Oil heat and low pressure burners

[ohland]

Furnace repairman just left. We have a Stewart-Warner "Winkler" low pressure oil burner. It is over 50 years old now, and other than two thermostats and a few relays, it is still putting out the BTUs. We need a relay replaced (should be in next week) but overall, I like using Bunker #2 because unlike gas, it will not explode...

Why not electric? When you pay to rewire my house....

[Pb2au]

Don't you know you are supposed to spend 15K$ on a new system to save money as opposed to replacing the relay?

[smoked turkey]

ah, I well remember those days. We had a 10x50 mobile then and the oil furnace had a 55 gallon barrel on a support frame to make it gravity feed. Worked great. Glad you are able to keep the old girl going. We have an old Ashley wood stove in the basement now and it does a very respectful job. I do have electric heat but believe me I feel much warmer with wood heat. Probably cheaper to operate too.

[starmac]

99% of the heating done in this area is oil, but it isn't exactly by choice.

[lancem]

I would love to figure out an easy way to heat my garage using waste oil. I seem to collect a lot of it and taking it to town is always the last thing on my mind when I go once every couple of months... Anybody have an easy, read that as cheap, way to use it?

[Plate plinker]

Electric heat is costly I use the natural gas over my electric heat pump.
May switch over to geothermal in the next 2-3 years. The utility gives a 60% discount on my rate for that!

[Nashvegas Welder]

I saw a set of kick-a$$ plans on the web a while back for a home built waste oil heater. I wanna build one myself. I'll try to find a link.

[Nashvegas Welder]

http://www.motherearthnews.com/diy/waste-oil-heater-zmaz78sozraw.aspx#axzz3CaE3q7bI

[dragon813gt]

A Winkler that's still running. We stopped working on them 15 years ago for liability reasons. They are also really inefficient compared to a retention head burner. You may have the last running Winkler in the nation :)

[MaryB]

I heat with natural gas and wood pellets. Has to get below 30 degrees for me to fire up the pellet stove though or I roast. I let it go out when I head to bed and let the furnace take over so I don't have to watch it.

I had oil hat at one farm site I was renting, jelled up the fuel one night when it was -25, was loads of fun getting that going again. Got out a garden hose from the hot water heater and ran it over the pipe, mixed in 10 gallons of kerosene to thin the tank. Was lucky I had the kerosene, used it to heat the living room.

[GhostHawk]

Dragon nailed it, efficiency!

I put in a new Natural Gas Forced Air furnace 17 years ago about this time of year. I had just bought the house, furnace looked old, but ok. Then one night it got cold enough for it to want to run.

BANG


BANG
BANG


KERBANG!!!!








Did the work myself with some help with friends, cost under 1k. Unlike fuel oil, my Natural Gas is 80% + efficient. (Need combustion air intake from outside to get to 90) I suspect your old winkler is probably doing good to get 35-40% efficiency.

Our fuel bill even in North Dakota is very liveable. Worst I've seen was 150 a month then we got on budget plan and it settled into about 120-130. Last year we got a no interest, no payment loan from the City, put in all new windows, doors, (Loan disappears in 10 years) and watched our fuel bill shrink to half.

Natural gas rocks IF you can get it.
Its price stable, its safe, consistent, and pretty much worry free.
Pretty much everything in the house that can be gas, is. Most have hot surface ignition, only the 16 yr old water heater and kitchen stove still has pilot.

Good news is with no power we can and have managed for up to 5 days on just the kitchen stove. :)

[Mtnfolk75]

MaryB,

We also heat with a pellet stove about 180 days a year. We also, shut down at bedtime and relight while the coffee is brewing. We have no other heat with the exception of a small electric in the bathroom and bedroom that are on a thermostat.
Our 538 Sq Ft cabin has 1 bedroom, bath, kitchen & living room. We heated about half the winter of 2005-2006 with electric, when our Propane Earth Stove died. SCE bills went from about $75 to $700 a month. That is what prompted the pellet set up
in October 2006. $2,300 stove that drop shipped from Utah and I installed, lasted until Spring 2012 when parts became obsolete. Replaced with a $1,400 stove from Ace Hardware, 3 times the stove and much more efficient, went from burning about 75 bags average to 60'ish last winter.

BTW, we are all electric, dropped propane with the earth stove. We get too much snow to get regular propane deliveries & a 250 gallon tank wouldn't last the winter. SCE bill is usually about $40 summer & $80 winter now.

[dragon813gt]

If you want to be all electric then geothermal is the way to go. The company I work for does everything but we were formed around geothermal. If you can afford the upfront cost of the well you are set for 100 years, well wise. The units themselves, brand dependent, last 20 years plus. We have a 27yo house w/ 11 Waterfurnaces in it. 9 are still original and aren't going away anytime soon.

Modern air to air heat pumps are fairly efficient. They are over 100% above 40 degrees. But they taper off fairly quickly. The ductless minisplits, Mitsubishi Hyper Hear, run down to 20 and are still efficient. Electric backup, pretty much a toaster, is what kills your electric bills. The longer you stay off of it the cheaper your bills will be.

I have natural gas at my house. If I could get a well driller in my yard I would put geothermal in no questions asked. We have less service calls w/ them by a large margin. And w/ 30% of new sales being geothermal and close to 1,000 units running we're talking a good bit of equipment. I ripped out a monster belt driven forced air oil furnace when I bought my house. It was originally coal fired. Pretty much a 55 gallon drum w/ a burner bolted to it. Best I could get w/ a Beckett AFG was 72% burner efficiency. Total system efficiency was more like 30%.

[MT Gianni]

I last saw a low pressure oil burner in 79 and my boss said "no way are we touching that" when they wanted it serviced. I knew enough about them to call first and he said "eat the milage charge and get out now".

[MaryB]

My living room is impossible to heat with the furnace unless I run a huge plenum across the ceiling then duct to the floors. Put in the pellet stove and the living room stays a toasty 78 while the rest of the house is around 74. If you use any fans to move air around put them on the floor and push the cold dense air towards the stove. Works 100% better than trying to push hot air where it doesn't want to go.

Gas bill used to hit $120 on the coldest days, I can burn $80 worth of pellets and have a $20 gas bill now. If I fine tune this new pellet stove better I can probably do an overnight burn like I used to with my Bixby. If corn bottoms in price I may switch to it.


MaryB,

We also heat with a pellet stove about 180 days a year. We also, shut down at bedtime and relight while the coffee is brewing. We have no other heat with the exception of a small electric in the bathroom and bedroom that are on a thermostat.
Our 538 Sq Ft cabin has 1 bedroom, bath, kitchen & living room. We heated about half the winter of 2005-2006 with electric, when our Propane Earth Stove died. SCE bills went from about $75 to $700 a month. That is what prompted the pellet set up
in October 2006. $2,300 stove that drop shipped from Utah and I installed, lasted until Spring 2012 when parts became obsolete. Replaced with a $1,400 stove from Ace Hardware, 3 times the stove and much more efficient, went from burning about 75 bags average to 60'ish last winter.

BTW, we are all electric, dropped propane with the earth stove. We get too much snow to get regular propane deliveries & a 250 gallon tank wouldn't last the winter. SCE bill is usually about $40 summer & $80 winter now.

[ohland]

A Winkler that's still running. We stopped working on them 15 years ago for liability reasons. They are also really inefficient compared to a retention head burner. You may have the last running Winkler in the nation :)

Huh, thing is pretty much boolit pruf. Some electric parts fail (relay contacts), I scrape off the light soot from the flue sensor (bimetallic strip or something), but it is from 1964, so there is little electronic on it. I dimly remember the sticker on the side from a service call, 80 or 85 percent. Don't remember quite what. With the fuel tank inside the basement, it never freezes. My Dad originally had the fuel tank outside, but the first winter answered that question.

Even have the original user's manual / parts list in the original (beaten-up) 9x11 1/2 envelope. Oh, it is a Low-Pressure furnace....

[dragon813gt]

There is no way it's at 80-85% efficiency. Depending on when it was done it could have been done w/ a wet kit. If you didn't use them correctly you got false readings. They also aren't real time so you can't watch the burn. Don't get me wrong. A Winkler is the Cadillac of low pressure burners. To much liability to work on them anymore. Especially w/ the very low numbers left. That stack relay is another huge liability. Let's put the safety in the flue where it's likely to fail. They get ripped out and converted or we don't work on the unit. It's one thing if you work on this stuff yourself. But when you have thousands of customers you don't take any chances.

[ohland]

Unfortunately, Google allows one to view only. Pages 132-135.
http://books.google.com/books?id=2yUDAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA257&dq=popular%20science%201959%20%20stewart-warner&pg=PA132#v=onepage&q=popular%20science%201959%20%20stewart-warner&f=false

From ad copy, "watch the Winkler LP burn crude oil, crankcase drainings, heavy oils, light oils, catalytic oils. Winkler challenges any other burner to pass these tests.

Note that the EPA may not be totally thrilled with someone using their Government Motors used oil. I know of nothing but Bunker #2 in ours, though I saw a snippet suggesting that #4 was to be supported. No specific "as-of" date, or serial number. FAIK, it never did support #4, YMMV.

Ooh, a period newspaper ad - CENTRAL HEATING & AIR CONDITIONING SERVICE 9 N. Terrace St. Janesville (WI)

My grand dad was (eventually) from 455 N Terrace... It is a small world...

[dragon813gt]

I don't understand the point of your post. Just because it can burn different oils doesn't make it better. Beckett/Riello/Carlin and designed to burn #1 and #2. And they do it well because they are high static retention head burners. I work on industrial boilers that burn #6. They are steam atomized burners and they are anything but efficient. But what do you expect when you're burning tar.

If you're happy w/ your burner that's all that matters. W/ the cost of oil most people want the most efficient one they can get. Which is still well below gas due to the nature of condensing flues and soot formation. There is a reason Klondikes were bulled from the market.

[ohland]

LP oil burner works OK, Bunker #2 will not explode and I don't need to rewire my house....

The eccentric that drives the pistons is down about 51RPM. The LP burner has pre-mixed oil-air foam being pushed out a bigger nozzle than HP. It can handle sediment up to 1/16 in size.

For modern construction, I don't think oil would be in the running. But just like boolits, its good enough for what it does.

[dragon813gt]

Now I'm really confused. Bunker oils are listed by letter, not number. Bunker A is just #2. So you're burning regular #2? Or are you burning Bunker B which is #4 fuel oil? Your safeties really have to fail for #2 to blow up. It's usually caused by the homeowner pushing the reset button over and over which soaks the chamber. Only way to take care of it is to light it off. Had flue pipes blow off and called the fire department a few times. But this was all user error. And this is the reason that electronic primaries lock out after two failed attempts to light off.

Like I said, if you're happy w/ it that's all that matters. No one delivers Bunker B or C to residential homes. Commercial customers are having trouble finding it as the oil companies aren't selling as much due to gas conversions. They also need permits to burn it which of course aren't cheap.

Having the oil/air mix come out the nozzle is one of the main reasons for it's inefficiency. When you have the primary and secondary air surrounding the atomized oil it keeps the flame tight which keeps it hotter meaning higher efficiency. I know if one Winkler in the area. It's on an abandoned boiler that's sitting next to the new one in a customers basement :)

[ohland]

I have never really read the type of fuel on the receipts that the fueller leaves. The S-W stuff calls it "No. 2 oil", not bunker. I suppose the bunker appellation is a time-worn saying. Whatever.

Stewart-Warner was of the opinion that the LP models "may reach 82 or 83 percent efficiency". Did you perhaps read the Popular Science, Feb 1959 article? I did some screen snips and recreated a PDF document, also have a Word document with the story.

"Europe, never famous for squandering, has taken to the low-pressure burner in a big way. It's the only kind of burner that will successfully handle their lower grade oils. Also, Europeans consider 60 to 65 degrees as good heat, and the low pressure burner is the only one that can be turned down that low and work well."

[MT Gianni]

That efficiency would be burner efficiency not furnace efficiency of how much heated air moves to the house. You will have duct, plenum and stack losses as well.

[dragon813gt]

"Europe, never famous for squandering, has taken to the low-pressure burner in a big way. It's the only kind of burner that will successfully handle their lower grade oils. Also, Europeans consider 60 to 65 degrees as good heat, and the low pressure burner is the only one that can be turned down that low and work well."

That has to be from the 1959 article. Their oil is a higher grade then ours. They switched to low sulfur oil a long time ago. All their burners are blue flame w/ FGR. Any of the oil burners we currently have here have been illegal there for a long time as well. I laugh at the thought that a HP burner couldn't heat their homes because they keep them cooler. What you find over there is they're almost all hydronic. They don't have a lot of forced air. They use constant circulation combined w/ outdoor reset. They don't run the water up to 180, shut off, turn back on at 160 like the majority do here. Their systems are more efficient all around. It's a shame we don't get their burners. But a Buderus boiler w/ a Riello is still extremely efficient. I can set one or them up to the point of condensing, which of course we don't do.

I know the winklers were capable of 80% burner efficiency. But they typically ran in the mid 70% range. So for every dollar of oil it burns $.25 goes up the chimney. Compared to a Beckett where you will typically see a $.10 savings per dollar. Every system is different. You can't set up all Becketts to run at 85%. But w/ the price of oil every little bit helps. Burner efficiency increases combined w/ system efficiency increases means less money going up your chimney.