Bath stove. Cast iron bath stove and cast iron fireplace

If you have an old cast-iron bathtub lying around somewhere in your garage or dacha, you shouldn’t rush to sell it for scrap. It can be used to make an excellent outdoor oven and install in the garden.

A stove made from an old unnecessary thing will become decoration and an excellent assistant, delighting guests and household members with delicious and original dishes.

Most often, a garden barbecue stove is made from old cast iron bathtubs. The cast iron from which the bath is made, having high thermal conductivity, retains heat for a long time and allows you to cook not only the usual food, but even bake bread and other unique dishes.

How to make a stove from an old cast iron bathtub?

The essence of the construction is that the bath cut in half. The resulting halves are placed one on top of the other, with the curved side outward, and laid metal sheet between them.

It separates the firebox and the chamber in which the food will be cooked. Holes are made in the sheet of iron and the upper half of the bath for chimney and the pipe is welded.

It remains to strengthen the structure, give it interesting view, insert grate bars and do doors.

Necessary materials and equipment

To build a garden stove you will need:

herself bath, it can be steel, but better - cast iron;
Bulgarian;
edged metal cutting circles;
circles for grinding;
Metal sheet thick 5 mm and more;
drill;
bolts;

heat-resistant sealant;
tape measure or roulette;
pencil or marker;
welding machine ;
pipe for chimney;
grate bars;
bricks;
clay;
sand.

Preparatory work

Before you start building a structure, you need to make all the preparations:

Mark the middle of the bathtub and cut it in half - this work is labor-intensive and dusty, so it's better to spend it outside by turning the bathtub upside down.
Cut a blank from a metal sheet to the size of the resulting half.
On a cut sheet of iron and half of the bathtub that will be on top, mark the holes for the chimney and cut them out.
Weld the pipe into the partition and bring it out through top part.
Do markings for fastenings.

Important! All work on cutting, grinding edges and trimming iron sheets must be carried out wearing safety glasses. A welding work- V special mask.

DIY stove construction

When all preliminary the work is done, you can proceed directly to the construction of the furnace itself.

Foundation

Furnace design quite heavy, so you can’t do without a foundation. It will not allow the device to shrink and deform.

For a structure that is not heavy in weight, the foundation can be brick. For more significant is done bulk- depth up to 50 cm. To ensure that the stove is at a convenient level, supports of the required height are concreted into the foundation.

Further work are carried out after complete drying foundation.

Assembly of the structure: photo

Half of the bath, which is reserved for the lower combustion part of the stove, coated with sealant, the top is covered with pre-cut sheet of iron with a welded chimney. You can insert cast iron into this sheet hob.

Photo 1. A cast-iron bathtub, carefully sawn in half, is prepared for applying sealant.

Top design covered with the other half bathtubs, bottom up, passing the chimney pipe into a pre-cut hole. Edges in contact with metal sheet, are also coated with sealant.
Both halves of the bath and the sheet between them bolted together.

Photo 2. The connected halves of the bath form the furnace body: combustion chamber and a cooking compartment.

Finished design mounted on supports in the foundation and lined with bricks. The masonry can be only on the back and sides or on all sides.
In the lower part - the combustion chamber - is installed grate.

Photo 3. The stove, assembled from two halves of the bath, is almost ready. All that remains is to fit the doors.

If the design of the furnace includes a firebox and ash chamber covered with brickwork, then during operation immediately doors are mounted: for the blower in the lower part, for the firebox - a little higher, opposite the grate.

Important! The damper or door handle must be wooden to avoid burns.

The wall is laid out to the junction of the edges of the bathtub with each other. The bricks must fit snugly to all edges of the stove.

For the top compartment stoves are provided flap or door. In the tightly closed part you can not only cook any dishes, but even bake bread.

Insulation of the cooking chamber

Upper half drags on mesh, throws a solution of 1 part clay and 2 parts sand, thickness up to 7 cm and levels out. You can decorate the top wild stone, pieces heat resistant tiles or simply whitewash.

The final stage

That's it - bake ready, you can already use it. But many are trying to give it more modern look, For what rough work hide beautiful brickwork, veneer wild stone or decorative tiles.

Photo 4. Finished whitewashed cast iron stove from a bathtub, installed in the garden on a brick base.

Possible difficulties during work

Problems when constructing a garden stove, problems may arise on preparatory stage when cutting the old one cast iron bath.

Advice. Work is carried out wearing glasses and thick clothes, covering the body.

It needs to be cut carefully, slowly. First, the enamel layer is cut along the marking line to prevent chipping. Then the cast iron is cut at an angle, making small slits, and not allowing the angle grinder to overheat. To prevent the disc from being pinched by the bath halves, the incision site is expanded wooden stick or brick.

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Bathtub stove: 4 stages of creating a cast iron monster

There are never many stoves in a well-equipped dacha, especially good ones, and it’s a pity to sell an old cast-iron bathtub for scrap. These are exactly the thoughts that came to me after installing a brand new quaril font in my apartment. And I decided not to get rid of the previous massive tank, but to take it to a country site and convert it into an efficient stove structure. Next I will describe how it happened.

Stage No. 1: preparation of tools and materials

As for transporting the bathtub to the dacha, the most difficult thing was to bring it to the trailer. Cast iron is incredibly heavy and has magical property: Gain mass with every step you take. But somehow, my comrades and I, nevertheless, put the “hippopotamus” into the prepared vehicle and I delivered it to the site of further work.

Only after everyone had suffered as loaders did the brilliant idea come to me that it was necessary to saw the font in the bathroom, because this would still need to be done in the future to create a stove. But two halves are much more convenient and easier to carry than the entire cast iron product.

After delivering the main “beast”, I set about preparing all the other supplies necessary to complete the plan:

Tools

When working with a cast-iron bathtub cast back in Soviet times, I recommend using only high-quality power tools from well-known foreign brands, since cheap Chinese copies simply may not withstand such a difficult confrontation and burn out.

Materials

In addition to the cast iron container itself, I needed:

Stage No. 2: cutting the cast iron font

I want to warn you right away that this process very labor intensive, requiring great patience and care, since during its execution it is possible to break both the tool and the disc, resulting in a high probability of serious injury to people nearby.

In my execution it looked like this:

To start laid the bathtub upside down on the ground for the convenience of further operations;

If you cut containers indoors, be sure to cover the walls and furniture with plastic film or old rags, otherwise cast iron dust will settle on them, which is almost impossible to remove.

Strictly I drew a straight line in the middle with a marker, marking the location of the cut;

Further strictly according to the applied markings carefully made a cut into the enamel layer using a grinder, the depth of which is usually from 1.5 to 2.5 mm. If you immediately start sawing the cast iron itself, then chips will form on the enamel covering it;

Now moved on to cutting the font itself and did it slowly, regularly giving the instrument rest. Believe me, the price of haste here can be very high; the saved 20-30 minutes will not replace your burnt angle grinder.

Stage No. 2: installation work

Now it’s time to assemble a real stove from an old bathtub that you cut up with your own hands. I, in turn, will conditionally divide this part of the work into three phases:

Laying the foundation

I already mentioned above that a cast iron font is very, very heavy, so the structure being built will be even heavier. Consequently, without a reliable foundation, shrinkage processes will constantly occur, which will lead to deformation of the body, which is absolutely unacceptable. Therefore, I started the assembly by pouring a reliable foundation:

I dug a pit with my own hands using a shovel an area slightly larger than the future oven and a depth of 300 mm;

Then he covered the bottom with a ten-centimeter layer of sand mixed with crushed stone;
Along the perimeter put out the formwork from the boards;
Installed fittings inside;
Mixed concrete solution from gravel, sand and cement in proportions 5:3:1;

Filled the prepared cavity with the resulting mixture.

In a good way, the foundation should be poured long before dismantling old bath, since it will take time to set. But this moment turned out to be ill-conceived for me, and therefore there was a break in my activities aimed at making the stove.

Furnace assembly

As the foundation hardened, I moved on to assembling the two halves of the bathtub into something more practical and functional:

Cut a sheet from prepared metal, which can completely cover the floor of the font;

I did it closer to the back wall. future design hole and welded a half-meter piece of prepared pipe to it;
I installed one of the halves of the tank on the foundation;

Then applied heat-resistant sealant to its edges using mounting gun, and placed the assembled sheet with part of the built-in chimney on top;

Further started making a hole for the chimney in the second half of a cast iron container. Here the work turned out to be more difficult than similar manipulations with steel sheets, so I will describe them in more detail:

I applied markings in accordance with the cross-section of the chimney pipe around the drain. Of course, it needs to be marked first of all where it will pass, I just initially, for greater convenience, adjusted all the structural elements so that these points coincided;
I drilled many holes along the intended contour;
Carefully, again, slowly, I cut the remaining jumpers with a grinder;
The edges of the resulting opening were carefully processed with a file, bringing it to the desired state;

I applied sealant around the perimeter of the sheet covering the already installed part of the stove, and, putting the second half of the bath on the pipe, covered the structure with it;
The top of the chimney was increased to a meter height;
Sides protruding along the perimeter, including a steel interlayer of the intermediate sheet, drilled with a drill a drill whose diameter is 10 mm;

Into the resulting holes threaded the corresponding bolts, and screwed nuts and washers onto them on top. Tightened each connection tightly;

For the lower combustion chamber picked up the grate so that it fits tightly between the walls, and there is still 150 mm left to the bottom. If you have problems with an object of a suitable size, then weld metal corners on the sides;

Perimeter and façade design

In the condition that the stove had after its assembly was completed, it gave off too much thermal energy environment, did not look aesthetically pleasing and was a somewhat shaky structure. So I did the following:

Mixed a solution of cement and sand, using a ratio of one to three. For this I used a drill in tandem with a special attachment in the form of a whisk;

Built brick walls behind and on the sides of the stove. Brick has low thermal conductivity, therefore, now large quantity heat will rise to the food being prepared;

For the facade, I used a grinder to cut out curly shapes to match the contours of the halves of the font metal sheets. Then:

In the canvas intended for the lower combustion part I cut out small hole, just such that the prepared firewood can freely pass into it, and install the door;
In the canvas intended for the upper cooking part, I cut out a kind of crescent, which covered only the edges of the chamber, and from the rest I made two openings different sides doors;
I installed both products using angles, a drill and bolts.

As an alternative, you can cover the front side up to the level of the cooking chamber with bricks. Only in this case it is necessary to install doors for the blower and firebox into the masonry. The upper compartment is then closed simply by a large steel flap with a handle.

Stage No. 4: finishing

Here I had two tasks:

Insulate the stove structure even more;
Decorate the building, making it an excellent addition to the country interior.

And I started:

Mixed a solution of clay and sand in a ratio of one to two;

You can also add some lime to the mix. This will reduce the risk of cracks appearing during the hardening of the finishing layer.

Covered the cooking compartment with steel mesh, the cell size of which is 20 mm, and fixed its edges to the brickwork using self-tapping screws and plastic dowels. Now applied from above clay plaster it will not slide down a smooth cast-iron surface, and when it dries, it will have sufficient strength;
By this time, the kneaded mixture had reached the desired consistency, and I used a spatula applied the first finishing coat, which did not iron;

After the clay has set, already done finishing , then moistened the spatula and carefully leveled the created coating. In total, my cladding was approximately 70 mm thick;
After hardening whitewashed his fur coat, adding similarity appearance structures with antique stoves.

Also in the future I want more brickwork close ceramic tiles, but in order to save money, I don’t want to specifically purchase expensive materials for this. Therefore, I’m waiting for the time to renovate the bathroom at the dacha to use the ceramics removed from its walls.

Benefits received

It turned out to be quite possible to make a stove from a cast-iron bathtub with your own hands, but not so easy. Here and excavation, and the construction of brickwork, and cutting of cast iron, and welding, and even finishing. Not a weak set of tasks. But in the end I:

Gave a “second life” old things that have already served their purpose. There is always some joy in this of a small victory over time itself, which mercilessly treats everything in our world;

Diluted country house interior attractive looking design. Of course, it’s still worth covering it with tiles, but even now the created structure fits very organically into the design of my suburban area;
Very good saved on materials used. Having a working solid fuel stove on your household is much more profitable than getting pennies for accepting ferrous metal for a cast-iron bathtub. And for the most part, I found everything else that I needed to realize my plan;
Received possibility to use for cooking solid fuel , saving gas and electricity, the availability of which in some suburban areas can be a big problem;
I was finally able to cook the dishes, requiring special conditions of a real Russian stove, which the erected structure now provided me with;

I began to see friends on the threshold of my dacha much more often who want to try something delicious in the heat of the day. In addition, they never come empty-handed; the end result is a wonderful feast.

Alternative modifications

In fact, these are not even modifications, but, on the contrary, somewhat stripped-down options, which, nevertheless, can also be very useful in the household. Moreover, both of them can be realized from one vessel:

For example, how to make a bath with a cast iron grill stove? After all, fried meat cooked on open fire– this is simply amazing. For this it will be enough:

Take the half of the bathtub that is without a hole and attach another pair of legs to the cut edge for stability of the structure;
Place a suitable sized grill on top. It is not at all necessary to fix it “tightly”; on the contrary, the removable version is more convenient to use and maintain;
That’s it, through the open façade you add firewood or remove coals, put pork, lamb or chicken on top, and heat-intensive cast iron helps create the temperature necessary for frying;

You can also make an effective stove for a bathhouse from a cast iron container:

Place the bathtub upside down so that the main part of it is in the steam room on a previously prepared concrete base, and the cut went into the next room;
Inside, install a grate with the help of corners, and cover the facade with a metal sheet equipped with doors for the firebox and ash pan;
Install a chimney pipe with exit outside the bathhouse area. You can first weld a small horizontal pipe into the facade, and then use an elbow to bring the chimney vertically to the roof;
Build it in the steam room brick wall around a cast iron container at a distance of 10 cm and as high as the tank itself;

Fill the gap between the bricks and the bathtub with stones, which, when heated, will provide the necessary heat.

Conclusion

Don’t rush to throw away or sell for scrap your old cast iron bathtub, because you can use it to make a wonderful garden stove that will repeatedly delight you with very tasty and healthy dishes, will decorate the area and become another reason for your friends to come visit you. Plus you can do most of the work with my own hands, assistance will only be needed when transporting and installing the upper part of the structure.

The video in this article will offer you a number of additional materials, which are directly related to the information presented. If you have questions on the topic, please ask them in the comments.

August 20, 2016

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In this article we will look at how to make a stove from a cast iron bathtub. What materials and tools are required for construction. The advantages of such a stove.

If you have an unnecessary cast-iron bathtub at your disposal, do not rush to throw it away or sell it for metal. From this bathtub you can easily make a wonderful barbecue oven in your summer cottage.

A stove made of this, it would seem, no one the desired bath It will be a wonderful decoration and a wonderful stove for preparing various dishes. Cast iron is a metal with high thermal conductivity that excellently stores heat. In such an oven it is good to cook both regular food and bake baked goods and various amazing dishes.

Do-it-yourself stove from a cast iron bath

Advantages of the oven

Just the thought of making such a stove can help solve some accumulated problems and reveal the following advantages:

year-round opportunity to cook your favorite food
a beautiful stove will be a good decoration for your dacha
cost savings during construction
saving gas, electricity
getting rid of unnecessary baths

How to make a stove from a cast iron bathtub

The bath needs to be divided in half. The halves are connected to each other with the concave part facing outwards. Between the separated halves lies a sheet of metal with a thickness of 10 mm, which separates the firebox from the place where the food will be cooked. In the upper cut-off part of the bathtub and in the metal sheet, through holes are made for the pipe, which in turn will serve as a smoke exhaust, and the pipe is welded. Then they fix the stove and give it an aesthetic appearance.

Tools and material for manufacturing

To make it you will need:

unnecessary cast iron bathtub
a metal sheet
grinder with metal disc
heat resistant sealant
pipe, drill, bolts
welding

Preparatory work

First you need to make blanks:

the bath is marked in the middle, turned upside down and divided in half
cut a blank from a metal sheet to the size of the resulting half of the bath
Mark and cut through holes for the pipe on the sheet of metal and the top of the bathtub
the pipe is welded and brought out through the upper part
make markings to fasten the halves of the bathtub and the sheet between them

Foundation for a stove made of a cast iron bath

Since our oven will be heavy, we need to make under it. With a foundation, the stove will not shrink or become deformed. It can be made brick or for too large design bulk. Supports are embedded into it at the required height so that the stove is at the same level.

Assembling a stove from a cast iron bath

The edges of the combustion part are coated with heat-resistant sealant, then an iron sheet with a welded chimney is placed on it.

The parts of the bathtub with an iron sheet in the middle are pressed together with bolts.

The entire structure is fixed on supports. Then it is covered with bricks. A grate is inserted into the combustion part.

If the stove has a closed firebox, then the doors are immediately installed during the manufacturing process of the stove.

Furnace insulation

The upper part of the furnace is pulled together metal mesh and covered with clay and sand. Then lays out decorative rock or heat-resistant tiles. If it’s easier, you can just whitewash it.

Problems in kiln construction

Problems during the construction of a barbecue oven can occur during the preparation stage during work related to cutting the bathtub. It must be divided very slowly, without haste. First you need to cut the enamel layer in order to avoid chipping. Then they begin to saw the metal at an angle, making small cuts. The grinder should not overheat. To prevent the bath halves from pinching the disk, the cut must be spread with a suitable board or fittings.

Do-it-yourself stove from a cast iron bathtub video

The video clearly shows a stove made from a cast iron bath. The structure of the structure and what materials are required to fasten all parts of the furnace are announced.

Making a universal stove from a cast-iron bathtub, and even with your own hands, is much cheaper than buying a ready-made one.

Moreover, a stove made from a cast iron bathtub will become not only an indispensable thing for suburban area, but also a real source of pride. For what purposes is such a device suitable?

For preparing a variety of food, from fragrant homemade bread to any main dishes.

Thanks to its material, such a stove will retain heat perfectly. As practice shows, there are old cast-iron bathtubs in almost any summer cottage.

It would be a shame to throw them away, so most often they are used in some technical purposes, for example, as watering tanks.

We offer you step-by-step instructions on how to make an interesting stove for your garden yourself.

A stove based on a cast iron bath is not only an original, but also an extremely economical device.

Plus, its creation does not require any special materials, a lot of time, or special skills.

As they say, everything ingenious is simple. However, the result exceeds any expectations.

Instructions for making a stove from a cast iron bath

Be extremely careful, as cast iron is quite fragile - sudden, careless movements can make it unsuitable for further work.

Angular is quite suitable for cutting Sander(or as they also call her, Bulgarian).

Stock up on several cutting discs and time, you can’t rush here - this is the most important part of the work.

Then take one half and place it on top so that you get a structure that resembles a capsule with a cut.

For next stage For DIY work, you will need a metal sheet, but one that is too thin will not work for our purposes.

Ideally, the metal thickness should be more than 5 mm.

The stove will use both halves of the vat, and the sheet is needed to separate the top from the bottom (i.e., the cooking compartment from the fuel area).

Thus, you should get two chambers - one for cooking, and the second for firewood.

Don't forget to make a hole in the sheet for the chimney. It is better to place it as close to the back wall as possible. It will run from the lower chamber through the entire oven.

To secure the sheet and the bath halves, it is best to use fasteners: clamp the edge of the sheet between the edges of both halves and put it on.

To prevent smoke from forming in the upper chamber, use oven sealant. We attach the chimney to a metal sheet by welding.

Before cooking, cast iron should be heated a little, for example, by heating firewood in the lower chamber - this will make the material easier to weld.

We cover the front part of the lower chamber with a metal sheet; first we need to make a large hole through which firewood will be placed.

Now you can make doors for both the firebox and the upper chamber in which food will be cooked.

An easy-to-make and at the same time functional stove for your summer cottage is ready. The only thing left to do is to decorate the structure so that it becomes a real decoration of the yard.

If you or someone you know has artistic abilities, then paint the stove, for example, with folk motifs.

Not a single neighbor or guest would even think that similar device It is possible to make it yourself from an old, unnecessary bathtub.

Making a stove for a bath

An old cast-iron bathtub can make not only an excellent kitchen stove, but also a bath stove. Why spend extra money on a device that you can make yourself?

First of all, it is worth noting that the construction of a bathhouse, as well as the installation of a stove in it, requires a certain knowledge of the matter, therefore, for safety reasons, it makes sense to seek advice from a professional stove maker.

Sauna stoves have a number of requirements.

So, all such units must have:

a sufficient amount of thermal power, as well as a wide range for its regulation;
steam generator and heat accumulator for changing the mode of moisture and heat;
regulation of the convention;
such surfaces whose temperature will not exceed 150°C.

A simple stove for a two-tier bath that fully meets the listed requirements can be built from an old cast-iron bathtub.

The lower tier of a sauna stove is half of a cast-iron bathtub, laid with the convex part up and the cut towards the wall. The outside of the entire structure is covered with bricks.

Steam generation is achieved using 8-10 buckets of stone covering one part of it. Heat is accumulated in the upper chamber (following the example of Kuznetsov furnaces).

The principle of operation is quite simple: gas passes through the bath, heats the stones, reaches the bread chamber located on the opposite side, then the gas flow is directed down and up (does a “dive”), and then exits the pipe.

There is a damper at the bottom to prevent smoke from escaping.

A sauna stove made from an old cast-iron bathtub is an unusual design.

Most often, ready-made devices are purchased to heat a room, but if you want to experiment, you can make such a unit yourself.

Advantages of cast iron stoves

Cast iron is considered one of the the best materials, and factory-made stoves made from it are not cheap.

First of all, it gained popularity due to its durability, ease of use and resistance to high temperatures.

If we compare a cast iron unit with a brick one, the first one has better thermal conductivity. Since the bathhouse is not supported all the time heat, the material must be insensitive to changes.

In winter, most often, the bathhouse at the dacha is not heated, as a result of which the brick may begin to crumble, but cast iron is not afraid of such problems. In terms of room heating speed, cast iron is definitely the leader.

From a fire safety point of view, a brick oven does not pose a threat only if it is new. Cracks are dangerous because sparks can break through them.

For aesthetic purposes, it would still be better to line a homemade stove with bricks, but if individual blocks are damaged, they can be easily replaced.

The main competitor of cast iron is steel. Despite the fact that in terms of heating speed and strength steel furnaces do not lag behind cast iron ones, the former have a significantly shorter service life.

Another one of them weakness- susceptibility to corrosion. Cast iron has the same problem, but to a much lesser extent.

If you decide to make a bath unit from an old bathtub, the result will be an easy-to-use device that will perform its functions perfectly and will last for many years.

Also, a cast iron bathtub can be converted into an original country fireplace. This design is especially suitable for those who are just doing brickwork at home.

In this case, the fireplace is “recessed” into the wall, which allows for maximum use of the space.

Craftsmen, of whom there are plenty in every city with an average population, have long mastered the production of solid fuel boilers and stoves from steel or brick. Moreover, most of their products function quite reliably and efficiently. And only cast iron, as a material for homemade heaters, remained on the sidelines until recently. But there is already an initiative here, and in this article we are ready to present it and discuss the question of how to make a stove from a cast-iron bath yourself.

Homemade garden stove made of cast iron

Previously, it was not without reason that craftsmen ignored cast iron, although it is in high demand as a material for the manufacture of heating equipment. The fact is that gray cast iron is difficult to process mechanically, and manufacturers of heating equipment use industrial casting to give it the required shape. These technologies are not available at home, so to make a stove you can take some kind of cast iron product and remake it, which was done by one of the home craftsmen. An old cast iron bathtub, of which there are still plenty left from the Soviet era, was suitable for this purpose.

Because the this material Because it is extremely hard and fragile, processing it requires not only a lot of patience, but also good metalworking skills. The garden stove shown above from an old cast iron bathtub is good example such skills and patience, and our task is to explain how this is done. The first step is to take the corner grinder with a working diameter of 250 or 300 mm and stock up on cutting wheels for metal, then carefully measure half of the bathtub and draw a cutting line. In this case, the width of the cutting wheel should be taken into account.

Procurement work

The next operation is to cut the cast iron bathtub in half, strictly along the line. The work is hard and long, but quite doable. When there are 2 halves of a product, they must be fastened together. Again, welding cast iron parts at home is not possible, so the halves are bolted together, and a steel sheet is laid between them, separating the firebox from the oven.

For this purpose, the master took a corrugated sheet metal about 8 mm thick, you can follow his example. If you have regular smooth metal of this thickness or a little more, it will also work, although it is better not to use a sheet thicker than 10 mm, this will affect the heating time of the oven. It is better to cut the blank from the sheet in advance, but if the available metal is small more sizes bathroom, then this can be done later, locally.

Another step towards the goal is marking and drilling mounting holes in the cast iron bathtub and metal gasket. Let’s make a reservation right away that you will need high-quality drills and the ability to sharpen them, because cast iron will not just give up to you without a fight. To make 4 through holes, you will need to patiently sharpen the drills several times, while maintaining the working edge angle of at least 120º. Drilling different instruments, from small to large diameter, at low drill speeds, periodically lubricating with machine oil.

And the last labor-intensive operation is cutting a hole for the chimney pipe. While it is not very difficult to make it in a metal spacer 8 mm thick, then you will have to tinker with the bathtub. It is best to cut through the place where the bathroom drain used to be; it must be expanded to a diameter of 100 mm. When this operation is completed, you can begin assembly. First, the chimney pipe must be welded to a metal sheet.

Any knowledgeable stove maker will tell you that this place is the weakest in the entire design of any steel heater; this joint burns out first. A cast iron stove from a bathtub is no exception, so it would be more correct to pass the pipe through a sheet and scald it on both sides.

Assembling the furnace body

When the element is ready, it is installed on the lower part of the bathtub, and the second part is placed on top. The craftsman used a special sealant at the joint as a seal, but asbestos or basalt cardboard can also be laid. Then the holes are aligned, the bolts are installed and tightened. At this point, the stove body can be considered ready.

In order for a homemade stove from an old bathtub to acquire a finished look, you need to cut out and attach a metal front panel; a sheet thickness of 5-6 mm is sufficient here, and then make doors and a grate. This entire structure should be installed on a pedestal made of brick. In order not to heat the street, the metal surfaces of the combustion chamber and oven must be insulated with a layer of basalt fiber and lined with any convenient material.

Since a bathtub can be used to make not only garden stoves, but also heaters for different rooms, then in the latter case, insulation of the body is not required so that the walls can freely give off heat air environment rooms. Then the front panel will take on a different look, and the brick base will have to be refined finishing materials. At the same time, there is no need to build brickwork in front and behind the stove so that the firebox is freely washed with air. However, another craftsman can replace the brick support with a metal one, here everything is in your hands.

About the advantages and disadvantages

The main advantage of a homemade cast iron bathtub stove is its almost zero cost. The main investment is your work, and you will have to put in a lot of it. The second advantage is durability, it directly depends on the service life of welded joints chimney and the front panel with doors, and the tightness of the main elements. As for the bathroom, even the enamel on it will not burn out right away.

For reference. IN Soviet time for baths and kitchen utensils Silicon-based enamel (quartz sand) was used. It was applied to hardware in 2 layers (primer and glossy layer) and heated to a temperature of 860 ºС to quartz sand melted, and then cooling was carried out using a certain technology. This kind of coating, which protects cast iron, served for decades and was destroyed only by strong blows heavy object.

From a heating engineering point of view, operating efficiency homemade stove unlikely to exceed 40% due to direct output flue gases from the furnace to the outside, they transfer only part of the heat to the oven, and the rest goes into the atmosphere. For this reason, a similar design is used as a sauna stove, where efficiency indicators are not so important, the main thing is temperature. True, only one half of the bathtub is taken and placed on a brick-lined base, and then erected side walls and a heater is installed.

Half of the bathtub serves as a reliable and durable firebox, which will not burn out very quickly, and will give off heat to the heater perfectly. As a result, less red will be spent on construction ceramic bricks, which will significantly reduce the cost of the steam room as a whole. The only caveat is that sauna stove correctly join two materials with different coefficients of thermal expansion - brick and cast iron. For this purpose there are expansion joints, where asbestos or basalt cardboard is laid.

Conclusion

Similar non-standard solutions in the design of stoves made by hand, they amaze with their originality and simplicity. No one will doubt the reliability and durability of a homemade cast-iron stove from a Soviet bathtub, but it was invented and assembled by a master with his head and skillful hands at home. Any homeowner can make such products; subsequently, they will serve him faithfully for many years.