Any oil-fired Rayburn experts in the house?

[Nomad]

Hi all,

We are currently on holiday in Wales (and loving it !), making use a friends cottage that wasn't being used this week

Will be doing some DIY while I'm here as a sort of "thank you" for the use of the place, and one of the bits that's totally new to me is the oil-fired Rayburn stove / boiler
Simple design, burner on left, oven on right, hot air from burner passes below hotplates from left to flue on the right.
The boiler is in there somewhere but I've not found it yet - I guess somewhere behind the burner but not sure :ashamed

It being a small village, we we chatting to one of the locals who told us the previous owner kept the stove because they liked it but it never gave off much heat

I was here around christmas, and even with the stove turned up full, the water pipes from the boiler were warm at best - never hot.

Would anyone have any suggestions what is needed?
So far I have tried :
Lift the top off the stove and cleaned the soot from under the hotplates (lots of soot but it made no difference)
Cleaned around the burner chamber (sides, top, etc) again lots of soot but no difference.

Controls I have found are a vent in the bottom door to allow more air into the burner chamber and various sliders inside to direct the hot air.
It might just need these setting - but what does what??

Any help appreciated, asking here as I know we have a plenty of folk with lots of good advice

Thanks folks !

 

[Tigman]

How many burners does it have , pressure jet ? If it has 2 one for cooking one for heating , maybe one for heating not firing ! Single vaporising burner controlled by thermostat , stat could be up the swanky ie not calling for heat !

Any piccys ?

Check the oil filter to the cooker might be choked no flow of oil .

 

[Nomad]

How many burners does it have , pressure jet ? If it has 2 one for cooking one for heating , maybe one for heating not firing !

As far as I can tell it's just 1 burner (behind left door) and it is supposed to do cooking & heating.
If there are 2 burners, any idea where I should look for the 2nd ?

The system has 22mm water pipes to/from it so is obviously supposed to run the boiler & radiators. Any ideas where the boiler tank is located in these stoves? Could the vents around it be soot'd up??

Any idea what a service on these normally includes? (remove soot? where??, etc..)

many thanks

 

[Tigman]

It has got water in it ? Via an fe tank somewhere , does it cook ok temperature wise ?

 

[Tigman]

It's been a while since I worked on oil boilers, Wilson wall flame was the Bain of my life , pain in the neck , not familiar with the ray burn but access to flu ways should be obvious and flues should be cleaned on service .

 

[Nomad]

It has got water in it ? Via an fe tank somewhere , does it cook ok temperature wise ?

Oil is gravity fed from a raised oil tank outside.

Oven temp is always very low. Oven thermometer mounted on door has markings up to 300 deg, temp very rarely goes above 10 deg !

System has water (immersion works fine, you can feel warmed water circulating from the stove if you turn the heat up.

I suspect the heat isn't being generated in the first place, it's not a case of it's there but I can't control where it goes.

Had flue inspection hatch off, some soot inside but not bad. Flue seems to go through wall into next house. Shared flue? Flue runs through their house

 

[andypocock]

Our Esse oil burner get's like that every six months or so. All it needs is a good decoke and hoover out and it's back to normal. Check for carbon build up on the inside of the burner where the oil feeds. I poke our's through with a suitable sized drill bit but the Rayburn might be a different but they are simple beasts and just need to be kept clean in my experience.

 

[scarecrow]

could there be a baffle somewhere for a switching the hot air to the boiler or oven there is one on mind but it's not a Rayburn it might be a good idea to check the water tanks in the attic if it is the old type system it will have a big tank and a small one the smaller one feeds the radiators and boiler should be topped up with distilled water

 

[Nomad]

Any piccys ?

Check the oil filter to the cooker might be choked no flow of oil .

Pics as requested (using borrowed camera - apologies for the quality )

Main view, a soggy sheepdog is a standard accessory around these parts

Left doors opened - should show burner but pic is too dark. Oops

The only filter I can find is on the tank outside.

Have just spoken to the owners, they were planning to book an annual service soon so I'm tempted to just leave it and do other jobs around the place...

thanks for the advice folks

 

[Tigman]

Thats the one , check it see if its clean if not change , the flow of oil is controlled by the thermostat, whack the stat up full on and see what happens , if its burning right your water should get hot , sounds like a lack of oil to me ! If its gonna be serviced they will sort it !

 

[oilbeback]

There are many reasons why a vaporising Rayburn will not get to temperature.
Yours looks to be the round wick burner, similar but bigger than what is found in an AGA. The burner itself will block with carbon over time. The oil is fed into the centre of the burner and it radiates through channels to reach the wicks. These channels block easily. The centre bore blocks with carbon as does the elbow coming off the bottom of the burner. The oil feed pipe known as the bundy pipe also blocks up. The oil is fed to the burner via the control box which is mounted on the left hand side of the cooker. Inside the control box is a float and needle valve which maintains a head of oil. It is released from the control box via the metering stem. This is a brass tube with a fine slot, through which the flow of oil is regulated. This slit can block with particle from dirty oil. The control box may not be receiving enough oil to keep pace if the oil filter or oil pipe from the tank is restricted. There may be a flue problem or a lack of combuston air, although this will usually be accompanoied by fumes in the kitchen. Finally all vaporising appliances are struggling due to the change in specification of kerosene. So much so that manufacturers such as ESSE and EFFEL have stopped production.
A good service may well sort it out. However these appliances days are numbered in my opinion due to the price and quality of the kerosene. When on low fire rate of 4 cc a minute they are costing about £90/month to run. On low fire they will barly cook never mind heat the water or radiators.

 

[rtcosic]

...................
Finally all vaporising appliances are struggling due to the change in specification of kerosene...............

Just out of curiosity can you expand on that, as I wasn't aware of recent changes to Domestic Kerosine specifications that might influence vapourising burner performance.

The 2006 change to BS 2869 CLASS C2 was the last change I was aware of.

As far as I was aware BS2869:2010 Fuel oils for agricultural, domestic and industrial engines and boilers, published 30-Sep-2010, only affected FAME and sulphur content content of Classes A2 and D Gasoil not Kerosine.

What changed??

 

[dai]

check the output from the control box
undo a pipe between the control and the burner
switch the oil on and
on low there should be 4cc/min/dripping out
high there should be 13cc/min

 

[oilbeback]

Just out of curiosity can you expand on that, as I wasn't aware of recent changes to Domestic Kerosine specifications that might influence vapourising burner performance.

The 2006 change to BS 2869 CLASS C2 was the last change I was aware of.

As far as I was aware BS2869:2010 Fuel oils for agricultural, domestic and industrial engines and boilers, published 30-Sep-2010, only affected FAME and sulphur content content of Classes A2 and D Gasoil not Kerosine.

What changed??

Heating oil suppliers have been forced to reduce the polluting sulphur in domestic heating oil from 0.2% to 0.1% with effect from the 1st January 2008 to meet EU regulations. This requirement is contained within the 1999 EU Sulphur Content of Liquid Fuel Directives. In England and Wales the Directive is being implemented under The Sulphur Content of Liquid Fuels

 

[rtcosic]

Heating oil suppliers have been forced to reduce the polluting sulphur in domestic heating oil from 0.2% to 0.1% with effect from the 1st January 2008 to meet EU regulations. This requirement is contained within the 1999 EU Sulphur Content of Liquid Fuel Directives. In England and Wales the Directive is being implemented under The Sulphur Content of Liquid Fuels

Yes I know about that, came in with BS2869:2006 for Class C2. But that has no impact on combustion properties for vapourising burners. Anyway only imports might ever have been that high, most UK production was well below even latest limits.
As far as I can see the distillation specs (and Flash Point) haven't changed in decades, so I can't see what recent changes might have done.

But we'll get our knuckles rapped in a moment (justifiably!) for going off topic.

 

[oilbeback]

Well somethings changed. We service loads of AGA, Rayburn,ESSE, Effel etc and they are nearly all carboning up , sooting up not getting to temp. All our local oil suppliers are offering additives to try and compensate so something must of changed.