Furnace help!
 

I need some help with my furnace. It's a forced air fuel oil furnace. The problem is that the fuel pump won't come on. I push the reset button on top of the unit and hear a slight buzzing, but not a motor buzz for several seconds but nothing happens. I unplugged the temp limit switch and the blower turned on. Also I have a hobbs meter wired to come on when the fuel pump turns on and it's not coming on either. I noticed it died when it turned on tonight for just a few seconds and the quit before the blower even turned on. I don't think the motor or pump it self is bad but possibly some safety switch that controls the motor.

The motor very likely does have a reset switch somewhere on the case feel around for it some are on the end some are under some are near the inside end.... The buzzing is the transformer/ignitor.

I am not too familiar with an oil furnace, but it seems like a safety switch of some sort is bad. I would jump out each safety switch, ONE AT A TIME, and with the power OFF while jumping a switch out. After jumping out one switch, try the furnace. When it runs O.K., turn the furnace off and check the switch you have jumper to see why it is bad. Don't run a furnace forever with a jump out switch. Just my two cents.

Well the oil pump (and burner fan) motor usually gets its power from the primary relay (the box with the button) along with the ignitor and since the ignitor is buzzing its putting out power (with some exceptions) Probably the motor reset switch was tripped, but the relay could have a seperate motor power terminal and the relay is pooched or something simple like the neutral is loose or maybe the motor is dead. Not enough details to say.

They are right. On all of the regular ones I know of you have a grey control box that sits on top of the motor just to the side. On top of that is the reset. It's the little red button that sits in the box. You can't miss it. Try pushing that in and it should click down and stay held down. Once you do that it should refire and at least try to start. BEFORE YOU DO THAT THOUGH , CHECK THE BREAKER ON YOUR MAIN SERVICE PANEL.:hammer: You wouldn't want to call in a technician to find out you tripped a breaker, ouch:gaptooth:
If the button doesn't stay down and the pump try to fire then check along the side of the box where the small wires attach under the screw heads. Make sure they are all there and not unattached / broken someplace. Those are the things that keep it from firing most often.
Sometimes it will trip out itself however quite often there was a problem that made the box trip in the first place. You should be aware of that and alert for it to do it again.
If that doesn't do it and you'll likely want to call in a tech before you freeze up :runforhills: unless you have backup like I do.

I did check all the resets, there's 3 one on that box, one on the motor and one on the circute board, plus the breaker. None of those fixed it. I haven't yet tried to jump anything I was afraid of frying the board since some sensors are resistance based and I don't know if any on a furnace are. I gave in and called a repair man this morning, it needs to be cleaned and serviced anyways so I figure so far I shouldn't be too far behind. Hopefully it's not something too expensive, I don't want to replace this furnace with another oil furnace, but on the other hand I still have 300 gallons of oil in the ground! I had planed on running this one til this tank was empty, then trying running biodiesel in it til the furnace died.

I do have a back up actually, I have a wood stove plus a small electric heater that keep things warm in here. Though the stove by it self is just alittle too small to totally heat the house, hence the furnace is important.

I like the biodiesel idea. Ask the service guy about it. But i think you need the extra lubrication of the oil. I would look at filling the tank with bio and just keep deluting the oil in the tank until she dies

On an aside, I had a fuel oil furnace and when it died I replaced it with propane. My fuel costs more than doubled. I actually had the propane guy check to see if the gas was leaking out of the tank because it went so fast.

Yeah propane isn't much of a deal around here either. Not sure you'd need lube in biodiesel, really its just the pump that might benefit and they're pretty robust simple machines. From what I've read biodiesel works very well in furnaces.

At this point the furnace either has a loose wire or the burner motor is fried. OR if it has pre or post purge it could be the relay, is it a black relay with a button on the front or a grey one with the button on the top? The circuit board (if it has one) is really more for the distribution fan although the thermostat does go into it and power the burner motor and ignitor too. So since you have the ignitor running it isn't the board.

Ok so the repair guy came and I think ended up making a big mess and not getting anywhere. First he said the buner controler was bad because he opened that up, I had spark, but no pump. He jumped the pump and it came on just fine. On my furnace the ignitor and controller are in the same unit, he said it'd be cheaper to use a more and separate genaric ignitor and controler. So he removed my controller/ ignitor and proceded to rewire my furnace to run on the new 2 components. After that the burner functioned properly, however now the fan won't run right at the right times and he feels the motor is red hot and is bad. he pulled and rerouted alot of wires on my board trying to get the fan to run right and really got nowhere other than making a mess. He says it'll probably cost $800-1000 for the controller ignitor and a blower and it may still not fix the problem. Quoted me $2,800 for a new oil furnace, which I'm not sure I even want to go that way, at this point I may just go to electric. However I don't have any quotes on this yet, plus I still have abit over 300 gallons of oil in the ground that I already paid for. On the other hand this is like the only guy in my area that even deals with fuel oil so I forsee getting service and repairs in the future a problem, esspecially when this guy retires, and he's already up there in age so that may not be long. As of now I bought some time by getting 2 oil electric radiators to supliment my wood stove, so at least I have heat. Sufice it to say I'm alittle frustrated now!

Oh it's a combo ignitor/relay..... i hate those. Yeah it would be cheaper to replace with 2 units. I take it you have a multi speed direct drive motor and he was trying to use a different speed? I always get the numbers wrong but your board is a st 109A I think They run $150 or so, an ignitor is around $40-$50 and a separate relay is probably $50. Fan motors have gotten dear, 1/3 hp 3 spd 150-200 for some reason. They used to be fairly cheap. Should only take an hour to change all of it. He doesn't sell used parts?

Wow, I'd be ----ed too. What sort of monster is that thing? I wouldn't plow a pile of money into an old one. For the mean time have you considered just running electric space heaters? Don't fall over yet. With fuel prices being so stupid that's what I've been using for the past 3 years in addition to my pellet stove. My electric bill averages about $50 a month more. That's cheaper than burning oil and we have NYSEG which is some of the highest in the country. The fedex guy was telling me the other day that he had a friend the is building a fully electric house. He couldn't believe it as that went out up here in the late 70's but the guy assured him it was cheaper than dealing with oil. It's a simple option to get you through the winter. Those oil filled radiator type are the safest and best overall for most uses, dead quiet and are only about $38 each.
The big problem you will find with biodiesel is it has the tendency to destroy the seals in the pump. They do make some that are resistant to it but they are more expensive. You can buy it 15% around here occasionally but lately the supply has dried up.

Those aren't the prices he was giving me, he was saying the ignitor and controller alone would be about $500 in parts then another $125 for the motor. I don't know if it's multi speed, but he was screwing with the speed setting's on the board. Started removing multiple wires, I started getting worried as while I didn't know where all the wires where going I know the had to have a purpose. And no he doesn't sell used parts, actually oil furnaces are almost extinct in my area! I'm actually thinking about buying a used furnace though I saw several used on Craigslist for $3-600, seems like a much better deal than $2,800 especially since I only use my furnace about 1 hour a day total.


It's an 18 year old Nordyn, not ancient, but by no means modern tecnology. I actually did but 2 of those oil filled electric heaters to supliment my wood stove, seem to be working good so far, but it was over 40 today. However according to my calculations I should only need a continuous 6,000kw to maintain temperature with no wood stove so with 2 oil filled heaters plus a back up forced air I'm at 4,500 I should be ok.

From my calculations in my area with current oil prices electric is actually cheaper than oil. I figure electric cost $3.22/100KBTUh with electric at about $.11/kwh, while oil cost $3.80/ 100KBTUh at $3.80/ gallon. Basically what I figured is that on my 80% efficent furnace, which is about as good as they get even now that 100,000 BTUh is 1 gallon of fuel oil. And while niether is cheap, when you only have the two options (aside from alternative energy) and only see oil going one way. Plus there's basically zero maintainance, very few parts to fail, and no storage requirement, selectric starts looking real good.

Right now I only use my furnace minamally anyways and the goal is not to have to use it at all. I plan to do this with the addition of a wood boiler esentially making the furnace a back up for when I'm away.

I'am however leaning towards a used oil furnace for the time being though seing as I still have abit over 300 gallons in the ground, might as well use it.

have you replaced the filter coming out of the tank? Next I would check the fuel nozzel, has it been replaced lately?

Both got replaced today. Didn't make a differance.

Furnace oil is 138,000 btu/gallon for your math most people use 140k for quick math and you'll see different numbers here and there) Used furnace is a good idea but I'd just steal the needed parts and swap them onto your existing furnace. What would need matching perfectly is the the relay timing and locked rotor amperage. They will be on your existing controler/ignitor.

Is there any way you could get somebody to buy back the fuel oil? Then you could use the $$ towards your new electric solution.

We do know we've reached a crazy point in fuel prices when electric heat is an option once again, but it sure sounds like you did the math correctly.

Best idea yet. The tank can be pumped empty or drained from the basement.

Any chance you could find a bigger used woodstove, or maybe a corn/pellet stove? It might be a very cost effective solution for the short term (until you get your boiler in). I used to have to use quite a bit of propane in the early mornings. I upgraded my woodstove with a larger used one and now it is NEVER under 60 when I get up in the morning (not MI, I know) and I use zero propane unless we are out of town. I do keep some in the tank for when I am out of town, but if it ever dies on me, I am going electric for sure.

This is all I ever needed to do to mine every time it acted like yours. Change the filter and bleed the line.

When was the last time the jet was replaced. Not sure on proper name, nozzel where fuel oil comes out and shoots into the furnace. They are supposed to be done every year, although most arnt. But when they plug thats it.

I probably could get a larger insert, but by the time I do that I probably might as well buy a new furnace or boiler, last I looked cheap inserts where still a couple thousand dollars. lol. My wood stove is actually installed inside my fireplace like an insert, and I basically stuffed the biggest one I possibly could in there, which was still a medium/small wood stove. The wood stove will heat the house well as long as someones around to feed it, but I really only get a 3 hour MAX burn out of it where it's really putting out much heat. Right now I'm doing fine between my porable heaters and the wood stove so it's not an emergency. But still a problem that needs to be adressed. As stated before right now I'm looking at replacement as the most viable option. I found a used oil furnace for $325 that will probably fit the bill, it's abit larger than mine, so I'll have to modify the duct work, but other than that it should go right in place.

My furnace guy replaced the nozzel and filter when he was trying to figure out what was wrong with it and my furnace bleeds it self automatically, it has a return line. The problems not in the burner, when jumped the burner lights off fine. The problems in the electronics somewhere either in the burner control or the circute board, or both. Of coarse since the repair guy destroyed my original control then f':censored:d up all the wiring I'd just end up throwing parts at it. I'm sure I could put a new controler, ignition modulal, circut board and fan motor on it and bring it back to life, but I've came to the conlusions it's just not worth it. Esspecially when there's fucntioning used ones out there for less than all the parts I'd need to fix mine. Plus sufice it to say this will be the last time I call in a repair man for anything that's not under warrenty, better off just to read how to fix it and do it myself than pay someone else to come in and screw it up!

find a new furnace guy but this is not a do it yourself kinda thing!! furnaces need testing and the test equipment is not cheap. furnace can look to be running well when it is not, tweeking by eye can burn lots of fuel and soot up the system.

even more important is your health, carbon monoxide is a silent killer!

He's the only one I could find that still does fuel oil in my area, there are VERY few oil furnaces still in use around here. Most are NG and in areas where NG's not availible most are on propane. He didn't use anything besides a multi meter and jumper wires to work on my furnace. I'm not worried about carbon monoxide, the only way that'd be a factor was if the heat exchanger was cracked or the flue was leaking. Plus I have multipul CO alarms around the house.

Ford Major is right, you service man should have used a pump pressure tester too, or he's breaking rule number one. The pressure tester allows him to shut off the oil at the burner and test the safeties (and of course test pump pressure!) If thats the only guy you can get you might be better off with propane!