Who should I hire to clean my Buderus boiler?

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This Columbia steamer was leaking and we were called upon to replace it. The owner was tired of dealing with oil companies and wants to go gas, so we're putting a gas boiler in. We were told the oil company had serviced this boiler every year. This is what we found when we opened it up.

Can you blame them for wanting to switch?

With this level of "servicing", is it any wonder oil heat is declining?

Older Weil-McLain WGO-3 with Beckett AFG that we serviced for the first time yesterday. Took most of a day to get it clean:

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You can see the rug had come loose and the sulfur deposits got behind it and made it curl inward. You can also see where the flame was hitting it, causing sooting in the flue passages. The oil company must have been laughing all the way to the bank.

We also replaced the old 3-wire primary and added an oil-delay valve. I know there won't be much cleaning to do next year!

Today's job was servicing this Burnham V-84 with Riello F5 burner. Here's what I found when I opened it up:

by the fact that the whole bottom of the boiler was a mass of sulfur. Fuel oil has been ultra-low-sulfur for some years now:



This is a Crown CTPB-5, a cast-iron Scotch Marine 3-pass unit, with a Beckett AFG. Besides the sulfur, it had a hollow nozzle when it should have had a solid, and the draft regulator had fallen apart. The house dates to about 1955, and has baseboard and convectors.

Took me most of a day to get it running properly- and my soot-vac was HEAVY when I finished. But it tuned up nicely.

Not the first time I've seen this when this particular oil company was involved. What were they thinking? If this house had gas service, I could have sold a conversion right then and there...............

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1851928#Comment_1851928

Pictures of fouled up boilers with zero context. Personally? when I was doing oil service my goal was the make and keep our customers happy and their systems running as best as possible. I never or rarely ran into a service tech who didn't care. Maybe I ran in rarified circles.

Here's just a little background of the story. We received a service call, by a customer referral, to this customer that was "suspiciously unhappy" with his current oil company's service.

He stated that he felt that he was having too many "emergency service calls" every year.

He informed us that in total, he has had 17 "emergency service calls" in the past 3 years, for all of his oil fired equipment. In addition to the annual service & cleanings for each unit, so that's an additional 3 more service visits annually.

His building is a mixed commercial/ residential building. The commercial part is a wholesale laundry facility.

Here is what he has:

Commercial-

Fulton 20 HP high pressure steam boiler- oil fired (10 years old)

Bock 120e hot water tank- oil fired (4 1/2 years old)

Residential-

Buderus G215/3 w/ SSu-45 (3 1/2 years old)



His oil company, is a large union employee oil company (and I have nothing against unions or union members).



His call to us, primarily, was for the Buderus. For his next door home neighbor had the exact same boiler installed by us, about the same time his was installed, and they have had no issues whatsoever. Just the annual service.



They say a picture speaks a thousand words.......................

The first five were the "before" pictures, the second five are the "after" pictures. And on a side note, it took 2 men 10 hours to "clean" this unit. using chisels and threaded rods to literally crack the almost concrete like blockages.



But keep in mind, the oil company said, documented, and charged for the cleanings and services the "performed".