Your Oil Furnace |
| YOUR OIL FURNACE: Keep It Running Efficiently In the past, the owner of an oil heating system had no direct way of monitoring the performance of the burner. Consequently, the owner didn’t know when maintenance or a tune-up was required. A recent State report* recommends that oil heating systems be owner-monitored by purchasing a bimetallic thermometer with a temperature range of 150°F - 750°F (see note). The thermometer is used to measure the temperature of the exhaust in the Almost any change in the performance of a heating unit will result in a change in stack temperature. The efficiency decreases no matter if the stack temperature rises or falls from the tune-up value, although a higher temperature is much more common than a lower one. A homeowner simply inserts a thermometer into the stack and checks the temperature at regular intervals.Checking every two months is recommended. Asmall hole is usually present in the stack of most burners which have been tuned, and is a handyplace forinsertingthethermometer.The hole is made by a furnace repair person during an initial burner tune-up to enable measurements to be taken and exhaust gas samples to be extracted. Compare the measured stack temperature to the temperature of the stack recorded at the time of a tune-up. This enables the homeowner to see if the system’s efficiency is dropping. A rule of thumb is that a change of 40°F represents a drop in efficiency of 1%. Using this information, the homeowner can decide when a burner needs to be tuned. Generally, a change of 80°F to 100°F from the last tune-up is an indication of need for another tune-up. In the past, a record of the stack temperature was usually not given to the homeowner. This made it impossible to evaluate the rate of degradation of burner performance. Below is a recording chart to help in keeping track of furnace stack temperature changes. Compare your measurements with the stack temperature entered on the sticker at the time of the most recent tune-up. When the change is more than 80°F, call for a tune-up. Note. To make a temperature measurement, you will need a thermometer with a range of 150°F to 750°F. A bimetallic thermometer is constructedoftwometalsandisrecommended for its durability. It typically costs $65 (2006/07 price). Presently the best supplier is Brooklyn Thermometer Company, Inc., 90 Verdi Street, Farmingdale, NY 11735, phone (800) 241-6316, fax (631) 694-6329. The 2006 thermometer catalog number is 5236. Call the company for the latest information. |
Author Richard Seifert
