in addition to it?

I think it's going to be pretty hard to make something that's even close to what you can get out of the LG?

That's what I'm thinking Dave. I have always opted fro convenience and it sure would be nice to just turn the key and start cleaning and not have to worry about propane,lighting and cleaning burners

Mo wrote:That's what I'm thinking Dave. I have always opted fro convenience and it sure would be nice to just turn the key and start cleaning and not have to worry about propane,lighting and cleaning burners

In your location Mo, I would have started with a Hx machine in the first place. I too prefer the simple convenience of just having the heat available without having to deal with an add-on heat system. The only exception is during the winter when I can't get more than 160 degrees at the wand.....then I crave the added heat of a different system.

Your winters wouldn't be a factor, so a heat exchange system seems like a good idea to me. Either convert that TNT or sell it off for something else....maybe an inferno mount?

I should just buy a heat exchanger and be done with it.

I found a guy on craigslist selling a few stainless steel vent pipes double walled for 5.00 bucks. They are 8 inches in diameter and 4 feet long. Is that diameter to0 big. I was thinking about a 4 in diameter. But at least I can coil 100 feet of tube in that sucker.

What do you think? Good idea or am I FOS.

Ok Mo
Looks like nobody's going to jump in on this so here goes.
If you are thinking that a homemade hx is going to give you the heat you are used to having with the LJ heater probably not going to happen. There's a lot more to it than just stuffing a pipe with tubing and hooking the water and exhaust up and your done. I know you are aware of this but some may not I'm no engineer but the engine exhaust btu's verses restrictions and diameter of the hx plus water flow and water pressure are all variables that have to be factored in.
Most hx tm are doing everything they can to maintain a industry standard of 230 degrees at 300 psi with #4 jet. Most cleaners are running 400 - 600 psi the difference between 300 and 600 is one third more water. Then some of the cleaners want to use 6 to 8 gallon jets moving even more water then gripe about not being hot enough.
Now the homemade preheater Bx can help warm the incoming water so that the propane heater will use less lp gas become it would take less time to heat up. That is what a pc legend se does. That's thoughts.

Thanks, Eddie..........I'm glad someone was able to put thoughts into words.

Sorry, Mo nothing against you, but like I thought and said earlier, it's prob not going to happen, making heat equal or even close to the LG with a home made HX.

Eddie is correct, you will not get the same kind of heat as you did with the LG heater, but how much do you really need?

My old butler can only get me 200 degrees at the mount, but I have never been unable to clean with that heat. Even my sad temperatures during the winter still got the job done....just took an agitation step.

I think I would call John's HX and put the question to him or even to Les Judson. There has to be a way to convert it, even the El Diablo has an Hx option now.