Residential Heating Oil Furnaces

State of the art technologies bring heating oil systems into the 21st Century.

Furnaces no longer just blow hot air through the house. Whether you are looking at upgrading your present heating oil system or installing a new one, one fact remains constant: heating oil systems are better and smarter today than they have ever been before!

They are designed as the focal point of a comprehensive, efficient, clean and safe system to heat your home. But it?s not all about heat. The same ductwork that connects the furnace to the rest of the residence can be used as the conduit for other forms of conditioned air as well. For example:

? Cooling with central air.

? Moisture control with a humidifier

? Eliminate dusts and pollens with a central air cleaning system.

Innovative technologies are producing heating oil furnaces with efficiencies in fuel-to-heat conversion ranging from 81% to 95%. The use of low-mass combustion chambers and improvements in the design of heat exchangers, coupled with high-pressure flame retention burners and innovative microprocessor-based controls are just several reasons for this leap in efficiency.

Modern furnaces can save you money, too, as an effective way to cut energy costs! Efficiency in the use of your heating oil pays for itself while providing an increase in comfort, peace of mind through confidence in the equipment and low exhaust emissions promote a cleaner environment as well. Several of these innovations are highlighted below:

? ?Smart? controls: The latest in micro-processing technologies allows the system to automatically adjust itself to changing environmental requirements resulting in fewer ?on/off? cycles. This reduces fuel consumption, wear on equipment, exhaust emissions and electrical usage by the system.

? High-pressure flame retention burners: Hotter flames with less air and fuel required are evidence of improvements in the high-flow atomization and vaporizing technologies used in the newer burners today.

? It?s safe: Fuel oil, in its natural liquid state, won?t burn. It must be vaporized to ignite. It will not burn if a lit match is thrown into a puddle of it. By virtue of this quality, it cannot explode when exposed to a spark or flame. Also, heating oil fumes are not poison like natural gas.

? Clean Burning: The average oil burning system emits 6 ounces of particulate emissions (soot) per year or roughly 1/8th of a pound of soot for every ton of fuel oil burned. That marks a 95% improvement over the last 25 years or so. There are no federal regulations on heating oil emissions.

If you heat with another source of energy or are building new, then you should be aware that heating oil is a viable option to meet your family?s heating needs.

Heating oil technology has kept pace with the competition from other heating options and in some cases surpassed it. If you currently heat with oil, then it is a safe bet that it will continue to serve you well into the new century before us.

For more information on Home Heating Oil Prices and energy solutions, visit Home Heating Oil Prices Do your research,save yourself some money. John Bogdanski a renegade Oil Heat marketing executive, rips open the curtain,exposing the industry.

How Often Do We Need To Have Our Furnaces Cleaned

For those people who live in area's of the country that gets cold, it's time to think about your heating equipment. With the technology new furnaces have today there isn't much to do on them as far as setting them up for winter. In the old days (10 years ago and before) we were told to have our furnaces and boilers checked once a year. But now furnaces and boilers have electronics doing most of the work. There are only a couple of things that a service tech needs to do in today's furnaces and boilers as far as a "clean and check" goes.

The old days:

In the old days when a service man (politically correct term today is "service tech" this term started about 21 years ago) when out on a "clean and check," he had all kinds of things to do. First he pulled out all the burners and blew them out with co2, then he checked the heat exchanger for cracks using a mirror, then vacuumed up any dirt he found. He also changed the "thermocouple" (on a standing pilot, where the pilot flame burns all the time, the thermocouple tells the gas valve there is a pilot light, and it's ok to open, and start the heat sequence) on the "pilot light" and blew out the pilot light assembly to make sure it would burn clean and that the pilot flame was positioned correctly on the thermocouple, and on the burner pilot runner.

After that he pulled the blower, and if it was a belt drive blower, oiled the squirrel cage bearings, motor bearings, and checked the belt for cracks . On a "direct drive blower" all he had to do was just oil the bearings on the motor.

Now all the burners are cleaned and the heat exchanger has been checked for cracks and everything is back in place, including the blower.On to the next step.

Now, if the service man was worth his salt, he checks the most important part of the furnace, the "limit switch". There's a limit switch in every; gas, oil, electric, or propane furnace, or boiler. It's main function is to turn on the blower (usually 200') and shut it off (around 110 or 100' any cooler, and you would feel like there was a draft) and the most important job it has is to tell the "gas valve" to shut down the burners incase the blower fails. It keeps the furnace or boiler (boilers also have a "safety relief valve" like hot water heaters) from over heating and starting a fire.

What the better guys did was pull the blower wire off the limit switch and start the furnace burners. With the blower wire pulled off the limit switch, the blower can't start, and when the furnaces gets to about 200 degrees, the burners should shut off and not relight again until the furnaces cools and lowers it's temperature to about 140 degrees. Some guys just checked the limit switch by rotating the dial on the limit switch and blower settings until the burners shut off. I liked taking the wire off the limit switch and testing it that way because it was more real life working conditions in the event of blower failure.

One of the last things, and just as important as checking the limit switch, was to check the "flue pipe" to make sure it, or the chimney, hasn't been blocked by soot or birds. It wasn't uncommon to find dead birds in the flue. Some even made it into people's basements. This doesn't happen anymore with the new furnaces. And the very last thing that was done was to check for gas leaks.

Furnaces 10 years ago to the present:

Today's furnaces and boilers don't need the kind of attention from the service man like furnaces of the past did. On most modern furnaces all that needs to be checked is the "flame sensor". The furnaces of today pretty much watch themselves. The burners almost never get dirty now a days because they are working in a mostly closed (80 plus furnaces are not, but the 90's are) environment. The blower, gas valve, and all the safety controls (including the "limit switch" and "blower switch") are run by a circuit board. The blowers are all sealed now too. They don't even need to be oiled!

So how often do we want our furnaces and boilers checked?

That's a tough question. It all depends on the environment your furnace is running in. It your furnace or boiler is running in an environment that has a lot of dust or animal hair, then it mite be worth it to have your furnace checked once a year. If your furnace is running in a relatively clean environment, you can probably get away with 2 or 3 years of not having to have to spend the money to have a clean furnace checked.

Don't forget that these new furnaces shut down when they spot the slightest problem. Some tech guys feel the only real time for home owners to have their furnaces ( don't forget where're talking new furnaces not the old clunkers) checked, is when they don't start. They don't think the cost justifies what your getting in return.

But in the end, it's the choice of the home owner to decide how often they have their heating equipment checked.

Jerry Quatrano is the proud owner of Addison Services who has 30 years experience in the Heating and A/C industry, and still likes to talk about it, along with selling great products at his site at addisonservices.com

If you found this information helpful, please consider purchasing one of our great products.

Thanks

Every Day That the Furnace Works Is a Good Day

 

The things that make our lives better - our homes, food, clothing and our families should make us feel good by just knowing we have them. But those important things likely have been a part of our lives for a long time. Human nature turns our attention away from the familiar. So we seldom feel very happy about what we have. But if something important to us is taken away and then is somehow recovered, we feel joy and appreciation.

Too bad we humans can't feel so fortunate about things before they are taken away. How great we would feel about our health, our abilities to move around, our mental abilities to reason and remember, and the numerous other things that are out of our minds just because we take them for granted. Shouldn't we make 'asset awareness' a higher priority in our lives? What better way is there to get more out of life? That little bit of wisdom would make us happier if we could just get ourselves to put it into practice.

My furnace stopped working late one evening this winter when the temperature outside was heading toward the lower twenties overnight. There would not be a furnace repair shop open at that time of day. I have quite a few tools, am mechanically inclined, and have some knowledge of how the furnace works. So I went down into the basement and started removing the pump/blower assembly from the oil-burning furnace so it could be inspected. When the mounting bolts were removed and the assembly taken out, several small pieces of shattered plastic could be seen lying at the bottom of the combustion chamber. The plastic shaft linking the motor to the oil pump had shattered into many small pieces. There would be no heat in the house overnight and probably a good part of the next day.

The temperature in the house had dropped into the lower 60s around 8 p.m. when I noticed the furnace was not coming on, as it should. By 10 p.m. when I had discovered the root cause, it was in the mid 50s. Fortunately, I have a lot of extra blankets. I took three, folded each in half for a total of six extra layers and put them on the bed. I put on a coat, a second pair of pants, heavy socks, a knit hat, and knit gloves and went to bed.

I was quite comfortable that night. The next morning, the temperature in the house was 48 degrees F. I was dressed warmly and was reasonably comfortable as long as I kept moving quickly and didn't slow down. The urge to stay warm felt like an overpowering concern. A call to the nearest furnace repair shop (about 10 miles away) gave me the good news that a replacement part was in stock. The $12 price seemed like a real bargain to get back a heated home again. Just after noon I had completed the repair just in time to eat lunch as the house warmed up to the balmy 68 degrees were the thermostat was set. What luxury!

We have so much. We heat our homes. We provide ourselves with food and other necessities. We have many luxuries and creature comforts. Every one of those good things should be celebrated and enjoyed. All of what we have is special - the newly acquired, the familiar, the big/important things and the little things. It is special to be able to prepare a plate of food for supper, take it out into the yard and sit down in the sun and eat it. If that doesn't seem special, visit a nursing home (most of us will live in one some day). Most of the residents there are wheelchair bound. They eat in their rooms or in a large dining hall with other residents. Those are their only two choices.

When I walk out onto my lawn with my plate of food, I am going to enjoy it. I hope I always remember - every day that the furnace works is a good day.

Alan Detwiler started the web site Leisureideas. Visitors to the site are encouraged to use imagination and whatever happens to be available to discover new ways to enjoy themselves.

Alan writes books on how to pursue playfulness and a sense of wonder. His books are available in digital format and can be purchased and downloaded on the eBookMall web site. Go to http://www.ebookmall.com Then do a search for Detwiler.