Firing Boiler

On foot of the other thread here on oil heating etc... our oil tank declared itself well and truly empty last night in the middle of the cold snap!

I have just received 1000litre of kerosene and now the dam boiler wont fire up! I have pressed the red button on the front of the boiler. iIt seems like its going to start up but it doesnt. Any ideas on what I should do? Hope it doesnt involve a plumber or a sparky!

Thanks in advance

I'm only a relatively new oil boiler user (soon to switch to gas) but I'd imagine that the boiler sucked up some crap that was in the end of your oil tank.

This happened on my boiler recently but it was caused by crap falling down the rusty flue.

Unfortunatly I didn't know this at the time & so a service man fixed it by cleaning out a filter & charged me €100 for the call out.
If you can find your filter then that might be the problem.

As with Frash I'm no expert but I'd imagine it is airlocked due to sucking in air instead of oil - check the manual, there should be some instructions on how to release the air and reset it.

I would think your boiler needs to be bleed. Their is a small nut below the reb button to fire the boiler - you need to loosen this and keep firing the boiler until all the air is out. Replace the nut when you see the oil coming out and it should be back in action. Depending on how much air is in the line this can take a while if a lot of air is present. But 10 minutes should have you back working

If you ran out of oil then the boiler is more than likely air locked... You'll have to "bleed" it which entails opening/loosening a nut on the igniter part of the burner and then pressing the red button three or four times (after it has reset each time) until eventually you'll here the oil entering to the burner to ignite, then, tighten the nut... It's simple when you know how but daunting to do when you don't know what your really doing!!

If it's your own house then, you'd be well advised to get a "Tiger Loop" fitted on the line so that in future when you run out (as I always do!) it saves you all the trouble of bleeding the boiler or having to call a plumber. The device prevents air from entering the boiler.... Truely a great product (cost's about €70.00).

If you threw the Oil delivery driver the price of a drink he might bleed the boiler for you... They don't really like doing it in case of other problems but, some will!

Thanks a million for the informative replies! I'm delighted to say that Mr Fluffy got the whole thing up and running pronto . We are 'new' boiler users too and so problems like are bound to confuse us at times but I know know where to come for answers!!!
Thanks

Chuckles said:

If you threw the Oil delivery driver the price of a drink he might bleed the boiler for you... They don't really like doing it in case of other problems but, some will!

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it is best to leave a new fill of oil settle in the tank after delivery as it will have stirred up any gunk or dirt in the bottom of the tank.