Welcome! Here are the website rules, as well as some tips for using this forum.
Need to contact us? Visit https://heatinghelp.com/contact-us/.
Click here to Find a Contractor in your area.
If our community has helped you, please consider making a contribution to support this website. Thanks!

Early oil systems history.

Options
brandonf
brandonf Member Posts: 225
in Oil Heating

Hey all.

II did some random thinking while on the throne and I started wondering how the first heating oil boilers worked with no electricity.... They mustn't have had a blower so it must have been a simple flame to heat very slowly similar to coal if the boiler was converted....

I figured somebody would know the answer.

Homeowner, Entrepreneur, Mechanic, Electrician,

"The toes you step on today are connected to the butt you'll have to kiss tomorrow". ---Vincent "Buddy" Cianci

Comments

  • Big Ed_4
    Big Ed_4 Member Posts: 3,458
    edited February 12

    I would think the first oil heater would be a drip type "Kelly pots" .. Oil dripping in a hot pot.. Used in cold water flats with a chimney …

    There was an error rendering this rich post.

  • Jamie Hall
    Jamie Hall Member Posts: 27,137

    I think you will find that most early oil systems came in when houses and buildings had electricity. Not very much by modern standards, it's true, but it was there. Electric light was pretty early on in most places except very rural areas (having said that, I should note that my uncle's house, just down the road from Cedric's home, didn't have electric lighting until 1958…).

    Now early oil burners are a rather different story. Excluding kerosene heaters with wick type elements, though (which were common enough!) most of them still used electricity.

    Br. Jamie, osb
    Building superintendent/caretaker, 7200 sq. ft. historic house museum with dependencies in New England
  • mattmia2
    mattmia2 Member Posts: 16,241
    edited February 12

    though some oil and gas heating in the us goes back to the teens or so, most of the us was heated with coal or other solid fuel until the 50's. Both my grandparents' first houses that they bought in the 30's and 40's where heated with coal when they bought them.

    all of the early oil burner designs that i have seen used an electric motor of some sort.

    really the ability to automatically control them was most of the reason for switching from coal to gas or oil.

    at least for central heating. for cooking, lighting, and space heating there were varying versions of a coleman stove where the fuel was pressurized then vaporized in a tube through the flame and burned in a bunsen burner or various wick type burners.

  • EBEBRATT-Ed
    EBEBRATT-Ed Member Posts: 19,992

    The practical beginning of oil heating started around 1920. Most all oil burners required electrical power, but most houses had electricity in the 20s at least in the cities. Rural areas may not have had electrical until later.

    I know of no oil burner that did not need electricity even if just for the safety control, thermostat etc. The pot type vaporizing burner had no motor, pump or transformer.

    gas had the millivolt system so you could get heat with that if it was steam or gravity hot water.

Categories