Hi Ron,
i just stopped by here again today and saw you response to my earlier post.
Well I am on my second year with this heater and I am loving it! I had to rebuild the pump motor and make grates for the flame deflection but other than that it works great with no issues. The last year I heated my shop with fuel oil I spent $3500.00 in oil, last year I may have burnt 50 gallons of regular fuel!
This year I replaced the old hot air oil furnace with a commercial Gas hot air furnace that hangs from the ceiling as my back up and freed up more floor space in the shop too.
To answer some of your questions,
yes that little drip pot is positioned over a pressure switch so if the oil back feeds it will shut the pump down.
The thermocoupler is a good idea too, I actually stopped burning the glycerin because the temp would drop too low and shut the pump off. The thormocoupler is set at 160F, located at ethe bottom of the fire chamber and is connected to the power supply of the pump, it does not complete the circuit until the thermocoupler see 160.
There is also a regular control box located on the side of the unit that you would normally see on an regual oil gun. I was not sure what was for. I learned that the unit originally came with a Cad Cell that was positioned at the top of the burner but the original owner did away with it because it would often get enough soot on it to falsly shut down the pump.
The burner pans are about 13 inches in diameter.
Burns just under a half a gallon and hour on low and just under 3/4 gallons an hour on high. I can get about 12 hours on a tank full
The cleanest burning oil is the used vegetabel oil, I can go for three days before I need to shut won to clean pans, with waste oil I shut down and clean once per day.
Great little unit, When the time comes I will probably get the "eliminator" as the replacement for this unit. It has a thermostat that will help reduce the oil consumption.
