anyone thinking of a paraffin heater for this winter

[fizzy]

The "cab heater" type Chinese burners have really gone up in price since the energy/cost of living crises. They use a heat exchange so they don't generate CO2 into the building. Even on diesel they work out much cheaper than leccy heaters, and they are multi fuel so I suspect people are burning other fuels such as used engine oil.

I wouldn't fancy running them on used oil. When they say multi fuel they mean diesel or kerosene. I use kerosene which is a lot cheaper than diesel.

 

[DAPPH]

We had the old Valor paraffin heaters when I was a kid, my first A/E visit was when I burned my hand on the top of one!
Still got one of the old "fancy" looking black valor heaters, tho just kept as decoration/old time's sake really. I did try running it on red diesel once as I had a load for nowt, used it in some oil lamps too, unfortunately it was a bit too smelly and smoky...

As a 5 to 10 yr old at the samce school loads of us kids got green slime snot chest infection as a result of our parents having to use paraffin for heating and lighting it wasn't until I was turned 22 that I started getting essentical / critical worker .anti flu injections every year that the chest infections stopped . When you look at the incidence of chest infections of the Indian and sub Sharan peoples who still rely on paraffin for light and heat it's no surprise that the incidence is high despite like us there was always a draught of cold air blowing through the place .

I did get damaged a bit on a cold weather exercise playing in six foot or more of snow . We had a military issued valor room heater in an 8 man tent tied to a barn wall , it was supposed to be turned of at night an hour before we went to bed in our sleeping bags , at minus 15 oC an NCO decided it was to be left on ..almost killing eleven of us . Luckily someone elsewhere realised our group were not up and about at 06.00 hrs .so came to investigate and found us all suffering from the heater fumes poisoning. . The NCO got deservedly reduced to the ranks for his stupidity and willfully ignoring standing orders.

 

[DAPPH]

I wouldn't fancy running them on used oil. When they say multi fuel they mean diesel or kerosene. I use kerosene which is a lot cheaper than diesel.

Used oil drained off hot then cooled engine oil ends up with the grey sludge of oil residues ,carbon particles & all manner of metal particles settling out Those of you who have removed a 60 k mile sump and cleaned it out will know what I mean.

We had a £2K industrial oil burner for the Youth Training Scheme I was helping run , Most weeks when the company were doing independent engine testing fron engines from all over the world we were given some 20 or more five gallon drums of waste oil from an engine test facility 50 yards away , after four months of settling out about 1/4 of the waste oil was not useable due to the sludge separating out , This was returned and sent of for processing .
At the end of every month end I had to run the burner dry and scrape out the gunge in the internal heated reservoir , an evil mucky job .

Seeing as the fuel pump on these Chinese burners is a simple pulsed magnetic current flicking a piston up and down it wouldn't be long before such pumps would be worn out or seized because of the particles in the oil which were similar to an abrasive T Cut liquid or Brasso.

 

[Porkypine]

As a 5 to 10 yr old at the samce school loads of us kids got green slime snot chest infection as a result of our parents having to use paraffin for heating and lighting it wasn't until I was turned 22 that I started getting essentical / critical worker .anti flu injections every year that the chest infections stopped . When you look at the incidence of chest infections of the Indian and sub Sharan peoples who still rely on paraffin for light and heat it's no surprise that the incidence is high despite like us there was always a draught of cold air blowing through the place .

I did get damaged a bit on a cold weather exercise playing in six foot or more of snow . We had a military issued valor room heater in an 8 man tent tied to a barn wall , it was supposed to be turned of at night an hour before we went to bed in our sleeping bags , at minus 15 oC an NCO decided it was to be left on ..almost killing eleven of us . Luckily someone elsewhere realised our group were not up and about at 06.00 hrs .so came to investigate and found us all suffering from the heater fumes poisoning. . The NCO got deservedly reduced to the ranks for his stupidity and willfully ignoring standing orders.

Yikes.. You've been very unlucky there, we all escaped quite unscathed.. Indeed my old gran, who used to wander down the "oil shop" every few days for the paraffin, lived to be 102 and I never heard her cough ever (she also smoked old Holborn til she gave up smoking at 96!)