Fuel Oil News May 2026 | Page 23

BY GEORGE LANTHIER

BASIC DRAFT – PART 2 have an electronic tester, you can use that if it will read the ranges.

To verify enough air for combustion, inlet draft, you need to do a simple test. To prepare for the test you are going to have to get your draft gauge to read the air in the room that the burner is in. You want to do this test on the solid door closest to the burner. It’ s important that if the door is louvered, you move away from this door and get to a solid one. The test won’ t work unless we are testing the burner and its entire smoke enclosure. In many cases
In Part 1 we established a lot of rules for draft and ended up by talking about outside air and the fact that although I’ m the world’ s greatest believer that you must have plenty of draft for combustion, I’ m not an advocate of outside air. It’ s funny, because over the years in my ruminations about combustion air people think I love cold outside air, NOT!
By now you’ re probably asking yourself, is there any sure way to know if you have enough air for combustion, well there is, and you need a draft gauge. I told you that air was draft in Part 1, right? So, what did you think I was going to tell you, that you have to have a pogo stick?
To work around draft you must have a really good draft( air) gauge. My personal favorite has been the Dwyer Magnehelic ® for a long time, Figure 1. It’ s accurate, reliable, inexpensive and very tough. No, it can’ t take a drop from a 20-story building, but it can get banged around a lot more than others.
With this gauge in a. 50” w. c. range I can setup both residential and most commercial equipment including the Euroboilers. For heavy commercial and industrial grade equipment I switch to another Magnehelic ® with a one-inch w. c. range. Naturally, if you
Figure 1
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