Sooting boilers – an added risk with condensing boilers?
When an oil boiler is maladjusted (mal-commissioned) overbaffled or nozzle damaged, oil boilers can, and do, soot up. This problem is exacerbated considerably in condensing boilers. The boiler becomes choked with thick, greasy, flocculent soot which has to be scraped out and cleaned physically. It is difficult, if not impossible to prevent particles of soot drifting or billowing round the home whilst it is being cleared and it can adher to walls, curtains, anything. Best avoided! Sometimes it is necessary to remove or reduce baffling to ameliorate the problem but then the appliance efficiency drops and the very rationale for installing a condensing unit is dissolved and you would not be getting the product you paid for or the efficiency you expected. A Standard oil burner has the potential to soot up if over baffled or mal-commissioned. This risk magnifies with condensing oil burners which usually create additional resistance to flue gases particularly where a condensing heat-exchanger
