Care & Service Tips for Burner Nozzles
A liquid fuel burner nozzle is an intricate piece of hardware, designed to do an accurate job of atomizing and metering liquid fuel in the spray pattern best suited to a given burner. You can help assure top performance of this vital component by following the important guidelines in this section.
Until installation, keep nozzles in their original containers
and preferably in a suitable box or rack. They should not be permitted to roll around in a drawer or toolbox or be carried loose in pockets. On service calls, they should be kept in a clean nozzle box.
Handle the nozzle carefully
after removing it from its container. Pick it up by the hex flats, avoiding contact with the filter or strainer to prevent contamination. This is especially important for nozzles with lower flow rates, as their smaller slots are more easily clogged.
Nozzles should always be handled with clean tools
to reduce the possibility of contamination. To properly service a nozzle and check its performance, it’s recommended that you use a pressure gauge, vacuum gauge, and a complete combustion analyzer including a hand held smoke pump tester.
Be sure the strainer or filter is in place
on the nozzle before installation. Do not disassemble the nozzle before installing it because great care has been taken to make sure the nozzle is absolutely clean on delivery.
Before installing a new nozzle, it is very important to flush the nozzle line and adapter
with at least a pint of fuel pumped through it to remove sludge and dirt, or you can blow out the line with compressed air if it’s available. Failure to do this has been the reason for numerous callbacks for plugged nozzles.
The nozzle orifice is polished to a glasslike finish.
Don’t ruin it with a wire or pin, or by bumping it with a wrench. This can cause streaks in the spray.
A nozzle can become overheated due to back pressure in the combustion chamber.
This results in coke and sludge formation both inside and outside of the nozzle. Follow furnace or boiler manufacturer’s specifications.
Burner Nozzle Care & Service Tips
Watch as Beckett Trainer Alan Wornham demonstrates some burner nozzle care and service best practices.
Don't blow into the nozzle.
While this may seem to be the handiest and quickest way to “clean” a nozzle, you run the risk of contaminating it instead.
Make sure the fuel tank is clean.
Water and sludge in the tank can clog lines, filter, or nozzles.
On a conventional installation, be
sure the end of the burner tube is
flush or slightly set back
with a soft fiber combustion chamber to prevent the nozzle from becoming overheated. Follow manufacturer’s specifications when available.
Be sure the supply line filter (between tank and burner) is adequate for the size of nozzle used.
It will remove many of the small particles which may be present in the fuel or formed in the tank. Filtration is particularly recommended for burners using small nozzles. The filtering element should be replaced at each summer cleanup and the line flushed out with fuel. The Delavan line filter should also be replaced annually.
Nozzle cleaning
A quality nozzle should last through a normal heating season provided that an excellent to superior grade filtration system is used. A Delavan nozzle is a fixed precision metering device with no moving parts. When not overheated, there have been cases where a nozzle has worked several heating seasons trouble-free. However, most service organizations have shown the best, most economical results can be obtained by replacing nozzles annually. To clean a nozzle properly is a painstaking, time-consuming job. In the lower flow rates, it’s practically impossible to see whether the orifice and distributor slots are thoroughly clean without the aid of a microscope. Also, disassembly of or tampering with the nozzle will void the manufacturer’s warranty. In the long run, you will save your time and the customer’s money by a program of nozzle replacement.
General Troubleshooting Guide for Burner Nozzles
Like any piece of equipment, certain conditions affect a liquid fuel burner nozzle’s performance. Our troubleshooting guide provides tips to address some of the most common causes for nozzle performance issues as well as some of the most Frequently Asked Questions by Liquid Fuel Heating Service Technicians
Annual Appliance Maintenance Checklist
Now that we are in the heating season, many burner service contractors are performing the annual clean-up or servicing of their customers’ appliances. What exactly does the serviceman do on these annual clean-ups? Let’s review a list of things that are usually involved from the experts at Beckett.
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