How to change the wick on a Parasene Superwarm 10 greenhouse heater

I could not find any instructions on how to change the wick on my secondhand Parasene Superwarm 10  (Model ‘692’). After fighting with it for an hour, I figured it out and these instructions are for anyone else who needs to know.

Unclip the two legs for the heater cover which have clips on them. The cover will now fold open out of the way on the hinge in the third leg.

The main burner section (black) needs to be rotated anticlockwise about half an inch (a centimetre or two) to detach it form the fuel tank (red). This was where I first had problems as mine was frozen up and so I tried to unscrew it but it wouldn’t bunch. In the end I tried to lever it off with a flat bladed screw driver and this freed it up enough to rotate it.

You can now remove the burner from the fuel tank.

The wicks are raised on a rack and pinion system. On mine the top notch of the rack has a wire wrapped around it to prevent the rack going too far down and the wicks dropping into the tank. I suspect this is not original. However, I removed the wire which now allows me to wind down the wicks until they drop out of the burner assembly.

Open each of the metal wick holder pieces which is wrapped around each of the old wicks. At the bottom of each wick holder there will be two metal tabs. These hook under the plate attached to the rack when they are in place. In order to re-assemble the burner assembly you will need to straighten these tabs.

Wrap the wick holders around each of the new wicks. I did this so that the bottom of the wick holder is at about the half way point on the wick but this is a guess as I don’t have instructions. However you do it you want to make sure that each wick is at the same position.

Now slide each wick back into the burner assembly and push the metal wick holders most of the way in. Take the rack and feed this back into it’s position in the burner assembly so that it engages with the pinion. Push it in until it touches the metal of the wick holders. This is how it pushes up the wicks when the pinion is turned.

Now, the tabs which you straightened before need to be bent around the metal plate on the rack. This enables the plate to push the wicks down when you wind the pinion. If you didn’t straighten them before then you will find them in the wrong position now you will have to remove the rack to get at them.

I then reattached the wire around the top notch of the rack but as I guess this isn’t an original element of the assembly, you’ll have to work that bit out yourself.

Reattach the burner section to the fuel tank by aligning the tabs with the holes and rotate clockwise about half an inch.

As I understand it the wicks now need to soak in the fuel before they can be lit so don’t go lighting it straight away as you will just burn the wicks rather than the fuel.