Safe way to light oil burner?

What is a safe way to light a delavan siphon nozzle-based oil burner if using diesel as fuel and not preheating furnace?

If using propane, I'd just send a small amt of propane into furnace and light with torch at vent hole.

Seems I like the above process would be inadvisable if using diesel with a delavan siphon nozzle. The nozzle atomizes the fuel. Too much fuel in air before lightning could be unfortunate.

 

Tear a small strip of rag and tie it to a length of 1/4-1/2" metal tube about 4' long, put a small amount of diesel on the rag so it's not dripping everywhere and light with a lighter. Use the burning rag to ignite the fuel spray at the bottom of the furnace. This would be disastrous with more volatile fuels like petrol/gasoline.

 

Cool. Thx!

 

Same as above. I usually dispense with the rod though. I push it down along the side and light with a propane torch. Let some compressed air in till it starts fluttering and then slowly introduce the fuel till you get a good heavy black flame. Then turn your blower on and tune from there. Watch for the rag cinder getting blown ou of the furnace. The rod helps. Once it's been burning for a minute or two you can close the lid. Then season to taste. I've found that fuel and air requirements will change as the furnace heats up. It will not support full fuel and air until it's plenty hot so be patient.
Pressurized fuel makes the process easier, but gravity/siphon is the same proceedure. Keep a few spare rags handy.

Turning it back off is NOT the opposite though. Turn fuel off first or you will get tons of smoke, then turn the blower off. Always always turn the fuel off first no matter what the fuel. Don't turn your compressed air off for more than a few seconds or you will burn up the o ring. Leave it on.

When I reignite a HOT furnace

I OPEN THE LID,

momentarily turn compressed air off and let some fuel squirt in. If the furnace is hot it will ignite with a lazy smokey flame, then immediately turn the compressed air back on. Then turn the blower back on, then close the lid. If you turn the blower on first and then the fuel, you will get a pillar of white smoke and the a loud woof, bang, pow, kaboom.... you know, batman stuff. Very disconcerting. Remember that smoke is combustible.

If you've had a flameout and the furnace is not hot enough to ignite the oil go back to step one.

Sorry about the caps. It's important.

Pete

 

@Petee716 , based on your comments, sounds like I will need to mount lid on a swing arm or similar. My lid is pretty heavy. Removing lid potentially several times during use will get old pretty fast without it. Was going to do this anyway but wasn’t high on my list.

Time to break out my harbor freight 120v, 70 amp stick welder! Adding swing arm mechanism for lid is just about last step. Well, other than painting everything flat black, so my crappy welds aren’t obvious

BTW ... on the topic of cheapo stick welder ...

If you ever need to improve performance of cheapo Harbour Freight stick welder, replace welder electrode holder with the $14 Berger holder that HF also sells. I just did this the other day. Mind blown! Performance went from almost useless to somewhat useful.

 

Melter posted a video of lighting his furnace recently. Same process as above and same one I use. I started with a propane weed burned (1lb tanks size). That thing just wanted to snuff itself our when lowering into the furnace.

 

I pull my burner, point it at a lit propane torch and crank the fuel. Flamethrowers are us! I then stuff it in the furnace and add air. LID OPEN, ALWAYS!
Once I am able to add air, I slowly close the lid and adjust the mixture.
If you get a flame out. Kill the fuel ASAP and open the lid. If you get a spontaneous relight with the lid closed, you might not have a lid any longer.

 

I haven't yet tried the soaked diesel rag, but I'm pretty sure it will have good results. Here is the thread that was discussed above
http://forums.thehomefoundry.org/index.php?threads/best-burner-for-larger-furnace.1043/page-2

 

Yeah there's just not enough air down there to support the flame when your burner is in the tuyere and everything's shut off.
On another note, when I preheat with propane I use the same rag method or a burning stick in the furnace and then turn the gas on and let it woof. It's no biggie. The ignition flame doesn't have to be robust with propane like it does with diesel.

There are a number of different strategies for lid lifting. Here's mine

If you decide to use nested pipes make sure there is plenty of clearance between the pipes. If I build another one I would use the same design with more clearance. Once it started getting rusty it stopped settling so nicely. I spray it down with PB Blaster before every session and it works great. That's not terribly inconvenient but it's just one extra step. There's a lot of other designs for lifting. Myfordboy's comes to mind among others.

Pete

 

I did a pour today, it wasn't anything exciting, but I did film the startup procedure from cold for ya. Easy peasy.
This is the Kwicky running 15psi of air and unpressurized jet-A that's only elevated about 2feet above the ground for a little gravity boost.

No editing, just raw film.

 

I'll never understand the need for propane if you are only burning diesel. Skip it. IF you want to run used oil, simply start on diesel and once the furnace is hot (about 10mins) switch the fuel source to oil. Again, no propane needed unless want to preheat with propane and switch straight to oil... A simple T in your plumbing is all that's needed, oil feeding one side and diesel on the other. Some quarter turn ball valves feeding individual needle valves and bob's your uncle.

 

So here's the odd thing. Went back out after dinner to try and diagnose problem. Took burner out of furnace, turned it on with compressor at pressures between 5 and 15 psi in open air. Tried to light it with a torch. Diesel would not light. Fuel in direct path of torch flame would burn, but that's it. Once torch was out of path, ...nada! Tried varying amounts of fuels. Same result.

Checked o-ring for giggles. It was fine.

Bad quality diesel?

 

I wouldn't expect it to burn in open air. I'm actually kind of surprised Jason's does. The way I figger it when the mist comes out of the nozzle it has to run into something that's already on fire in order to ignite. If the flamefront is moving faster than the fuel, the fuel can't catch up to the fire. Having it contained in a confined space helps to resolve that. When I'm first starting off with Deisel with the burning rag in there I give it a good squirt from the nozzle and try to wet a good portion of the floor and wall so there's a good amount of fuel burning for the mist to hit. Assuming your tank is somewhat elevated you should be able to get a little raw juice in there without compressed air at least for a second or two on initial ignition.

Pete

 

Makes sense. I'll give another try in the morning.

 

Ben,

Are you thinking of pressurizing your fuel at some point?

Denis

 

I see you have the brown overalls like me.... a wise choice if there's an oil vapour explosion .

 

Not at the moment. Getting plenty of fuel with siphon nozzle. Only unexpected variably with fuel stream is due to my compressor. Once I develop a better feeling for my oil burner’s characteristics when using diesel, I might reevaluate.

Propane and oil burners are completely different beasts. I’m very comfortable with propane. Not there yet with oil burner.

 

The tip of my nozzle is only about 1inch from the end of the pipe. Take a look at the charts for Jet-a vs Diesel. I though jet A was not as flammable as diesel. I could be wrong, it's been a long night and I'm wiped out. You can always visit your local airport and buy 5gallons of Jet-A off them. If it's a mom and pop FBO, they will probably give you their sump fuel as most are drowning in the shit.

 

What's the point? He's got a delavan, its motive force is venturi/siphon. That thing is no more than an over complicated and expensive kwiky. I'd like to try one some day, but for now, I wouldn't trade my burner for truckload of hookers.

 

It looks like you've got a setup that's working quite well for you and I wouldn't change it either. Part of the downside of relying only on gravity and venturi is the variables you have to contend with when an adjustment of one feature (in this case the compressed air volume) affects more than one aspect of the system. I found often times that by the time I've increased the pressure enough to get the fuel I need there's an unworkable amount of air pressure/volume going into the furnace. The ability to meter the amount of fuel independently is very helpful, especially if the fuel is from varying sources, temp conditions, or head height. The literature on the SNA nozzle even advocates the use of a metering pump, albeit that's only in the context of head height (we're not exactly using them to manufactures specs anyway). I did without for quite awhile but had one flameout too many and built my tank.

Pete