rocol oil seal

[Fred]

Hi,

We have oil-fired central heating and there is a compression joint by the tank that seems to be weeping. It is only very slight but with oil costing as much as it does, I don't want to lose a drop ;)

I know there is PTFE tape and all sorts of pastes for sealing water but what can I use for kerosene?

I used google and found rocol oil seal and its data sheet mentions kerosene, but I got the impression it was more for sealing threads.

I have tried replacing the fitting and using a new olive. I even cut a little off the top of the pipe in case it had been deformed (it's where 10mm microbore copper joins) but there is no improvement.

I don't think it is under tightened but I don't think I have over tightened and deformed it either, so I don't know what is going on.

TIA Fred

[Dave Liquorice]

That's the stuff to use but when I was looking a month or so back it only came in 500ml tins or some other silly quantity in relation to doing only a few joints.

The 10mm microbore I've seen wasn't particularly round... A new fitting and new olive shouldn't require any goop to form a seal. I'd nip it up 1/4 of a turn at a time from finger tight.

[Fred]

Thanks. I haven't looked very closely at the sizes yet. It was just a quick google search. Is there a problem with big bottles other than buying more than you need? Does a solvent evaporate giving it a short shelf life or something?

Yes, I would like to replace the microbore one day. Either to the plastic qual-oil pipe or harder, larger diameter copper. I have heard but never seen 12mm copper. Is that like microbore too or is it hard like 15mm?

[Fred]

Thanks. I have PTFE but hadn't used it. For some daft reason I was worried that perhaps I could not use it with kerosene. Perhaps I was thinking it would dissolve or something! I should have googled to find out.