sunday dawned cold and clear.....no heat call

Sunday dawned sunny and clear, but very cold. finally a day off...today is the day we have been planning on watching football playoffs with a crock pot of 2 alarm chili....it is already on its 12 hour simmer....

The telephone rings, not a good sign on an early sunday a.m.,  its my sister, she has no heat.....

We dress , pack a 5 gallon bucket with miscellaneous STUFF....screwdrivers, pliers, basic tester, flashlight, and much more....
there are several inches of new snow on the ground and its cold.

We get there, I have snow pants over my pajama pants. Mr. Fix-It has his trusty blues on.....
we are in.....the boiler room is in the garage in its own room, we hear movement upstairs......i get a text from my neice " are you coming soon? its cold!"  I text back," we are here!"   I hear her running down the stairs.

Mr. Fix-It is already into the furnace, he has checked to see that the oil burner switch is on, made sure there is enough oil in the tank, and checked the line to make sure there were no obstructions in it.... then he started taking the covers off to get to the innards.

He tried the reset button, nothing. tries to start and almost immediately shuts off. Mr. Fix-It said "there's no fire in the hole!"
Mr. Fix-It looks inside the chamber and its sooty black, no clean white burn.  Now we have to take all covers off, we try to figure out how all the covers come off..... we get the top cover off and look inside, we cant ever see the grid inside, it is loaded with soot!
My brother- in -law starts to vacuum....what a mess....soot is sooooooo dirty.
we are literally chipping away at the hardened soot.....slow but sure.....after several hours of cleaning between 4 people, and emptying the vacuum and blowing out the filter in the wet/dry vacuum many times, we all look like chimney sweeps....we finally break through the soot into the fire chamber.....cuts and blood , sweat and tears.....we take down the chimney pipes which are loaded with soot.
It is clear that this furnace hasnt been running correctly for some time.
Mr. Fix-It changes the filter, which was much needed. He then tries to fire it, it runs on safety mode until it kicks off again. My sister, brother-in-law and I all watch expectantly, it runs on safety for a minute and shuts off.
Mr. Fix-It continues to reassemble the covers on the furnace.....we are just watching noone is saying much. We are a dirty pack of soldiers.....
Mr. Fix-It is undeterred......
He opens the door to the sensor eye and blows out any dust that could be tricking the sensor into shutting off. Closes it up again. Resets it and again shuts off after safety shuts off.. He then checks the air door, the door is set at 10, that is unusually wide gap.....Mr. Fix-It adjusts it to 8.  Resets it again, and Voila!

We all breath a sign of relief there is ice on the inside of the garage door windows.....

Mr. Fix-It strikes again!


Follow up to the above post:  The next day my brother- in -law called Mr. Fix-It, the furnace shut off again. Mr. Fix-It suggested he close the blower door to a 6. After that and since no problemo. And the oil consumption has gone way down. Go figure.

Our thoughts on this incident after reviewing all information that led to the failure: Our conclusion is the technician that had been paid to clean the boiler may not have actually have cleaned/vacuumed it out for a couple of years and he kept opening the air door to continue to get it to run. Hence, carboning up the furnace and burning an awful lot of oil. Oil men want you to use alot of oil!  (Just my two cents.)

FYI...Mr. Fix-It has never worked on this furnace.