Flex Oil Lines
Is there any other flex oil line supplier /maker other than Westwood? Beckett has run out of the size I need and I'm a little worried we may never see it again.
Comments
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I wonder if the Hydraulic Oil Hoses are able to be used for fuel oil. I'm not sure how that would hold up to Bio Fuel.
https://www.magisterhyd.com/product/hydraulic-hose-assembly-36-inches-x-1-4-npt-fittings/
Edward Young Retired
After you make that expensive repair and you still have the same problem, What will you check next?
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There sure seems to be a lot of hoses out there for sure but not too many sold for fuel oil. I found these from Crown. Westwood gave you a 2 year warranty and said you should replace them every three years. Mine are approaching seven now. The first set was on for seven. The tigerloop is suposed to be replaced every five. Mine is almost 14. I can either buy metric adapters and use Westwood or I can switch to 36 inch.. I think I will try these.
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You obviously have a tiger loop with 1/4" female NPT to the pump. What burner are you connecting the other end of the flex hoses?
That will determine of you need the European connector or the flare connector.
Bottom like… when the tiger loop first came out, I used soft copper and a bending tool to make the connection between the tiger loop and the pump. Do you know how to make a standatd flare on a copper tube?
Edward Young Retired
After you make that expensive repair and you still have the same problem, What will you check next?
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It's a riello. It's the British parallel threading but I have the 1/4 npt adapters. Beckett seems to have stopped supplying the 24" riello hoses. The boiler room is so tight. We replaced the an old liberty with this tripple pass and the burner is on the edge of the laundry room. I fear hard lines will get kicked. The liberty being vented out the top sat sideways with the burner facing the wall. I can do flares. The hard line comes out to a firomatic, flared. I have a Ridgid flaring tool. Easy peasy.
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Do you know if your fuel supplier is delivering Bio Fuel? If you are sure you don't have Bio Fuel then go the the closest John Deer dealer and get yourself some flex hydraulic hoses with 1/4" NTP ends. They can go directly into the Tiger loop and the other end can go into the Riello Adaptor fittings. As I recall one of the fittings is male and the other is female, So get the proper end on the hoses or get a 1/4" coupling so you can put the male to male fittings together.
Edward Young Retired
After you make that expensive repair and you still have the same problem, What will you check next?
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Thanks, Yes, the 1/4 to 1/4 size is common. I was mostly hoping to eliminate the adapters. I notice a lot.of Westwood stuff is running out of stock. As for Bio Fuel, there was some noise about it being available a while ago but no mention of ot on their website any more. My bill says #2 heating oil.
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So, the oil company said that the biofuel mixing is monitored, but not done by them. They claim it meets the current state standards between 5 and 7 percent but it will be increasing in the future so I better get these bio heat rated ones while I still can.
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I was still able to order some at Supplyhouse dot com. They had the Becket branded 223* and 222* products which are now B100 compatible. The lead time was over 2 weeks.
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For the past couple of years, most oil suppliers started selling some amount of biofuel blended, e.g. 5% ( B5) My oil vendor is pretty cagey about it, they will not disclose what percentage, they only say they are trying to source their bulk oil with "as little as possible".
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Yes, that's the word I got from my heating oil supplier. I ordered a pair of these beckett lines from Supply house. Got notification of shipment yesterday. They were drop shipped from Sparks Nevada which is where Beckett is.
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I ordered 2 from Supplyhouse, I have received 1 so far. PART # S223-24. The tag on it says "Biofuels compatible B20", should be OK for the next 5 years. The B100 reference was from product advertisement at various sellers webpages.
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I have seen many flex lines in operation for over ten years on B20 with no issues. I know that is technically improper, but I have yet to see a problem.
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Found out something interesting about these flex lines.
The end that screws into the Tigerloop, has a non-turning nut, when you tighten this, the entire flex line turns. The other end at this point is non-attached, so the entire flex line can freely turn while you turning this nut. The line's other end, which attaches to the oil pump, (usually with an adapter) has a free-turning nut. So when this (other) end is tightened, it does not distort the flex line into a pretzel. Based on this, the Tigerloop end must to be put on first.
Can be done the other way (putting on the pump end first), but then you will end up twisting the flex line. If the line it is long enough, it mostly just curls up into a pretzel, and there will be some loosening torque/tension remaining because of the twisted line. This, combined with some vibration, can result the line at the Tigerloop end coming loose and developing and air leak.
When my system was installed, the tigerloop was apparently installed the "wrong way", as I describe above, and after 3 years I started having an intermittent air leak, because of the flex line connection coming loose at the tigerloop. I am pretty sure now this was the root cause.
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Makes sense. The installer was not careful/conscientious enough. System parts are only as good as the people who install them.
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Its no different than a pipe connection with a union. You don't tighten the union first, then try to spin the whole thing. End to end, if turning side A clockwise, side B goes counterclockwise. Not good. The union connections are at the pump for ease of service of the pump.
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I might add that all that is pretty standard for hydraulic lines and fittings… whether it's log forwarder operating at 3,000 psig or the brakes on your car…
Br. Jamie, osb
Building superintendent/caretaker, 7200 sq. ft. historic house museum with dependencies in New England0 -
Thnks guys!
I am glad to see this is just common sense for you guys. You have apparently both experience and intelligence on your side.
Sorry to say, the optics for my installer are pretty bad. Apparently they did not pay any attention to this when they did the install. Neither were they interested in intelligent troubleshooting, when problems started to manifest 3 years later. Their preferred approach was replacing one component at a time, charging for a service visit each time.0 -
Sorry to say, the optics for my installer are pretty bad. Apparently they did not pay any attention to this when they did the install. Neither were they interested in intelligent troubleshooting, when problems started to manifest 3 years later. Their preferred approach was replacing one component at a time, charging for a service visit each time.
Sorry to say………….SOP today.
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Heh, us senior techs have done the best we could over many tears to try to pass the torch on to the next generation. Some responded, many did not. I believe that their parents may have failed them, I think that we did the best that we could. I am very happy to be retired.
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For those who are curious, I have decided to post a pic of my twisted lines.
At a glance, it was not obvious that there was a tension on the lines, trying to untwist the nuts shown. I can imagine how the install went: the tech put on the turnable nuts on the pump first, and then realized the other nuts (shown) do not freely rotate on the line. He probably figured the flex lines were long enough and they would be "fine", twisted as shown, what could possibly go wrong? (Too lazy do take apart the pump side, and redo in the correct order).
And he was not completely wrong, it worked for 3 years just fine. Only when the air inducer started failing, and introduced some vibration did the nuts actually start to untwist.
Took me several months of troubleshooting to figure out that was where the air was coming in, causing the lockouts.
Several experienced burner techs looked at this and did not occur to anybody what the problem was, based on the way it looks.
If you seen something like this in the field, would you instantly know what the problem is?0 -
I wonder if the installer did that on purpose so they’re not laying on the floor and in the way?
as far as experienced techs that doesn’t make qualified techs!
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Is that a reillo burner? I think as long as the swivel end is done last your fine. I see that loop all the time when the installer uses 3 foot lines when 2 foot.lines will do. Gives a bit.of kick protection.
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ChasMan: It is a Carlin EZ-1 burner. you are right, that is a 3 feet line, when I replace it I will put 2 feet.
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The curling is fine if it was meant to be that way. As long as the the union connections were done last. And hopefully the unions are at the fuel pump and not at the TL.
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I’ve been using these. Originally from the UK. Now in the US.
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Nice! A bit more money than the TL, but seems like these are double containment (ptfe inner, steel mesh, and pu outer). 5 year warranty, 10 year EOL. (whatever that means) .
If I read the description right, B100 rated.
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Yes they are an upgrade. Flare nut on both ends for easy install/remove. I’ve had the standard hoses crack on me just gently pushing on them to replace a pump strainer. I won’t use the old standard ones anymore, if at all.
EOL means end of life. Both Tiger loop and I think the standard hose are supposed to be replaced after 8 years.
That means if you had a leak/failure after 8 years on a tiger loop, that made a mess, a heat tech or an oil company would probably lose in court.So basically, a tiger loop is a commitment that the customer will be spending easily an extra $XXX.XX on maintenance every 8 years.
Which is why I avoid them unless absolutely necessary.
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It's not the tigerloop that forces the flex line though, it's the burner mounted on the swing door. Those lines look good. but not all that flexible. Too bad they dont import the whole line. They have 600mm sizes in the Uzk which would be perfect for me.
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HydronicMike: My remark "EOL whatever that means" was asking how is "End of Life" different from "End of Warranty". After the 5 year warranty expires, would I have 3 more years, during which, some sort of coverage, if any, still exists? I do not understand why they make a distinction between "warranty period" and "life period". Would it be simpler just to say, they have X years of warranty, after that expires you should just replace the darn thing.
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