Annual Furnace Service?

[JJT]

How often do you folks with oil heat get your furnace serviced? and how much do you pay? Is this something you can do yourself? My sevice guy recommends an annual service, but I push this to 2 - 3 years, should I do this annually? It also runs $80 - $120 for less than 90 minutes of work.

 

[Anonymous Poster]

It's one of the biggest money makers in the heating business.
Depending on where you live, witch determines the running time on your burner, you can probably do it yourself.
First thing you need to do is learn how the system works. Lately, I been noticing the home centers are getting into supplying filters and nozzles, so parts ain't that hard to come by.
In upstate NY, along the South shore of Lake Ontario, I service mine every year. It's a hell of a lot easier than having to get one going after the heat went off.
Every year, you need to change the filter, and change the filter gasket too. Oil comes with a lot of disolved parafin in it, and that settles out, and plugs the filter. Insuficient oil flo to the burner will give you more problems than you want.
Every year, you should inspect the heat exchanger for cracks. The new ones are about as thick as tinfoil, and won't last long.
Every second yera, replace the nozzle.
Every time you replace the nozzle, you should vacuum out the combustion chamber and the heat exchanger.
You should also vacuum out the chamber on top of the heat exchanger and the smoke pipe every other year.
If you don't know what you're doing, watch the service man next time he comes. Ask questions, and make notes.
Oil is dangerous, much less forgiving than gas.
If you don't have experience, you might be better to get an annual service agreement with your oil supplier. Even if you do that, I recommend you watch to make sure you are getting proper service. A lot of the so called tecks today don't know squat about oil, and do a halfassed job servicing oil burners.

 

[rdln]

Every year, I have somebody do it. Unfortunately the last two times I have scheduled a cleaning a week in advance we get a cold snap and my appointment gets shoved back due to emergency calls. I dont like that but somethings I wont do myself. It was running $80 bucks a pop when they did a litmus paper type CO test, now they have a fancy compooter---/w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif$150/w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif

 

[woodmills1]

If you have hot air please change the air filter often, it filters the air to your house. the oil filter yes once a year along with the nozzel. the electric igniter is a little tricky to align but if you are handy you can do that too. also yes to a visual for cracks or bad fire box lining. a mirror through the fire inspection door can help with that. If you do wood work in the area of your furnace also check the impeller on the furnace air delivery fan. at my last house i did much wood work in the basement and the fan would build up dust so it needed to be cleaned with a brush. it would load up enough to get out of balance. fix it before the bearings or motor goes. also hot air furnaces need to be cleaned out in the heat transfer passages, but there are cleanout plugs provided. get the gaskets first.

 

[beenthere]

<font color=blue>Oil is dangerous, much less forgiving than gas</font color=blue>
I am curious what you mean by that comment?

I took care of my Iron Fireman oil boiler for 20+ years before I switched to gas, and sure glad I don't have those headaches anymore. Just the thick, black soot that had to be vacuumed at every cleaning was problem enough. This Iron Fireman was a unique design (no oil gun as in conventional burners), had a 3600 rpm fan drawing air from the combustion chamber (not blowing air in as in conventioanal units), and the oil pump was belted down to 1700 rpm. Always breaking a belt, losing prime, and had to repair and clean myself as no one in the trade had experience with these units. Glad to be on gas for backup to the wood boiler now.

 

[Anonymous Poster]

One of the biggest dangers with oil burners is the dam reset button on the burner. I can't tell you the number of times I've seen burners where people pushed that button 20 times before they called for service. Then, they swear they didn't push it, and since you're now on a 16 hour day, you believe them, only to find a pool of oil in the firebox waiting to vaporize when she fires. That gets nasty real fast.
Also, there are different types of oil burners, ranging from gun burners to pot burners, with Timkin/Torridheat in between. With guns, there are standard guns, and flame retention head guns.
Gas tends to be pretty much straight forward, a burner and a valve, and you can usually reach the valve to shut it off quick when you have to. With the gas valve off, it's hard to have a runaway fire still burning.
It takes a few years for an oil burner apprentice just to see every type of unit, so there aren't a lot of tecks who really know what they are working on. That leadt to a lot of problems too.

Seperate issue, on the CO2 tests, once a burner is set up, there is no necessity to run a Co2 test every year, that's just a money maker. What you're calling a litmus paper test, sounds like a smoke test, where a few puffs of smoke are pumped thru a filter paper that is compared to a gray scale. That wasn't a Co2 test, and the papers only cost 2 cents each.
It sounds like you're being entertained by a money maker teck, instead of getting your burner properly serviced.