Most oil burners here are swedish
Almost all of the oil burners you come across here are made by a swedish company called Bentone. They seem to have been on the market for a LONG time as you see boilers from the early 1960s with Bentone burners sticking out the front.
Installers and service engineers seem to just prefer them as they're reliable and they always have the parts.
The older models wern't as neatly packaged as that square Bentone burner sticking out of the boiler in the picture.
I've also seen old burners made by Danfoss.
They seem to be extremely reliable as they run for decades with minimal servicing.
There are definitely some differences in terms of the equipment that's been traditionally popular in the Republic of Ireland and the UK. Oil fired hydronic heating was very popular here over the decades. It runs on a very light fuel oil that's classified as Gasoil, sometimes a blend of gasoil and kerosine and burns extremely cleanly with those pressure jet Bentone burners. Until the late 1970s there was no natural gas in Ireland at all. The first gas fields were discovered off the south coast in the mid-1970s. Old-fashioned "town gas" which was made from gassifying oil or coal was available in the cities but was really confined to gas cooking applications and was becoming completely uneconomic to run.
Also, unlike the UK, boilers / heating systems are usually housed in a seperate boiler room / boiler house that isn't attached to the house directly. This is for fire regulations but also because oil-fired pressure jet units make a continious rumble when they're running.
The entire city gas networks had to be rebuilt to safely handle natural gas, so the 1980s saw the towns and cities along the new natural gas grid being completely rebuit for natural gas. Many suburban areas got gas for the first time as the older local gas networks had never been extended that far (the old gas companies were struggling to survive never mind extending their networks)
Anyway, natural gas began to take over in urban areas by the mid 1980s. Although, there are still a signifigant number of homes heated by oil-fired systems. They're very easy to convert to gas.. just remove the old oil bentone burner and pop in a new gas one! The fuel was cheaper, there were various special offers to encourage people to switch over as it reduced pollution (particulates) in urban areas. It also reduced the problem of having to phone up and order 1500Liters of oil every so often and having it delivered by tanker.
Natural gas rapidly replaced oil in power plants too, by the mid 80s most of our energy was being generated by "combined cycle" natural gas power plants.. i.e. the gas is burned first in a gas turbine which generates power, then the hot exhaust from that turbine's fed into the normal power plant to raise steam to drive "traditional" turbines.
The Irish gas fields off the south coast are now almost empty, but there's a big interconnecter that feeds gas in from Northern Europe (Norway, UK, Russia etc) so it'll be heating homes for quite a while yet!
And, I'm in the Republic of Ireland (right on the south coast)
Below is a typical LPG tank for the other popular fuel source in rural areas LPG
Almost all of the oil burners you come across here are made by a swedish company called Bentone. They seem to have been on the market for a LONG time as you see boilers from the early 1960s with Bentone burners sticking out the front.
Installers and service engineers seem to just prefer them as they're reliable and they always have the parts.
The older models wern't as neatly packaged as that square Bentone burner sticking out of the boiler in the picture.
I've also seen old burners made by Danfoss.
They seem to be extremely reliable as they run for decades with minimal servicing.
There are definitely some differences in terms of the equipment that's been traditionally popular in the Republic of Ireland and the UK. Oil fired hydronic heating was very popular here over the decades. It runs on a very light fuel oil that's classified as Gasoil, sometimes a blend of gasoil and kerosine and burns extremely cleanly with those pressure jet Bentone burners. Until the late 1970s there was no natural gas in Ireland at all. The first gas fields were discovered off the south coast in the mid-1970s. Old-fashioned "town gas" which was made from gassifying oil or coal was available in the cities but was really confined to gas cooking applications and was becoming completely uneconomic to run.
Also, unlike the UK, boilers / heating systems are usually housed in a seperate boiler room / boiler house that isn't attached to the house directly. This is for fire regulations but also because oil-fired pressure jet units make a continious rumble when they're running.
The entire city gas networks had to be rebuilt to safely handle natural gas, so the 1980s saw the towns and cities along the new natural gas grid being completely rebuit for natural gas. Many suburban areas got gas for the first time as the older local gas networks had never been extended that far (the old gas companies were struggling to survive never mind extending their networks)
Anyway, natural gas began to take over in urban areas by the mid 1980s. Although, there are still a signifigant number of homes heated by oil-fired systems. They're very easy to convert to gas.. just remove the old oil bentone burner and pop in a new gas one! The fuel was cheaper, there were various special offers to encourage people to switch over as it reduced pollution (particulates) in urban areas. It also reduced the problem of having to phone up and order 1500Liters of oil every so often and having it delivered by tanker.
Natural gas rapidly replaced oil in power plants too, by the mid 80s most of our energy was being generated by "combined cycle" natural gas power plants.. i.e. the gas is burned first in a gas turbine which generates power, then the hot exhaust from that turbine's fed into the normal power plant to raise steam to drive "traditional" turbines.
The Irish gas fields off the south coast are now almost empty, but there's a big interconnecter that feeds gas in from Northern Europe (Norway, UK, Russia etc) so it'll be heating homes for quite a while yet!
And, I'm in the Republic of Ireland (right on the south coast)
Below is a typical LPG tank for the other popular fuel source in rural areas LPG
