Hello from Ireland

[philly]

Hi All,
Just joined the forum site.
Running home heating burner (purchased from Freetherm) on WVO and WMO  for the past 4.5 years. Wondering if there are any other members on this side of the Atlantic who are running one of these units. I have preformed some modifications to mine as I thought fit. I also built my own centrifuge to remove 'fat' from my WVO supplies which is the only thing that will cause ignition failure due to the spark electrodes being 'short circuited' by a build up of fat. The centrifuge is the best investement that I have made to date.
I welcome all comments.

[doug]

Philly,
 Welcome to the forum. I'm not from your side of the Atlantic, but I'd like to know more about your burner, centrifuge and modification. I do have one question for you. After you mix wvo and wmo together after a time do the two oil separate?
doug

[philly]

Hi Doug,
Thanks for your reply. I have two holding tanks in a shed at the end of my garden. These tanks are connected together with a T piece and two gate valves so I can choose which tank I use. One tank may hold WVO while the other may hold WMO or there could be a mixture of both oils in the tanks as I sometimes come under pressure for storage space. I pump the oil to the boiler room via an underground pipe and fill a small tank which will run my house for about 1 week. The advantage of this tank is that the oil in it comes up to room temp after a short while. It is located beside the boiler and is slightly higher than the burner so gravity assists the small pump suck oil from the tank into the oil pre-heater. I cannot answer your question regarding the oils separating but I guess that the viscosity of both oils must be quiet similar as the pre-heat temperature and secondary air pressure is almost the same for both oils.  The WMO will leave a soft white ash in the boiler which needs to be cleaned every 4 weeks during the winter. The WVO leaves zero ash, however if I do not remove the fat in it with my centrifuge if can cause the ignition spark on the electrodes to arc to ground resulting in the burner tripping out. My burner uses a delevan siphon nozzle (venturi effect) and an external air compressor. I will try and post some images of my setup later.

[philly]

Here are some shots of my burner and centrifuge. Hope you all can open them. Picture viewer, word or Power Point should work.You may need to save to your PC first if you want to enlarge image

[Russ]

Welcome to the forum Philly!  Glad you stopped by.

That setup you have there looks way too clean for a waste oil burner  .

Nice setup!

[philly]

Thanks Russ,
Running for over 4 years now. My next mod is to make it easier for cleaning out the ash. I have to pull out the burner and then remove it's mounting plate to gain access to the lower part of the boiler. I plan to make the burner mounting plate into a door on hinges so that it swings open with the burner in place. Also it will be very handy if I just want to inspect the nozzle and spark electrodes.

[philly]

Thanks Russ,
Running for over 4 years now. My next mod is to make it easier for cleaning out the ash. I have to pull out the burner and then remove it's mounting plate to gain access to the lower part of the boiler. I plan to make the burner mounting plate into a door on hinges so that it swings open with the burner in place. Also it will be very handy if I just want to inspect the nozzle and spark electrodes.

UPDATE.
To help with the cleaning I got my hands on a good quality ''Buderus'' cast iron boiler which has a large door which the WO burner mounts on. To clean the chambers I only need to remove 2 X bolts and open the door fully. The burner does not need to be removed for this task as it swings back with the door opening. I reinstated the original boiler with it's regular diesel burner and made a control circuit which brings on the diesel burner automatically should the waste oil burner cut out. I also wired a small neon lamp in my house which will illuminate should a fault occur. with the WO burner.

[Russ]

Sounds like a nice setup with your Buderus.  Doug on the forum has one and I really like it, but have yet to find one for sale in my area.  My current Burnham has the swing open door as well.  Very handy for sure!  And good use of your old boiler as a backup.  Id love to see pictures of the new boiler if you get a chance.

Thanks.

Russ

[u1100l]

What model Buderus are you running?