If your oil burner in your boiler or furnace is not lighting up, running rough, or not running as efficiently as it could be its highly likely that there is something wrong with your oil burner nozzle.
Its these devices that meters the flow of heating fuel, natural gas, or waste oil (for alternative energy fans) to the combustion chamber. These nozzles are specifically designed to spray a very fine mist of fuel in a pre-set pattern to be ignited as its coming out.
The pattern, to my knowledge, is different depending on what type of combustion chamber you have.
The opening on these nozzles is not big at all. They are extremely small and usually come with a stainless filter at the back opening to filter any moisture or contaminants that have not been filtered out already. Having said that its extremely easy for oil burner nozzles to get plugged.
The spinner will oftentimes wear on the inside changing the flame pattern. It happens all the time. These things are extremely delicate and you would be surprised by how little it takes for them not to be working at 100% efficiency level.
I would highly recommend you get your nozzles changed at least once a year to make sure you have everything working exactly the way it should. If you get an annual tune up on your heating boiler or furnace they usually change the nozzle, other various filters (oil and air), and drain your tanks.
On a side note you would be surprised by how much moisture builds up in your holding tank where you store your heating oil. Your may not think there is any condensation in there but water is one of the main culprits in oil burner nozzles clogging up.
There are three types of nozzles from what I know and they are: solid cone, semisolid cone and hollow cone. You only need to know this information if you plan to change them out yourself. Please do not try to attempt to do this if you do not know what you are doing. Me and my business partner will change them out from time to time because the distributor who installed it for us walked us through it step by step. Because we have a waste oil boiler we try to change them out semi-annually. Even having said that I sometimes get a professional to do it because I do not like the hassle.
But anyway, you need to know which type of nozzle your boiler or furnace uses because each one of the types just mentioned has a different spray pattern. You do not want to put the wrong one on!
Tags: boiler, furnace, Oil Burner, oil burner nozzle
[...] but not least, I would like to point out that it is not uncommon to plug your filter or nozzle when you run a burner out of oil. This may not happen but just be prepared if it does. [...]
[...] Oil filter, strainer, or nozzle is blocked [...]