The Furnace Saga
Mar. 14th, 2015 08:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blogcutterIt all started on Wednesday, February 25. We were looking forward to spending a bit of time with the grandchildren but awoke to find the furnace had died in the night. The temperature was somewhere around 12 degrees Celsius, even though the thermostat was set to about 20 - and turning it up to 25 or beyond didn't do a thing.
We followed all the instructions on the furnace for "Before you make a service call..."
The Reset button brought the heat on - we quite often have to use it when there's been a power failure, although that didn't seem to be the case this time. So all was well - or so we thought. We got in our day with the grandchildren.
But on Thursday morning we woke up... and the furnace had gone off yet again. Once again, we pushed the Reset button and all was well. But we decided that this was definitely not normal and we put in a call to the good folks at Petrocan.
They responded quickly, I'll give them that. The serviceman decided that the transformer was showing signs of wear, and replaced it. Total time? About 45 minutes.
For the next couple of days, the furnace hummed along, although on Saturday, I did think it seemed a bit sluggish and reluctant to start when I turned up the thermostat. I figured we'd monitor it for the rest of the weekend and if there was no improvement, call again on Monday morning.
But Sunday morning, we once again woke up to a cold house. This time when we pressed the reset button, the furnace came on... but only for a few seconds, nowhere near enough time to warm up the house. A second attempt was no more successful. We couldn't really manage without a functional furnace, so we again phoned their 24-hour service number. Again someone came quickly, even though it was early on a Sunday morning. This time, he checked for oil leaks and found none, "bled" the line (emerging with a pan of reddish fluid that almost could have been blood) and pronounced it fixed. Total onsite time this time was only 15 minutes.
Once again things worked okay for a few days but when I got up at 6AM Wednesday morning, it was a repeat performance of Sunday. No heat and pressing the restart button brought the furnace back only for a few seconds. I couldn't stay in for the serviceman as I had a meeting followed by a dental appointment and didn't expect to be back until late morning. So my partner arranged the service call.
Apparently he found air in the lines just as before. Once again he bled the line. But he also found "jumping pump pressure" and a worn oil pump coupling. He replaced the coupling and said he would replace the pump itself if the problem persisted. Which he didn't think it would. Total on-site time for the service call was again about 45 minutes.
Unfortunately he was wrong. On Sunday, March 8, we awoke to a repeat performance of the same problem. We again called in a serviceman, providing him with all the history of the past couple of weeks' worth of service calls. The nice young man again bled the line - they all seemed to agree that the problem was air in the lines - but this one seemed to feel that rather than replace the pump, a better idea would be to install a "tiger loop". (I immediately thought of an old TV commercial for some high octane gasoline that promised to "put a tiger in your tank"). Apparently it's a little box installed on the side of the furnace that continuously removes air from the oil - without any user intervention. Sounds great, I thought. Was there any way we could arrange right now for someone to come in and install one? He promised to talk to the folks in the office on Monday morning. This time he was here for about half an hour.
Tomorrow morning will mark a week since that fateful day. We still haven't heard back from them - we'll probably have to follow up - but nor have we had a recurrence of the problem. Of course, the weather has been a little warmer so maybe the furnace has simply not had to work so hard. But there's still a few more weeks of furnace weather to go. I'm crossing my fingers and toes and touching wood -- which we may have to burn if all else fails!
We followed all the instructions on the furnace for "Before you make a service call..."
The Reset button brought the heat on - we quite often have to use it when there's been a power failure, although that didn't seem to be the case this time. So all was well - or so we thought. We got in our day with the grandchildren.
But on Thursday morning we woke up... and the furnace had gone off yet again. Once again, we pushed the Reset button and all was well. But we decided that this was definitely not normal and we put in a call to the good folks at Petrocan.
They responded quickly, I'll give them that. The serviceman decided that the transformer was showing signs of wear, and replaced it. Total time? About 45 minutes.
For the next couple of days, the furnace hummed along, although on Saturday, I did think it seemed a bit sluggish and reluctant to start when I turned up the thermostat. I figured we'd monitor it for the rest of the weekend and if there was no improvement, call again on Monday morning.
But Sunday morning, we once again woke up to a cold house. This time when we pressed the reset button, the furnace came on... but only for a few seconds, nowhere near enough time to warm up the house. A second attempt was no more successful. We couldn't really manage without a functional furnace, so we again phoned their 24-hour service number. Again someone came quickly, even though it was early on a Sunday morning. This time, he checked for oil leaks and found none, "bled" the line (emerging with a pan of reddish fluid that almost could have been blood) and pronounced it fixed. Total onsite time this time was only 15 minutes.
Once again things worked okay for a few days but when I got up at 6AM Wednesday morning, it was a repeat performance of Sunday. No heat and pressing the restart button brought the furnace back only for a few seconds. I couldn't stay in for the serviceman as I had a meeting followed by a dental appointment and didn't expect to be back until late morning. So my partner arranged the service call.
Apparently he found air in the lines just as before. Once again he bled the line. But he also found "jumping pump pressure" and a worn oil pump coupling. He replaced the coupling and said he would replace the pump itself if the problem persisted. Which he didn't think it would. Total on-site time for the service call was again about 45 minutes.
Unfortunately he was wrong. On Sunday, March 8, we awoke to a repeat performance of the same problem. We again called in a serviceman, providing him with all the history of the past couple of weeks' worth of service calls. The nice young man again bled the line - they all seemed to agree that the problem was air in the lines - but this one seemed to feel that rather than replace the pump, a better idea would be to install a "tiger loop". (I immediately thought of an old TV commercial for some high octane gasoline that promised to "put a tiger in your tank"). Apparently it's a little box installed on the side of the furnace that continuously removes air from the oil - without any user intervention. Sounds great, I thought. Was there any way we could arrange right now for someone to come in and install one? He promised to talk to the folks in the office on Monday morning. This time he was here for about half an hour.
Tomorrow morning will mark a week since that fateful day. We still haven't heard back from them - we'll probably have to follow up - but nor have we had a recurrence of the problem. Of course, the weather has been a little warmer so maybe the furnace has simply not had to work so hard. But there's still a few more weeks of furnace weather to go. I'm crossing my fingers and toes and touching wood -- which we may have to burn if all else fails!
