Home Heating..

[norgeway]

I got to use one of my dormant skills today..LOL, Woke up to a cold house..Afer a little troubleshooting I diagnosed a bad cad cell, "Electronic eye flame detector", so while I was at it, I gave the old oil furnace a little tune up, a new nozzle and oil filter and a little adjusting and we now have a warm house again, in my dim and distant past I worked for a heating and AC company, doing mostly oil and gas furnace service, does anyone else heat with oil??

 

[wayupnorth]

I do and have used much more oil than in the 20 years I have been here because its so damn cold. Weather Channel had a segment this afternoon showing the coldest cities on the east coast and Bangor came in #1, not a record we want. I always have an extra nozzel for the burner. Easy to tell if it runs rough and easy to change. Each Fall, I have my serviceman come and go over everything with my New Yorker boiler and have plenty of heat and hot water for the next year.

 

[norgeway]

Re New Yorker..

Those are good units, I used to have several on my list to service every year, they are very easy to clean out.

 

[wayupnorth]

I had a 4 unit apartment house that had a New Yorker boiler for heat and the apartments paid for electric hot water. I decided to put one here in 1995 and it has run pretty much flawlessly since. Would I buy another, absolutely.

 

[joelippard]

I've got a gas ''67 Therm o pride here in my house and it's never missed a beat. It looks beautiful inside too. That thing can go from cold to hot as hell in no time flat. Even our 6 degree weather last week was no match for it!

 

[sudsmaster]

I remember the oil furnace in the basement of my childhood Connecticut home in the '50's. I also remember the whiff of heating oil we'd get as it fired on, and then the gentle warming (passive air flow). When we moved to California everything was gas, and of course not as many BTU's were needed to keep places warm here. Most flats had those in-floor gas heaters, which would hang down into the garage space below. They were tricky to walk on with bare feet, lol.

 

I have no idea what brand the oil furnace was, but as I recall it was big and green.

 

 

[norgeway]

ThermoPride

Is still the bEST oil furnace you can get, the gas ones are great also...Big green furnace...HMMM That would be, A Waterbury,York Heat,Mueller Climatrol or Milwaukee Thermoflo...also it could have been a Delco or an Iron Fireman, all of these were wonderful, far far superior to most of the junk made today.

 

[abcomatic]

Frigidaire

I have a newish Frigidaire gas fired, forced air furnace. It heats well and sure has saved on the gas bill each month. The only complaint that I have with it is that the pressure switch has to be replaced, often it seems. I bought a new one and replaced it myself.
The old furnace was a huge Green Colonel made in Des Moines, Iowa. Most of the heat went up the chimney along with the money that it took to keep it going. It was quiet but had a huge burner inside.
I don't believe that many people around where I am anyway, heat with oil. Most in the midwest use gas I think? Gary

 

[whirlcool]

Oil Heat

I remember in the 50's & very early 60's in the Chicago area a lot of homes were heated with oil fired furnaces. And like clock works, the oil guy used to come around to top your tank off. Even some homes built as late as 62' had oil heat.

Our house had a old coal burning Iron Fireman furnace. Sometime in the late 50's my parents had it converted to oil. That thing seemed huge. It must have been installed in the 1930's or 40's. Think of the furnace in the basement of the Home Alone house. That's what it reminded me of. My mother always complained about how dirty & dusty oil heat was.

When I was off to college they had all that taken out and a new gas furnace installed. That thing was tiny compared to the original. Instead of taking up a large space in the basement, it just occupied a small corner. But it heated the house so much better and my father used to be amazed at how much cheaper gas was compared to how much home heating oil was.

I think over time people either replaced their oil burning furnaces with gas models of converted them over.

 

[norgeway]

IN my hometown

Of Lenoir NC, it was just about all oil heat until the mid to late 80s when people started going to natural gas, I know of several houses with a gas range, electric water heater and a oil furnace!! I never understood that, Eventually I will put a gas furnace in here, the oil furnace here is a Bard from the 90s which I think is about as cheap as you can get.so I know it wont last forever...A Waterbury or York it aint!!!

 

[norgeway]

And the furnaces

That were sold in the 40s 50s and 60s,were basically like appliances, If you had money, You had a Lennox,or a York or a Waterbury, the 2 biggest oil furnaces I ever saw in a house were a Lennox and a Waterbury, The Lennox was in a 3 story house that was the Parsonage for the First Baptist Church, Ray Barger who owned Barger Ashe roofing went there, and he was the Lennox dealer, the first time I went with Hillard Underdown, who co owned the heating and ac business I worked for,he said, "Look inside that thing,,,Dosent it make you think you are looking into HELL!". I have to admit it did, it was 300,000 BTU and had 7 tons of air conditioning on it!!!!Man did it heat, it was installed in 1952 when the house was built, when the dummies who bought the house in the 90s when the Church sold it, took it out, they had to set 2 gas furnces side by side to heat that big old house,Another house had a Waterbury about the same size,Ordinary builders houses had Delco's, Chrysler Airtemp's,Richmond's and a few other oddities.

 

[jmm63]

Heat with oil here. Its my first house with an oil furnace. Its a forced air unit and its pretty old, about 30+ years, but I don't know the brand name. I have it serviced every year and the thing just keeps on going. I know they said at some point it had a new fire box installed, and other than a few parts here and there its been pretty trouble free. I would love to have a new more efficient one installed one day and a booster fan installed for the duct going to the master bedroon, which has really weak airflow. I had a new oil tank installed 2 years ago and that cost about $3000 but it's the last one this house will ever need. I don't notice any difference between gas and oil as far as performance, only in cost. This year has been ok since oil has been cheap, but some years it has been downright painful!

 

[artcurus]

parent's house-Natural Gas. Trane gas fired put in probably around 2005. The water heater is a tankless and it's awesome.

My house, Electric.

I despise electric heat.

 

[washman]

My family did once.

Once.

A 1974 Sunrise Park 14x70 mobile home came with a total, royal, 100% POS Intertherm oil furnace.

I helped change out pumps, nozzles, and the infamous Cad Cell relay more often than I care to remember. I hated that POS. I still hate it to this day.

Circa 1979 due to massive increases in the cost of fuel oil, we put in a wood stove and heated that way until we got our sectional in 1993.

That came with a Coleman/Evcon forced air natural gas furnace that was also a POS from day one. The pilot light kept going out, the controller board for the blower went out as did the motor itself. After two years of effing around with it, dad had it pulled and a Janitrol hi eff electronic spark furnace went in. Gas bill dropped and we had no more problems.

During my house hunting escapade, I did look at sectional homes. Guess what? Intertherm is STILL in single wides and Nordyne is in doubles! Holy junk batman! I cannot for the life of me fathom how they are still in business.

Best thing we did with the Intertherm when we had an electric furnace put in?

I emptied several hundred rounds of 38 and 357 into it. Never shed a tear in the process either!

 

[norgeway]

LOL!!!!

I used to service a Carrier oil furnace from the 70s, it was constantly stopping in the middle of the night for no good reason, I changed out just about everything electronic on it and it still stopped on occasion, I would have loved to throw a stick of dynamite in that miserable thing,I also serviced a York that was put in in 1949...it had the same burner motor ,ignition transformer stack relay and pump that came on it..and it never faltered once!

 

[dustin92]

We had one of those dreadful Coleman/Evcon furnaces in our last house (sectional built in 1999) and had plenty of trouble with it in 12 years. Blower motor once, draft blower a couple times, control board once, one time we had it serviced because it was lighting so aggressively it shook the house (repair person actually found parts that had been shaken loose!) and it was forever NOISY. Sold the house over a year ago, and have kept in touch with the buyer, it blew the board again this winter. LOL GOOD RIDDANCE! We currently have an Amana high efficiency natural gas furnace (from about 1990) in our circa 1950 home, and no major complaints, as far as I know it has never had a screw turned. Can be a tad noisy, but I guess at ~25 years old, it has a right to complain (draft blower is getting a bit loud, along with the main blower) Air conditioning was installed the same time, and it has always left some to be desired. Never seems to remove the humidity and takes forever to cool, so we supplement it with a few window units run on low.

 

[norgeway]

The shame is

Coleman made a wonderful heating system in the 50s and 60s, it was called Blend Air,it used 3 1/2 inch ducts, and the registers blended the room air with the warm air, ive serviced several of them, they were wonderful.

 

[wayupnorth]

I would rather have Natural gas, but the nearest pipline is 9 miles away and that will never happen, not worth the expense. Propane is out of the question, too much, so I am stuck with oil. I have 2-330 gallon tanks and get 1 fillup a year. Just trying to figure when is the best time to fill up is a challenge, filled in September and by Christmas the price was nearly 50 cents less per gallon. But with all the snow we got, an oil truck would never be able to make it here at the end of the year.

 

[norgeway]

We have burned

About 165 gallons since October, not too bad.