Red coloured debris in oil boiler combustion chamber

[danieldodson]

Every other year I vacuum out the combustion chamber on our Camray 5. It must be getting on for 20 years old so it isn't new by a long shot. But it seems to work. One thing I noticed today is that the ash appears to have a lot of iron in it. Is this normal? I appreciate that water is one of the products of combustion and the chamber is iron but is this much rust normal? If not, what could be the cause? At a rental property I own I had an oil engineer out to service the boiler (a Heatslave) and the debris was like a light brown, sort of like expanding foam.

 

[Johntheo5]

I have a 18 year old Firebird and get something similar but not near as much as that. I remove the front cover ~ every 4 years and see more of that on the baffles themselves, these baffles run very hot so possibly some form of hot corrosion of the baffles? I will be removing them this summer so will post a few photos.

 

[Terrywookfit]

FGT on a Camray 5 are very low.
It is probably condensate rusting the baffles .
Nowt to worry about unless return temp is low causing back end rot.

 

[danieldodson]

Thanks for the input. Incase it is related, I swapped out the nozzle on the burner as there was a lot of gunge around it. I was surprised how easy it was to do compared to the other models shown on video sites. 1 13mm nut to remove burner from chamber, 2 phillips screws to remove cowl around nozzle and then a 14mm spanner to remove nozzle. Couldn't really be simpler.