oil fired boiler not cleaned in 5 years, full of soot,,,hard as concrete

mark schofield

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lH2VaXz9KI

I never saw how bad something could get. This is a real eye opener

Robert O'Brien

Cold started pin boiler,what would you expect? I particularly liked his use of optical combustion testing around the 15:50 point.

icesailor

Robert O'Brien said:

Cold started pin boiler,what would you expect? I particularly liked his use of optical combustion testing around the 15:50 point.

An "old timer" that knows from experience what a good flame looks like. Don't need no stinkn' expensive combustion analyzer. I've been doing it this way since I was taught how.

Harvey Ramer

I cannot imagine that a 45° angle nozzle is a good choice here. But that is what was in it before, right.

Oh, and when he said it needs more air. That was probably to pull the flame off the target wall. lol

Steamhead

That looks like a Crown Tobago, whose model numbers begin with TWZ. We can see that the Beckett AFG burner has an adjustable head rather than a fixed one.

The Beckett burner specs for the TWZ series are on page 29 of this manual:

http://www.crownboiler.com/documents/tobago_installation_manual.pdf

Assuming the pump pressure is 140 PSI, that 0.75 GPH nozzle is the correct capacity for a TWZ-090 boiler. But it should be a 60B (60° solid spray pattern) rather than a 45A (45° hollow spray pattern).

And the video doesn't show him checking the head adjustment either.

Still, they wonder why oilheat is dying...................

mars_6

I have the utmost respect for you oil guys, out here in the west we are almost completely natural gas and aside from small problems with the gas pressure supplied by the provider or failures to convert a NG unit from NG to LPG we do not have to deal with the stuff like that. Cudos for the knowledge base that this site offers.

Marz

I've seen this where everything gets pushed down into the chamber, and the chamber is left full. Drives me bananas. Pump strainer anyone?

icesailor

Marz said:

I've seen this where everything gets pushed down into the chamber, and the chamber is left full. Drives me bananas. Pump strainer anyone?

I saw him bend the "Rug" over from both sides to clean the crud out from under. A very good thing because all those Kibbles & Bits with the soot gravy act as an excellent insulator. But bending the rug like that, usually breaks them. Some who do (or did) this, usually pull the whole rug out and use a wire brush to lick the dog plate (so to speak). Then, some of us take a beater screwdriver and stick it up between the sections to make the bits fall down. Weil-McLain WGO rugs usually fall apart in panic at the sight of a vacuum hose. A Lynn "Wet Blanket" cut to size is a great repair and takes the proper shape. Then, you suck the bits off the rug and slide it out.

I never thought of using a hammer on a soot saw like that. It was hard enough to keep it from forming a "S" shape when trying to push it through the hardened concrete by hand. I never cleaned a Crown Boiler, but every boiler I ever cleaned had enough room between the end of the pins to get a soot saw between the pins. If you don't do that, why bother to clean it? I hope he charged someone for that 1/4" feeler drill bit. They're not cheap. I found a cheaper alternative was a piece of 1/4"or 3/16" threaded rod, cut into a 16" that left the rest 20" with a file handle on it. The threads were "raspy" and got most of the concrete out.

Whenever I walked in on a pet show like that, the first thing I did was look for the I/O manual and see what nozzle size and type is required. Its obviously had "issues" for a long time. Might some of the issues be that the narrower 45 degree nozzle is being used instead of a 60 degree nozzle? And the flame impingement on the target wall is causing smoke and soot? It filled up the chimney flue with soot? "Max smoke: #1 on the Bacharach scale? If you want to go back again soon. I always fund the Firedragon method helpful. Open the air band until it smoked, or until you got a yellow spot on the smoke tester. Then close it until it smoked again. Then, open until the smoke went away. Then start testing. 12 1/2% CO2 and #1 smoke? Guaranteed you'd be back in 2 weeks for a free cleaning. Or they paid someone else to come fix your mess. Probably the guy who made the video.

Where he works, he probably has the reputation as the best Oil Burner Man around. Many others would be at the bottom of the list because we have to use instruments to achieve what he does with an experienced eye and acquired skills.