Oil Burner

[troyboy1]

I’m converting my Wood Burner to a Oil Burner ,What gives of the best heat,Engine Oil,Vegetable Oil,or,Heating Oil,Can you mix any of the oils if you run short,and,you have to mix Heating with Engine Oil?

 

[artie]

It's kind of impossible to add anything, since we don't know what kind of burner you're going to use.

 

[Argus]

You'd probably be better advised at a site catering for those trades - this is a wood-working forum and you've already decided to move away from burning that medium!

In this part of the UK oil-burner work is covered by 'competent person' schemes - I believe that the body is OFTEC. About us | OFTEC - off-grid heating technologies
They can advise on the regulations involved.

 

[Doug B]

I believe you may need a permit to burn waste oil which no doubt will cost money to get, I remember a few years ago a friend falling foul of some regulation or other because he was burning used engine oil.

 

[niemeyjt]

My local garage said they had to get a license and other waste related paperwork from the local council at considerable cost to burn used engine oil to heat the paint booth. He said it did not pay - so the waste oil was sent away and he heated with standard heating oil. Check before you go too far.

 

[Keefy.]

You're probably aware that you must fit a fire safety valve.
I think I'm right in saying that it has to be either outside the building or outside of the room/area that the appliance is in.

 

[clogs]

I wont use oil at all....and I have a duel fuel boiler.....
oil is never going to get cheaper, ever.....it also stinks.....not the exhaust but the odd drips u get......
always plenty of wood about.....I pay €120 per ton for Olive wood....use just over 2 tons on an average winter......
but collect rubbish wood to add to the pile.....
and I have the inconvnience to go to the boiler room outside to top it up.....
natural gas would be better but we dont have it and LPG is as expensive as oil....

 

[Dee J]

There's a garage a few miles from me that has some sort of burner chimney, and on cold days you can smell it from about half a mile away. That nasty bitter tang that reminds me of draining old oil from a hot engine. Maybe their burner is inefficient, but I'm glad I don't live closer.

 

[Simon89]

Two of the garages on the site I am on have burners made from calor gas bottles, burning used engine oil. One is air fed from a compressor to burn the fuel a bit cleaner. No smell, smoke from the chimney doesn’t look too bad either. Depending where you are and what your setup is you may get away without any bother from the council.

 

[Richard_C]

As far as I know you can burn heating oil ("new") without a licence but you need to pay c £3k to be licenced to burn waste oil. Engine oil back in the '50s was mostly oil, now the synthetics and semi synthetics are very high tech and full of additives (which is why you can change oil every 20k miles rather than 3k, and even big engines only need half the gallon or so we used to use). I wouldn't want to burn engine oil anywhere near my lungs or anybody else's for that matter, don't know what the combustion products are. It gets recycled.

No gas in our little village, so its oil c/h. I was paying 13.5p litre when I moved here in '96, it peaked at about 66p in 2013 and the last lot I got this April was just under 30p. Might help you do your sums. About 1 liter per 10 KWh?

 

[Spectric]

I used to run vegtable oil in some of my old diesel cars, pre common rail and they ran just fine so if you are just burning it in a fire then so long as you comply with the HETAS regs and ensure it is safe then it should burn most oils.