Burn, baby, burn
I now know far more than I really wanted to about my oil boiler. (Who am I kidding? That thing is fricking PIMP. It’s apparently the best boiler that money can buy, and it’s built like a brit shickhouse.)
After running it out of oil the other day and suffering through a night where the temperature in the house hovered at 56 degrees Fahrenheit, Burns and McBride came out this morning to fill it, but were flummoxed by the fact that there seemed to be two delivery connections. I pointed out that we have two tanks, and they pointed out that there’s only one vent, so it’s possible that only one of the connections works, and the other is vestigeal. They said they’d send out a Delivery Manager to take a look.
I met him at the house, and he turned out to be a nice gentleman, who confirmed that there are two delivery connections, one for each tank. He only filled one tank, because we discovered that the air vent seems to be partially clogged (something else I’ll have to get fixed), and he was afraid of building up too much pressure in the tanks. He said that the boiler might have difficulty starting up, because of air in the line, but showed me how to bleed that, and went on his merry way.
And of course I couldn’t get the damn boiler to fire. It’s heavily computerized, and has logic to prevent it from running if it realizes it’s only spraying air. So it’ll try for a bit, and if it doesn’t get any fuel, it turns off, and starts flashing a little green LED. There’s a button on the front to reset it and try again, so I figured I’d bleed out the air, then hit reset, and everything would be gravy.
I loosened the bleeder screw, which I expected to work like the one you find on automobile brake calipers; you have somebody press on the brake, you loosen the screw, and air and fluid comes pouring out. In this case, the oil only dripped, which I thought was strange. Anyway, I hit the reset button again, but nothing happened; the little green light kept flashing, and the motor on the front didn’t turn on. I tried switching off the power to the system, tried messing with the thermostat, but got nowhere. After 15 minutes of frantic googling, I discovered this handy online manual, which explained that to prevent fuel oil from filling up the burner, you can only reset the system three times before it goes into “restricted mode.” Getting it out of restricted mode just involves holding the button down for a long time. No problem. I figured if I could just get the motor to kick off a few times, it would eventually pump all the air out, and start getting good oil.
After resetting the system 9 times, I started to rethink my strategy.
I realized that the reason that brake fluid comes pouring out of the caliper when I bleed the brakes is that someone is pushing on the brake pedal, producing pressure in the system. The only pressure in the system was being provided by gravity, and it apparently wasn’t enough. It occurred to me: what if I reset the system while the bleeder valve is open? Every time I reset the system, it ran a motor that I assume must be some kind of fuel pump. Would this pump the air out? I loosened the bleed screw a turn, and hit the button.
WHOOOOOOOOOOOOSH
Oil/Air foam came spraying out of the valve. This was a positive development. The motor eventually turned back off without firing the burner, but I figured it just needed another go. That didn’t work, but one more round of bleeding the air and one more reset led to:
WHOOOSHclickclickclickWHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH
Amusingly, no matter how new it is, any oil-fired boiler is instantly “Old Girl.” The instant the boiler fired, I yelled “That’s it, Old Girl! Hell yes!” A few moments later, when “she” coughed and sputtered when another little air bubble hit the burner, I coaxed “No, no, Old Girl, stay with me STAY WITH ME!”
In the end: she was busily heating up the water for the radiators, and I smell like a damn refinery. I had to return to work afterwards; I’m surprised my coworkers didn’t insist on burning my clothes and hosing me off outside.
