Does an oil furnace have a pilot light?

Answer 1

Well, the answer is "yes and no".

A True oil FURNACE or BOILER does NOT not normally have a 'pilot light". Instead, they have some type of electrical ignition system. In the past--this was accomplished with an "iron" type of transformer that increased the 120 volt line voltage to 6-10 thousand volts, enough to cause a spark to jump across a pair of electrodes mounted above the "nozzle" where the oil sprays out of.This spark would ignite the oil and a very intense , hot flame would then shoot out into the combustion chamber--producing the heat, which in turn heated air or water to heat the building. This is only active when the furnace is on, and so--no oil is wasted to keep a pilot lit, as in a gas furnace with a pilot.

Nowadays--the oil is still lit by a spark across electrodes, BUT the inefficent, heavy, sometimes unreliable 'iron" transformer is being replaced by an "electronic ignitor" which contains a transformer, BUT it is powered by an electronic "switching supply" circuit, resulting in MUCH more voltage-14 to 20K volts, and using a LOT less AC power to do this.

So--no most oil burners do NOT have a pilot light, like a gas furnace sometimes does.

BUT--I HAVE seen , many years ago, oil fueled "space heaters" which DID use a pilot flame. These do NOT normally have a pump like a normal furnace, ad depend on gravity to feed the oil to the burner. The pilot functioned the same way that a gas furnace pilot does--but probably had a wick-type element to be able to burn-like a kerosene heater does.