AARRGGHHH! Oil boiler.

[TreeTangler]

Temps finally came out of subzero the other day and got up to 50*F with pouring rain. I let the fire die out so I could clean the stove and replace the door gasket. I hit the switch on the oil fired boiler and she roared to life and started throwing heat from the baseboard in minutes. I listened for a few minutes, everything sounded good so I went to work.

Came home to a house full of smoke and smelling of sulfer and burned fuel oil. Hit the emergency switch and opened some windows and got some fans going. Grabbed my tools and vac and headed down to the basement. Pulled the boiler apart and cleaned it, it was plugged nearly solid. Started it back up and smoked started pouring out of the power vent. I opened the sight hole to see the flame pinging off pieces of the combustion chamber, it had caved in. Worst part is, there's nowhere up here to get parts until Monday morning and this happened Friday night.

This a fairly new weil maclain fullycast iron boiler, I really did not expect this. It has been a horrible winter.

Thanks guys, I needed to vent a little.

TreeTangler

 

[Patrick62]

I feel your pain...

So much for the backup source! You gonna have to fast track that gasket on the wood cooker

 

[Chris-PA]

That stinks (literally I'm sure). Think how bad it would be if you didn't have wood heat.

Makes me glad I got rid of the oil heating system so I'll never have to deal with that again. Of course, my back up now is, umm..... sweaters and blankets.

 

[djones]

When we first moved into this house in '89, my MIL said that the furnace had just been serviced a month before, yet everytime that it would fire up we got an oil smell for the first few minutes of burning so being the curious person that I am, I went down to the boiler and watrched as it fired off, when it did a plume of smoke would come out around the panels of the boiler. I'm thinking,"That ain't right." So I look in the sight hole and see flames, lots of flames, blasting on the back of the fire box, Long story short, shut down, pull nozzle, wrong size nozzle 1.5 where at most a 1.25 should go, now has a .90, look into fire box, yup, back side collapsed, pull blower, pull top panel, pull front panel, pull mounting plate, pull fire box plate, remove firebox, have to order and wait 4 days. Called oil company service dept and told them in no uncertain terms not to set foot on our doorstep again. Haven't seen them in 23 years and have had no problems since. If you want something done right-----be sure to do it yourself.

 

[TreeTangler]

When we first moved into this house in '89, my MIL said that the furnace had just been serviced a month before, yet everytime that it would fire up we got an oil smell for the first few minutes of burning so being the curious person that I am, I went down to the boiler and watrched as it fired off, when it did a plume of smoke would come out around the panels of the boiler. I'm thinking,"That ain't right." So I look in the sight hole and see flames, lots of flames, blasting on the back of the fire box, Long story short, shut down, pull nozzle, wrong size nozzle 1.5 where at most a 1.25 should go, now has a .90, look into fire box, yup, back side collapsed, pull blower, pull top panel, pull front panel, pull mounting plate, pull fire box plate, remove firebox, have to order and wait 4 days. Called oil company service dept and told them in no uncertain terms not to set foot on our doorstep again. Haven't seen them in 23 years and have had no problems since. If you want something done right-----be sure to do it yourself.

I agree. I always do my own cleanings and services, quite thourough too. This spring the power vent malfunctioned while I was out of town and the wife refuses to learn the wood stove. I got the only boiler tech I could at that time to come out to repair and Service the boiler. Cost me $400 to have the fan prove switch replaced and the service never got done. I've had trouble with it ever since.

 

[Encore]

I love my wife dearly but when we first started burning wood a long time ago, I told her very flatly that if she wanted to stay warm when I was not at home (we only used the stove at the stove at the time) she needed to learn how to feed the fire and keep it going.

I came home to a chilly house twice before she got the hang of it haha. She even got to the point where she was lighting fires herself and doing a darn good job of it.

We haven't turned on the propane since moving into the house. If the tank wasn't 60% full I'd tell the company to come get their tank.