An oil burner should be serviced once a year, before the heating season, and a proper service is more than a filter change. It replaces the parts that wear, cleans out the soot that builds up inside the boiler, and finishes with a combustion test that measures how well the burner is actually burning. If nobody tested combustion, you did not get a full tune-up.
Oil burns dirtier than gas. A burner that ran all last winter has left soot on the surfaces the heat is supposed to pass through, and soot is an insulator. A thin layer of it means more of the oil you paid for goes up the chimney instead of into the house. That is why oil heat needs its annual visit more than any other system we look after.
What a proper oil burner service includes
- A new nozzle. The nozzle sprays the oil into a fine mist. It wears, and a worn one sprays unevenly and wastes fuel. It is replaced every year as a matter of course.
- New oil filters. The filter on the oil line and the strainer in the pump catch sludge from the tank before it reaches the nozzle.
- Electrodes checked and set. These make the spark that lights the oil. The gap and position are adjusted to spec.
- The boiler cleaned out. Soot is brushed and vacuumed from the combustion chamber and the passages the hot gases run through.
- The flue pipe and draft checked. The pipe to the chimney is inspected for soot and corrosion, and the draft is measured so the exhaust leaves the house the way it should.
- A combustion test. An analyzer reads the flue gases and the burner is adjusted until it burns cleanly. This is the step that turns a cleaning into a tune-up.
- Safety controls tested. The controls that shut the burner off if something goes wrong are checked to make sure they actually do.
Signs your burner needs attention now
- Soot around the burner, the flue pipe or the chimney cleanout
- An oily or smoky smell in the basement when the heat comes on
- A rumble, puff or bang when the burner lights
- The burner locking out and needing the reset button pressed
- Oil deliveries coming round more often than they used to
What a tune-up will not do
A tune-up keeps a burner burning cleanly and catches small faults before January. It will not make an old boiler as efficient as a new one, and it will not fix rooms that never got warm. Uneven heat is almost always the pipes, valves and circulators that carry the heat around the house, not the burner. We cover that on our heating services page.
And you do not need two tune-ups a year on a house. Once, before the season, is right for a home. A business or a building that runs its heat hard can need more, and we will tell you if yours does.
Thinking about switching to gas?
A lot of the oil burners we service belong to people weighing up a change. That is a bigger decision than a tune-up, and it depends on whether gas reaches your street, the age of the boiler and how long you plan to stay. Ask on the service visit and we will give you a straight answer, including if the honest one is that your oil system has plenty of life left.
We service oil boilers across Nassau and Suffolk, from our base in North Babylon outward. Call 631-587-0085 or use the form above to book yours before the cold sets in. More on our boiler work on the boiler repair and service page.
