Firebird emission problem

[FrozenNorth]

Just had the annual service on my Firebird oil combi. A day after the service the flue started belching stinking black smoke so the guy came back and the whole thing needing cleaning out. New gaskets were fitted and all seemed fine but the flue is now giving off excessive smoke/steam which has a smell of oil to it. Not sure if there's any easy fix for me to do or what to tell the guy to look out for when he comes back next week (hopefully!)
Any ideas?

 

[clearhead]

it could be a number of things
get him back
probably best you dont play

 

[FrozenNorth]

I read somewhere else that a simple adjustment of the air intake could solve it - sure I'll get him back but pointing him in the right direction would not only save him scratching his head any more but save me some money to boot! This Firebird has had no end of problems and has costed me a small fortune already.

 

[Burnerman]

Unfortunately, the only way to set these things up is to use a pressure gauge to set the pump pressure, then a smoke pump to see if the emissions are anywhere like clean, followed by a flue gas analysis if they are......you do risk burning out the baffles in your boiler if its overfiring.
Cleaning the entire boiler flueways out will be a massive help to the boiler engineer though!
Ask him to fix you up with a new nozzle too - worth it for what they cost.
John

 

[FrozenNorth]

Thanks - he said he'd set the pressure a shade lower than it was, you can see the emissions are higher than they should be and the smell is no longer of soot but quite a clean smell (if there is such a thing!) of oil. He changed three gaskets including one for the boiler door and cleaned out the soot from before and changed (I believe) the nozzle at service time. I'll check the nozzle bit with him, thanks for that and I'll clean what I can see around the flue before he comes - do you think it will do damage to use it in the meantime?
If it was a car I'd adjust the carb - assume it's the same kind of principle?

 

[Agile]

Its a similar principle but with a different effect.

MOST oil boilers are reasonably stable and the air adjustment not overly critical if they are clean.

BUT get it a little wrong and the boiler will quickly soot up and rapidly get much worse.

It does make me wonder if he properly cleaned it out.

Tony