I drilled 3/8" holes everywhere, nothing that was science thats for sure. They didn't give any specs at all on that part. The oil feeds into the coil (preheater) then drips down the center of the intake dripping on the center of the top frying pan. When adjusted, she doesn't smoke very bad at all. I can garantee she does much more than 21,000 BTU, the more oil, the hotter she gets, just remember to install a ball valve for the main shut off, then a needle valve to adjust the flow. This way, once you have it tuned, you can shut off the ball valve when your done with the heater, and you don't mess up your adjustment. I had a hard time getting oil to flow smoothly so I diluted my oil with diesel just to see and it worked much better. I think if it's really cold out, you may have a hard time flowing the used oil.
For my test, I ended up burning around 2.5 - 3.0 gallons in about 6 hours.(over twice the recommended rate). It takes a lot of tinkering to get it tuned but you know when it's right because it roars and the smoke almost disappears out the stack.Do not used rivets on your sheet metal, they will last about 2 minutes. Be sure to use some good sheet metal screws on the funnel. Also, get a real hot fire going before you turn on the oil, if you don't, she won't do anything but smoke real bad and will burn too cold to ever get going.
A coffee cup full of diesel in the burner does the trick nicely. I think, this heater can be improved on even more by using some compressed air and some sort of oil mist, like maybe a parts washing gun. We used to make radiator heaters from 4" pipe zig zagging back and forth and use a parts washing gun and diesel, man you talk about heat!! But diesel was less than 50 cents a gallon then, but I bet used oil would work as well.
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