OFTEC Training

[Veggie Dave]

I'm going to be doing my OFTEC training in two months (OFT50 and OFT101) but I want to know as much as is theoretically possible before I start as, if these courses are anything like the fast-track 'plumbing' courses, there's going to be a huge amount of basic information missing/barely mentioned. And as someone mentioned in one of the open forums, these courses never seem to fail anybody, which makes something of a mockery of the training/being OFTEC registered.

I haven't asked this is the Oil Forum as I'm looking for information on how boilers work, troubleshooting, installation.

Thanks.

 

[SimonG]

Difficult without hands on, but not rocket science even though it looks like it when you bench fire a burner

Do you know anybody who can give you a bit of hands on help?

 

[peteheat]

The course is really training you how to to pass.

The books have a lot in them the key to passing is knowing where / how to find the answers as the questions are based on the book contents.

Look up the Riello web site and you will get a good idea of how the burners work, This Link from Danfoss is fairly good and This Link

Have fun.

 

[Veggie Dave]

Do you know anybody who can give you a bit of hands on help?

That's one of the reasons for going into oil - there's only one old boy that I know of near me who does oil. There used to be another company but I don't know if they're still going as they weren't very good at their job. As for the old boy, he never seems to be available any more hence why I keep getting asked if I do oil boilers.

Being in a relatively rural area oil is still used by a reasonable number of people with seemingly no one to perform services ... including on my own boiler.

Look up the Riello web site and you will get a good idea of how the burners work, This Link from Danfoss is fairly good and This Link

Thanks.

 

[peteheat]

May I suggest that you don't make the the same mistake I did, of course it depends on how young you are to get an idea of how old "The Old Boy" is

Sometimes you have to just ask but if you think he is getting close to retirement it might suit both of you to come up with a plan where you take over his customers when he retires.

I was in a similar position a few years ago when a local service man offered me his customer list, he didn't want cash up front his pay off was two fold, all his customers would be looked after and he would get a commission off each job I did for as long as I kept his customer, he wanted £5.00 off every service and whatever looked fair on bigger jobs.

Well I was going places in a big hurry (my first million) so what did I want with his little service jobs?

Big mistake, the man was very well organised an average of six services a day in winter and replacing boilers and tanks during the summer when he wasn't away on his cruiser on the river or driving around Europe in his camper van.

It won't cost you anything to have a chat with him if nothing else to appear mannerly telling him you are opening up your oil service business, you may have a mentor or an enemy best find out sooner than later.