Its looking like I waited too late in the season to get the company that cleaned my oil boiler last year to do it this year. I only ran about 300 gallons through it since last cleaned so it really doesnt need a tune up, but past experience is that the heat exchanger does need cleaning ever year. I have the appropriate brush and have done it before, but when it was cleaned last year the new contractor mentioned that the reason the efficiency was a bit low was that the gaskets on the top plate and burner gun were missing and deteriorated. If I open it up this year, I would like to have something on hand just in case the existing gaskets are rough. I dont know what he put back in, but the old stuff looked like asbestos gaskets used to look like before they were banned. Bascially about a 3/4" very thin gasket made up of coarse fibers woven like burlap with some sort of gray material in the weave.
I expect I could probably use refractory cement, but would definitely like some suggestions. I dont have a lot of supply houses int he area so online sources are probably what I am looking for.
As a side note, many of the Northern New Hampshire regional oil suppliers have been bought out over the years and have gotten rid of their service departments or the quality of the techs have gotten poor. The reason I switched suppliers two years ago was that the service tech for Irving Oil insisted that there was no need to pull the burner to clean the unit and rather he cleaned the combustion chamber through the gun port by pulling the burner head and required a call back to fix a slow leak that doused the burner motor with fuel oil. When I had the new contractor work on it, he showed me that the entire refractory target on the back wall of the combustion chamber was mostly missing and had been for awhile. I dont mind paying for service but I sure dont like paying for bad service.
I expect I could probably use refractory cement, but would definitely like some suggestions. I dont have a lot of supply houses int he area so online sources are probably what I am looking for.
As a side note, many of the Northern New Hampshire regional oil suppliers have been bought out over the years and have gotten rid of their service departments or the quality of the techs have gotten poor. The reason I switched suppliers two years ago was that the service tech for Irving Oil insisted that there was no need to pull the burner to clean the unit and rather he cleaned the combustion chamber through the gun port by pulling the burner head and required a call back to fix a slow leak that doused the burner motor with fuel oil. When I had the new contractor work on it, he showed me that the entire refractory target on the back wall of the combustion chamber was mostly missing and had been for awhile. I dont mind paying for service but I sure dont like paying for bad service.
