These are two problems that most people who have oil burners come across.
Keep in mind that these are basic diagnostic troubleshooting steps for a person somewhat familiar to what they are doing.
If you have no clue how these machines work I would strongly recommend you call a professional to make a service call.
The oil burner will not turn on?
This is a common problem. If your furnace or oil burner will not turn on you need to start with pressing the reset button. This is going to manually start the burner. Its usually in plain sight and not hard to find at all. Although they may not say the words “RESET” on them its most likely going to be red. Push the button. If that does not work push it again. If it does not come on or comes on for a brief while and then kicks back off do not keep pushing the button. Check the circuit breaker and then check the fuses . You will usually find out that its a shorted fuse and if so its an easy fix. Again if it does not turn on after the second time do not keep pushing the button. Its just going to put more heating oil in the combustion chamber and when you do finally turn it on it could overload it.
The oil burner seems to be on and running but there is no fire?
I would start with the transformer on this. It could be that oil is being sprayed out the nozzle but not being lit. CAUTION: Discount the oil burner before proceeding further with diagnostics to the oil burner transformer. If its powered you can get shocked really bad or electrified. Disconnect the wires to the burner and the furnace. Leave the transformer wire in place. Take a screwdriver with a rubber handle (again the transformer could be charged with several thousand volts so take extreme caution and hold the rubber end) and touch it to one of the terminals of the transformers of the transformer. At the same time you want to angle the screwdriver so the it comes into contact with the other terminal. The current will form a nice 2″ arc and if the its smaller or yellowish it needs to be replaced.
It could also be the oil burner nozzle if the furnace is running but there is no fire. The tip of the nozzle is extremely small. Its made to spray a very fine mist of fuel out to be ignited and can clog up really quickly with moisture or dirt. To check for moisture or dirt disconnect the oil supply line from the burner and catch the fuel in some sort of glass. Look for the presence of water or excess particles. If you see some your nozzle is most likely plugged up. This is again one of the main reasons you want to filter you heating oil as much as possible. The same thing applies to if you are fueling your oil burner with waste oil. This part is really not that expensive and if your nozzle is clogged you should be able to get a new one either online or at a heating parts store.
Tags: burner nozzle, oil burners, transformer
Thanks for the info about the nozzle. I have had to replace two nozzles for my burner and I think it could have been because there was a lot of moisture in my tank. I had it drained and I added this additive to kill the “alge” that can grown at the bottom of your tank. We will see how it works when I turn it on in two months.
Jan
Thanks for the info. It was really good. I work on these things for a living and you have some pretty good stuff on your website. You’ve almost convinced me to get a waste oil burner. I talked to the guy at Columbia Boiler and I can get a nice one for $8,000 with installation. You can get payments on them as well much like you can for a car.
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[...] things just mentioned worked then you need to call a qualified heating technician out. You could troubleshoot further but if you are not trained you might do more harm than [...]