Shop Time w/T.W. Friends

fyi, i was told once that the flame sensors are supposed to be cleaned every year in these new furnaces.

i can't be bothered to read the manual myself because ignorance is bliss.

good reminder to start ordering parts for my springtime projects!

i keep looking for the 'remove grid' button in autocad

 

In my line of work there's no option...

 

my brother had a sno-jet when I was a kid. It was fast!

 

Got about 60 miles in. Seeing as the only really cold days we’ve had were Friday and yesterday there was still a fair amount of running water crossing the trails. I did have this gal jump out in front of me though!

 

I had to clean the flame sensor on the water heater at my last house constantly. I've never cleaned the one in my furnace.

Too bad these are scanned hard copies from 1995.

 

Oil furnaces i cleaned the Cad cell when I put the new nozzle and changed filters every fall.

 

I've yet to change the nozzle and oil filter on my furnace...

 

I understand putting it off -- the parts cost almost $15 and it takes 1/2 an hour after all...

 

Previous owner got it serviced by the oil company (you know where this is going) and put a 1.25 gallon nozzle in it for a small 1200sqft rancher. That's way too much. So, the airband would need to be adjusted and I need to get ahold of one of those gauges so I can reset it with like a .75 nozzle.

 

Get the oldest oil burner guy around to do a full set it up for you -- not so old that he sets it up by eye of course.
My burner man has been at it over 50 years.

Cast iron boilers have a lot of mass to heat up, they only hit their rated efficiency when at full operating temp, the 1.25 nozzle might be in there for a quicker heat up.

 

He still uses the old school Bacharach Fyrite test kit.
Just like an alignment, it isn't the tools - it is all about the man using them.

 

I was gonna have it looked at in the fall, but I needed tires on the truck.

There's a plumbing company 10 minutes from the house that does boilers. Depending on finances I'll have them look at it. Mine is a steel Burnham. I will say after converting the control to a cold start boiler, I don't use near the fuel I used to. Maybe have used a 1/4 tank this winter so far.

 

We have 45 minutes to and hour downtime at best in between sorts. You can clean out as much debris as you can, but this particular machine uses lots of grease for its chains and you would spend 6 hours cleaning it out and still catch it on fire if someone happened to do so...

 

When I got the garage there was a giant oil fired boiler there, just idling in cool weather used 5 gallons a day...
On the positive the bathroom was always comfortably warm and I could make tea with the provided hot water.

 

Not to self. When loading a new CNC machine with coolant, make sure the pump discharge is actually hooked up, before turning on the pump.

made for quite the show and mess spraying off my 12 foot ceiling.

 

We all do it...

On the positive you won't do that ever again...
There is nothing quite like shafting yourself to learn a lesson.


Some decades ago the price of anti-freeze skyrocketed due to a factory fire.
I made myself a nice funnel out of a 2 liter soda bottle that clicked neatly into the radiator fill (old car with a top tank).

So I glug, glug, gluged most of a very expensive gallon of antifreeze into my handy funnel and then heard a spattering sound.

I had left the bottom radiator hose off... I reached down and slapped my hand over the outlet and looked around for the hose.
There it was -- 20 feet away on the porch steps -- not a soul around for about 100 miles it seems...



Some time later...



Bright idea: "Maybe I can quickly catch it with the jug..."
...Which turned out to be taller than the space under the car...




It has been 35 years and I haven't made that mistake again.

 

@tacotoe
Hope things are going OK.

 

Goodnight everyone, sleep well see you here tomorrow

 

Good to know I was not alone in also leaving the bottom radiator hose off.

Even worse get distracted very long ago putting the oil drain plug back in only finger tight.

Dump the new oil in go back to the house. I lucked out seeing the huge oil puddle under the car