How To Bleed An Oil Burner To Restart Your Heat
How To Bleed An Oil Burner To Restart Your Heat, is an article that will help the average homeowner restart their heating system when they have run out of heating oil. This can be a very costly ordeal without the knowledge it takes to purge and restart the system. Take a few moments to completely read through this work and you should be good to go.
Please take note of the diagram above as this shows you how to locate the bleeder screw. Most types of oil burners will have this bleeder screw or one very similar and most are in this location. If yours differs you will need to locate the bleeder screw before you can continue.
We all have times when we may inadvertently run out of heating oil. When this occurs it becomes necessary to bleed the oil pump in order to put the burner back into operation. Simple to do with a little insight, quite a bit of money can be saved if a call to the heating repairman can be avoided.
First thing that must be done is to replenish the fuel supply. An oil company will deliver your oil without charge but most will add a service call to the bill if they must come inside and restart the system. Once again a little information can save this fee. This way with the high prices the money you save on the service call, you can then use to buy a little more oil.
Oil burners will also burn diesel fuel and if an oil delivery is too far off, then 5 gallon jugs of diesel fuel can be purchased from most gas stations and poured into the oil tank. This can hold you over until you can receive an oil delivery. This type of fuel will burn fine and actually burns a little bit hotter then heating oil. A few gallons of diesel now and then actually helps the system to stay burning clean.
Once the fuel supply has been replenished and we have located the bleeder screw, find your emergency switch on the boiler or furnace and place it into the off position.
This switch is usually right on or near the apparatus. IT will normally have a red cover plate and will state oil burner. There is sometimes one up inside the House as well as on the boiler or furnace but for our application we need to have those on and use the one we can reach at the unit.
A 1 pound empty coffee can or some type of container is needed. Using a socket or wrench that fits the bleeder screw open the screw one or two turns. with the coffee can under it. Now find the reset button which is red and on top of the burner or on the front. Most are similar to the picture at the top of this article.
If you ran the system out of fuel then this button will be popped up. It works like the button on a turkey only when this one pops it means the control hasn't seen a flame. It is a safety feature in case the flame goes out for whatever reason the unit won't run.
Push this red button in and it should stay in. Now holding the container under the bleeder to avoid spills, turn on the emergency switch and your burner should start up. Air and spews of fuel will come out of the open bleeder screw. Count to 15 or so and shut of the switch. Wait a minute or so and then repeat this procedure. Again turn on the switch and count to 15 watching the stream of oil to see when air stops spurting and you get a good solid stream of fuel.
This operation may have to be done three to five times for fifteen seconds each time in order to get a good stream with no air. If there is air still in the line then the pump can not pull the fluid. Depending on how far away your oil tank is this can take a little time.
Once we have a steady stream of oil and no air we are ready to put the burner back into operation. To begin this we must tighten the bleeder screw and remove our oil catch container from the area. Never leave this near any combustibles and it is recommended that you dump the oil you bled out, back into the fill pipe with a funnel outside at the oil fill.
After closing the bleeder securely, turn on the power and your boiler should come on and then fire. Once the system has fired it should continue to run without sputtering. If the burner goes out then the procedure may have to be repeated. After the burner has lit make sure the bleeder screw is not leaking and that you have removed the oil from the area that you bled.
There is a very good manual available online for just this type of questions.
Get it and you'll know a lot more then the next homeowner about your heating system.
After you have read this article and you know what your doing, you'll be the one in the neighborhood who all the people call to find out how to bleed an oil burner to restart your heat.
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