Our Dickinson Newport diesel heater, which we named Vinnie, has been acting up, not burning well at all. As I had installed it according to the manufacturer's instructions, I knew it was probably suffering from operator error.
The poor burning characteristics, for those who may run into this issue, had much of the appearance of the low fuel and air scenario described in the Dickinson manual. The flame was low in the burner pot, dirty orange and quickly built up soot on the walls of the burner pot. It was not vaporizing or getting above the burner ring at any valve or fan setting. As there was a full tank of diesel, I knew it wasn't the issue. When we fist installed it, the #2 setting was sufficient to get flames to be full bodied and vibrant yellow, filling most of the lower half of the viewing window. Since the poor performance persisted across varying weather conditions, we figured winds/pressure weren't the issue. The fuel had been coming from the same gas station, which has a very high turn over so fuel quality should be consistant if nothing else.
We knew we needed Newport 911... er.. to do something different in our approach.
The only thing we hadn't done in the course of regular use and maintenance was to check and clean the metering valve outlet-to-burner pot pipe. So today I did that.
It was messy, but apparently exactly what was needed.
Base of the burner pot inlet (from valve outlet)The soot from the burner pot just settles into the inlet pipe and after a few months of constant use had created a fairly thick goopy mess that slowly restricted the fuel flow. Even with regular cleaning of the burner pot sides and bottom enough loose soot makes its way into the inlet despite covering it as per Dickinson's directions. There was actually about 2-3 teaspoons of this sludge- ewww!
The end.
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