Waste Oil Heater Forum - Your definitive source for burning waste oil for heat.

Good news, it kind of failed when I was sitting there. After the thermostat turned it off, I put volt meters on the solenoids and the oil pump junction box wiring and upped the temperature and it did the behavior seen in the first video, then I was able to see something even more interesting in the second video.

I noticed the air pressure gauge was showing pressure but the oil pressure gauge was not. The oil solenoid was however getting 110vAc and so was the oil pump. The unit would of course turn itself off after 5 or 10 seconds as it wasn't seeing a flame via the CAD sensor and this appears to be because there is no oil pressure.

During the second video, you can see me reset the unit a second time around the 20 second mark and then you'll see that there is no oil pressure or flame, then I go over to the pump to show there is voltage to it and right at the 28 second mark you'll hear a click or thump from the oil pump and then you can hear the unit turn on and then hear the normal flame whistle coming from inside of the fire box. To put it another way, the brain energized the pump but the pump did not turn on and there was no oil pressure and towards the very end of the window of time it will continue to attempt to start a flame/fire, the pump made a click/thump, turned on and created oil pressure, allowing the flame to start and the CAD sensor to see the flame and then allow it to continue to run as normal. Also, when the pump is creating 0 pressure, I can feel it vibrating slightly.

So I believe it is the pump that is the cause of it not restarting. I believe the unit itself tries to restart, but gets no oil pressure within the time allotment window that the brain allows for it to start and then goes into a failed limp mode requiring a reset button press to restart. So then the question that comes to mind is, could this be due to some sort of air build up in the pump/lines, or more likely (because of the click/thump clue) is there some sort of solenoid or relay inside the pump that is failing, which starts/turns the motor over therefore creating pressure? Is this common? What's a new pump cost? (do I even want to know)

Cleanburn start up after failure 2: http://youtu.be/P3lY6T632LE

Cleanburn start up after failure 3: http://youtu.be/A_VSk3LHiRo

Here is a video (at the bottom) of me starting it for the very first time. I also took some measurements with Dc, Ac and resistance on the CAD sensor. I'm going to go check on it in an hour. Does anything look off to you? I know you can't see it in the video, but the oil goes up to about 7psi and then settles at 4.5 or 5psi within a few seconds.

Before start, not running resistance


Before start not running - Dc


Before start not running - Ac


Running - resistance


Running - Dc


Running - Ac





Cleanburn start up after failure1: http://youtu.be/jZSPPxSX2xg

You are absolutely right, that is the best part and as a nice side effect, I know a lot more about these units than I did 2 weeks ago ... I might even be able to service and clean it on my own now

So more than 24 hours later it is still running and maintaining the proper temperature. I notice that it add 1/10 of a running hour for every actual hour ... at least today it did. So using that number/ratio it will run for 2.4 hours a day and use 5 gallons of oil a day, does this sound correct? Or about 150 gallons a month in the winter conditions like I'm having now. If correct, this is a good way for me to know how much waste oil I will need for the years to come ... probably around 600 gallons each winter.

I did what you described with resistance previously when checking the voltage, my meter is auto ranging and resistance would jump all around from 6k to 16k when off, it was strange. Voltage seemed a little more consistent, 0vDc when off and 4 to 6vDc when on. The resistance measurement when on was about 250 ohms. It is still running by itself now 5 or 6 hours later and responding to the thermostat correctly. Aside from redoing the low and high pressure lines, I will have to keep an eye on it and see if it will run autonomously now.

I will redo it then, I want to make sure it will work properly first. The machine is cutting itself off for no reason. I watch the oil gauge so I know it isn't oil pressure, even though it is fluctuating.

Could the flame light sensor be going bad? What else could cause the sudden and random shutoff issues? Is there a way to bypass the flame sensor? Does it work off of resistance and I could use a resistor to test it instead?

I adjusted everything as you recommended, I had to turn up the oil pressure to stop the below from happening though and the flame is pretty strong now. Is there something else I can try to keep it running? It seems to not want to restart itself?

Cleanburn flameout 1: http://youtu.be/mu15mxOD3UI

So I took the fan off to try and clean it out, took off the rear panel to try and straighten it more and I decided I would vacuum the box a little more. What I found out is that when my cousin said he had vacuumed it out, apparently he only meant the part you can see. I discovered there was a lot of ashes where you couldn't see, as a matter of fact between the tube inlet and tube outlet there was over 5 gallons of ashes  . 6 out of the 9 tubes were completely blocked with ash, which is probably why it was getting so hot. Which brings me to another question, why are there 9 inlet tubes and 10 outlet tubes?

This this entire morning I have been cleaning that out properly, fixing the air flow issues and getting her back together. When I turned it back on I actually had to adjust the oil pressure and the fan tabs because it was running so cold it was turning the fan on and off, cycling.

I'm letting it run now to see if it turns off from getting too hot, but I believe the ash was the cause.

Squirrel cage. I do owe you!

If you were local I would have you come service it, pay you and provide a 12 pack of your favorite beer.