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Photograph of oil burner pointing to the transformer used for ignition (C) Daniel Friedman Oil Burner Snapping Crackling Sound
Diagnose & fix noises at the oil burner

Diagnostic questions and answers help diagnose heating oil burner noise, smoke, and odors. How to diagnose loss of heat, heating boiler noises, leaks, odors, or smoke.

These questions and answers can help you diagnose and fix heating oil burner noise or sound complaints.

This article series describes the cause and cure for just about any noise that you might hear at or near an oil burner, where it comes from, what it means, and what needs to be done about it.

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Oil Burner Snap, Crackle, or Pop Noises

Oil burner schematic (C) Carson Dunlop AssociatesSnap Crackle Popping Oil Burner Question: Oil burner noise: Cause & cure for heating boiler "snap, crackle, & popping" noises: antifreeze acidified & debris in the system: flush out needed

This may not mean much in the grand scheme of things but I want to thank you for your site.

I am high in the Rockies and have had boiler issues the past year. My glycol had acidified and when the boiler was firing the “snap, crackle and popping” could be heard throughout the house so my plumber did a flush last winter.

[Click to enlarge any image] Sketch at left provided courtesy of Carson Dunlop Associates, a Toronto home inspection, education & report writing tool company [ carsondunlop.com ].

All eight zones and the boiler were flushed through with a flush solution for several days, unfortunately they could not get the end caps off of the Teledyne boiler lines to brush out the heat exchanger of build up.

In any event, I ended up finishing off the last winter with just fresh water in the system (did not add glycol after flushing, just removed the flush: lots of small particulate came out in the brown discharge) but I finished off the winter with heat in the house.

Good thing, we had –30F temps at times.

Anyway, recently, rather than buy a new boiler, I had my guy do another flush, again two of the zones and the boiler did throw off particulate and they were dirty. Naturally, there was “green” in the discharge as I presume there was sloughing off of the inside wall of the copper lines that lead to the in floor heating tubes.

Anyway, we added glycol but man was I getting a banging still.

So, with the help of your site I was able to figure out that the Proflo PFT12 expansion tank’s relationship to my Taco Hy-Vent air purge on top of the American Purge Valve and was able to see – as a layman – what was going on. I see that they are integral.

Now, I know to tap on the bottom of the expansion tank to make sure it’s not full to determine if if it’s bad. I also know how to use the Hy-vent to manually bleed off some air. I had a five second hiss yesterday and today only a two second hiss so I guess I am getting the air out.

Bottom line: your site showed the exact air purge and I was able to figure things out. Hopefully. Without your site I would be calling the plumber back all the time. Thanks for being there: no critique from me, just praise. regards, D.C., Breckenridge CO

Reply:

Thank you for the very nice note D.C. We work hard to make InspectAPedia's information useful and accurate, so I'm really grateful to hear that it was useful to you. And questions or content suggestions are very welcome as they help me see where we need to do more work.

About the boiler flush-out, I'm not surprised that after a flushout and then use for a heating season, a second flush would be helpful.

But after that, if the chemistry is proper in the system with an antifreeze installation, you ought not to have to keep doing flush outs as the same physical dose of water remains in the system - you're not introducing new water, minerals, crud. I guess the trouble is when it's difficult to complete a thorough cleaning.

Thanks for the details - I'll add a version of these comments to our section on diagnosing boiler noises.


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