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SPRING LITERATURE SHOWCASE 2012 Lots of Smoke? Old vs new smoke scales BY G EOR GE L ANTHI ER Figure 1 A N ISSUE HAS ARISEN THAT IN MY OPINION WAS JUST NOT necessary for discussion, but someone tackled it and horribly fumbled, so I'd like to try to set it right, at least from my point-of-view. A lot of words have now been written about the issue (sic), and even more words to justify the fumble. In some ways as a really poor defense strategy and to smoke up the issue even more they even managed to get me involved in their fiasco. That did it! There was no reason to malign me in this pathetic mess, but what's new there? By the way this all happened in another publication, so don't expect to find that kind of stuff here at Fuel Oil News where oil heat is still called out by its historic and proud name! The bottom line is that the bottom line hasn't even been hit! It turns out that some today may be using older, outdated smoke scales. These scales are in every container of 'third-party' smoke paper, Figure 1. So the very first thing and probably the most important thing is that if you are using an old scale, go buy some more paper and throw the old scale out because the scales were corrected some time ago and the new ones are more 'in-sync' than the older ones. The fact that there were some possible inconsistencies a while back have been corrected, and if you read on, you'll see that the proper use of instrumentation and the setup of oil burners negates these problems making the whole issue a non-issue and just fodder for a poorly tackled subject. In addition, reference was made to 'industry guidelines' and my involvement for the setting of oil burners that are now obso- lete. Those guidelines date from 1949 through 2002, and, it's not just those guidelines that are obsolete, but the burners they refer- ence too! If you're not using Table 12-1 from my book Advanced Residential Oilburners, you are not only in the wrong pew, you are in the wrong church! Moreover, a chart from an obsolete 1990 text was referenced, but neither my 1995, 2002, 2007, 2011 or God forbid, my 2012 2 views on 'proper smoke level' were not. Also, if you are still ser- vicing non-flame retention burners, I offer you my sympathies because you not only need them, but so does your customer—in all honesty they should not be out there and you have a wonderful cradle for a gas conversion just waiting to happen! It is important for me to note that the smoke scales supplied with the smoke testers from Bacharach, Testo and Wohler, Figure 2, are correct and always have been. What I see are many more problems with improper use and maintenance of chemical testing kits, and so I'd like to reference you to my website and recom- mend that if you use any or all of a 'wet' or chemical testing kit including a smoke tester you read our Firedragon Field Note #5 about these kits at www.firedragonent.com/Notes.htm. In today's marketplace no burner should be set at anything other than True Zero Smoke (TZS), period. It would behoove the retail oil industry to replace these oil guzzling pigs before the gas suppliers do. In addition, many of today's burners are struggling to burn today's fuel mixtures, so what chance do you think these poor, old, tired, obsolete clunkers have? It's tough enough to do the job today on state-of-the-art burners and that, as I often say, is a FACT! It may be just my opinion, but even selling a used or refur- bished high speed flame retention burner to many would be better than leaving the dinosaurs in the basement. Why don't we try leasing? How about leasing oil tanks too? A long term lease of five or 10 years or more for new equipment would not only sell better and more efficient equipment resulting in happier customers, but could also slow down some of the hemorrhag- ing of this trade because at this rate we won't have a very long life expectancy. Time to stop thinking some 'silver bullet' or 'magic oil' is going to save us, and start thinking out of the box and 'same ole- same-ole' and the strategies of 'but we always did it that way', because none of those have worked and it's survival time, boys SPRING LITERATURE SHOWCASE 2012 | FUEL OIL NEWS | www.fueloilnews.com