Why oil needs servicing more than gas does
A gas boiler burns a clean, filtered, pressure regulated fuel. An oil boiler burns a liquid that has been sitting in a garden tank through summer heat and winter cold, collecting condensation, sediment and sometimes microbial growth. The burner atomises that oil through a nozzle with an opening measured in fractions of a millimetre, so tiny changes in fuel quality, pump pressure or air setting show up as sooting, smoke, higher fuel bills and eventually a lockout.
That is why a skipped oil service costs money in a way a skipped gas service usually does not. A sooted heat exchanger loses several percent of efficiency, and on a rural home burning 1,800 litres a year that is a real number, not a sales line.
What our oil service includes
- Burner removed, combustion head and blast tube cleaned
- New nozzle fitted, matched to the burner and boiler rating
- Ignition electrodes checked, gapped or replaced
- Fuel filter elements renewed at the tank and at the burner
- Pump pressure measured and reset to the manufacturer figure
- Combustion chamber, baffles and flueways brushed out
- Smoke test and full combustion analysis recorded
- Flue and terminal checked for soundness and clearance
- Oil tank, bund, sight gauge, fire valve and supply line inspected
What you can safely check yourself
Before calling anyone, three checks are safe for a homeowner and solve a fair share of oil call outs. Read the tank gauge, because running low stirs sediment and running empty draws air into the line. Check the boiler has power and the programmer or thermostat is actually calling for heat. Press the burner reset once, and once only.
Never open the boiler casing, never loosen a fuel line or filter bowl, and never keep pressing reset. Each failed reset squirts more unburnt oil into a hot chamber, and that is how a small nozzle fault becomes a smoke filled utility room. Anything beyond those three checks needs an OFTEC registered engineer.
The tank is part of the job
Most oil problems we attend start outside the house. Single skin steel tanks rust from the base up and often weep before they fail visibly. Older plastic tanks craze and go brittle after around twenty summers. Water in the bottom of a tank feeds a sludge layer that blocks filters within weeks of being disturbed. A service that never looks at the tank, the fire valve or the sight gauge is only half a service, so ours always does, and if a replacement is due we quote a bunded tank with proper base preparation rather than patching it up.
Where we work on oil
Radstock, Midsomer Norton, Coleford, Chewton Mendip, Litton, Chew Magna, Blagdon, West Harptree, Croscombe, Shepton Mallet, Wells, Frome and the surrounding Mendip and Chew Valley villages, plus the oil heated properties on the edges of BA1 and BA2 where the gas main stops short.
Related pages
Book an oil boiler service
OFTEC registered, Worcester Bosch accredited, rated 9.9/10 on Checkatrade from 362 reviews. Autumn slots go first, so book before the first frost.