Oil Fired Boiler: Black Smoke from Flue

lohr500

Did you do the check I suggested on the fluid you have drawn off from the tank to establish if it is water or kero?

Replacing the filter won't help if there is water being drawn through the pipe. Water will pass through the filter as easily as heating oil. 

QrizB

lohr500 said:

Replacing the filter won't help if there is water being drawn through the pipe. Water will pass through the filter as easily as heating oil. 

Water should get agglomerated by the filter and collect in the bowl.

Of course if you get too much water in there, the filter will be wetted and go soggy, then oil won't flow through it at all. (Had it happen to a diesel filter on a boat once, very inconvenient.)

dunstonh

I changed the fuel filter and it is still chucking out the same amount of grey smoke and smells really bad in the kitchen where the boiler is. Not really sure what to do now.

Is your pipe between the tank and boiler quite long?   It may take a while for the unfiltered stuff to pass through.

lohr500

My concern is that if there is +/- 2 inches of water in the bottom of the OPs tank, then any small tank filter/water trap  won't be able to cope once the water level reaches the outlet.

Far better to syphon out the water/sludge/cr*p to a level well below the outlet and then fit a new filter to trap any particulates.

Once the bottom of the tank has been syphoned out, by all means flush out any residual contamination in the line between the tank and the boiler once the tank is clear.

muggin5

Hey All,

To follow up on this, I have now resolved the issue. I ended up getting my tank clean professional to the tune of £630 and this didn't really make any difference. It needed to be cleaned but would have only cost around £350 if I hadn't filled it with 1500 litres of oil.

I managed to get another oil engineer recommended who was able to come out yesterday.

He took the oil heater off and found that the combustion chamber had around 3-4 litres of oil inside and everything was absolutely caked in black burnt oily soot. When he took the burner apart to check the nozzle, it was only finger tight!

The OFTEC service engineer who came on the 9th September hadn't tightened this up properly and then when the boiler was drawing oil, it would have been pouring oil from under the thread into the chamber.

It took myself and the engineer two hours of filthy work to clean up the boiler before being able to try it again.

It seems as though there wasn't really an issue with the oil and the tank but that the service boiler had failed to fit the nozzle properly and then left our home with a "I can't stick my analyser in there, it'll kill it" and "I'll come back when its settled down" (he never called me back)

Another £170 spent sorting it out his mess. The guy whole fixed it for us said it was lucky that our boiler hadn't blown up with all that kerosene sat in the combustion chamber.

I'm glad it's sorted, mightily annoyed it could have been completely avoided, £850 poorer and worst of all fearful that the first boiler man was happen to leave us (and others I guess) with a smoking time bomb in the house.

I haven't paid the first guy yet. I won't pay him if I can help it but I am not great with these things. I guess I'll tell hime that if I pay him then I'll be reporting him to OFTEC.

Thanks for the help in any case... an expensive lesson to find a good boiler guy for future work!

lohr500

Shocking to hear about the shoddy work and I am glad you got to the bottom of it. I would refuse to pay the original bill. The tank clean probably wasn't necessary but at least you know it is clean now and should be ok for some time.