Quote Originally Posted by alloy2 View Post
There's a transfer pump at the fuel tank set at 30 psi that supply's oil to a preheater at the burner, ignition was electronic, the issue with waste oil is sludge and foreign liquids ie: ant-freeze and water.


The filter is wire mesh, reusable, I used to chuck the filter onto the metal lathe and give if a quick spin to extradite the crude - a 20 litre bucket over the filter kept the crude off the shop wall.



Waste oil should be processed through a centrifuge to remove moisture and sludge to prevent the issues mentioned above.

Shops use hot air waste oil heaters these are less expensive to purchase, I choose the boiler. In the shop heat was provided using an old cast iron heat exchanger that was five feet long and sat right against the wall. Then another heat exchanger was installed inside the plenum on our forced air furnace in the house..

If the boiler failed to fire up the forced air furnace in the house would simply fall over to its alternative fuel source.

The hot air waste oil furnaces about the time the thermostat is calling for heat you already begin to feel the chill, whereas the boiler has a vast storage of hot water for a supply constant heat.

The shop I built in British Colombia I used a natural gas fired hot water boiler with a heated floor.
I hear you on the contaminants like water & anti freeze. They're pretty careful about that around here. Gasoline mixed in with the oil can be bad. That's something to be avoided.

Most of the residential burner pressures run 100 - 180 psi these days. All of the fuel filters i've done over the years had a felt like element. They seem to do a pretty good job. You just swap them and the nozzle out when you are doing your annual cleaning. That's pretty much the standard if you're burning #2 or kero in this area. It works pretty well. Most of the furnace / boiler calls in the winter are either because an outside tank gelled at the filter or because the annual maintenance hasn't been done in awhile.

I couldn't agree more about the hot air furnaces. They're convective heat. The air gets heated & circulated. Hot water baseboard or heated floor is much better. It's radiant heat. Radiant heat ... heats objects and people. It's much more comfortable because it's even. It's not like constantly cycling from hot to cold you get with a hot air furnace.