Suggestions for a battery operated lift pump for heating oil?

Why not just use a siphon? No batteries needed!

John

I used one of these for pumping out 400 litres from a heating oil tank into jerrycans:

It was fine. I attached a piece of garden hose to the end and then dangled it in the tank.

Powered from a car battery - maybe your power supply was insufficient?

Theo

Interesting. The ones I tried were sticks, with 2 or 3 D(?) batteries in the top and a tiny blade at the bottom.

That's a good question. The difficulty is starting it without risking a mouthful of oil*, but I'll investigate hand operated priming pumps.

Use a long tube, push it into the tank, put your thumb over the end and pull it out.

A lake near here was emptied for maintenance of a dam at one end. They used two siphons in parallel, each looking like a firehose. It took about three weeks! I didn't see the process being started, but there was no sign of any large pumps nearby, so they may have used the same method.

John

That would be fine for water, but too messy for oil

You can get siphon kits, with a hand-operated pump to start them. This avoids the embarrassment of a mouthful of petrol for example. The pump just needs a backflow valve in its design, so the liquid always goes in the forward direction (until the siphon action picks up the work). A pump like this, likely works a little better than the "rubber bulb" priming of the older ones, where the rubber is not compatible with fuel.

But for fuels, you want a "clean hands" solution for that. Nobody wants to aspirate fuels, trying to prime a siphon line without a pump.

When placing a tube into a large fuel tank, I would go for a rigid line, such as a 1/4" copper tube, or 1/2" copper plumbing line. Then, when you're withdrawing the item, it's a bit easier to prop it up and let it drain into a dish. With plastic tubing, it can try to coil up, spewing a few ounces of the liquid onto your transfer area.

I don't think any of these methods (for fuels) have zero dead-space, so cleaning the equipment later is always going to be a chore. Some items will drain for you -- the hand pump maybe not.

The motorized pumps, like the "drill pump with own motor", those are likely to have a half cup of fluid left in them and the hoses, later. And the drill pump with own motor, can overheat. Those have a duty cycle limit.

The pump I use for removing water from the back yard in spring, the water being pumped, flows through a "jacket area" around the core of the pump, so the liquid you are pumping, serves as the cooling system. The pump in that case, has a max inlet temperature, where if the incoming liquid was "bath water", that would allow the motor to overheat. As long as you're pumping snow-melt water, you can run that pump for two or three days straight.

For piddly little pumps, with no attention to cooling at all, those can overheat.

Paul

A ‘auto syphon’ - a tube with a valve in it. You put one end in the tank and ‘wiggle’ it up and down. The liquid passes the valve one way, eventually the syphon action starts.

They are designed for use in fuel tanks etc.

I expect somewhere like EBay or Amazon.

Maybe a pump designed to do oil changes through the dipstick tube? Would be with

"oil extractor pump" or "Electric Transfer Oil Pump"

Thomas Prufer

Lidl recently had for sale, a 12v pump to drain the engine oil from a vehicle, and they keep appearing on the middle isle. It says it is compatible with heating oil as well. I used it for an oil change, pump diesel, and to pump kero, without any issues.

You can buy syphon tubes with built-in pumps, such as

For more than occasional use, it'd be worth paying for a more expensive and better built version.

They are a massive PITA if you have to raise fluid to any height to get out of the container. The tank is going to be about 1.2m high and that's a lot of jiggling, and then you can only siphon below the level of the oil. If the tank is not full there may not be enough head.

An electric pump is miles better.

Theo

Something like:

I think you're going to get a lot more power from a car battery than a D cell. It pumped a 25 litre jerry can in maybe 5 minutes.

Really the only trouble I had was the inlet to the pump is in the gauze part at the bottom. When the tank was near empty the pump-on-hose wanted to lie flat which meant the inlet wasn't fully covered. I had to dangle it carefully to ensure it was vertical to dip the whole inlet, and tilt the (plastic) tank to get the dregs into one corner so there was enough depth to pump.

Theo

That's expensive. Know nothing about the quality but under £6 on Ebay -

That would be great if it would lift. Some of the reviews for similar-looking (and cheaper) types on Amazon say these things don't self-prime and don't always work well. I suspect it would be useful if pumping up but not if sucking up. Perhaps a better idea would be to have an air pump to slightly pressurise the tank and start a syphon, or Theo's suggestion of a submersed pump (but that has the problem of moving a battery or power supply some distance into the garden)

An off-the-wall suggestion: An old but working SU petrol pump? Available at your local Car Dismantler, or on e-bay.

Or any diesel lift pump.