Keep on truckin

It was another big weekend at the abode. I've decided to go on a beautification binge. Even though it will all be replaced, sooner or later, I decided to go around and paint all the trim, with a great $10 bucket of paint from the Restore. It started off with the trim around the top of the flat roof. Some of the flashing was rusting and it just looked like poop. So up I went, laying face down on the roof and hanging over the edge. I'm sure it was quite the sight. Next on the list was the back patio posts. While I was scraping of the old and peeling paint I came to find out that 1 of the posts was no longer attached to anything. Off we went to Home Depot for a bag of concrete to make these great little foundations. The post painting got held up for fear of unsettling the curing concrete, but I did bondo all the edges that had been mangled the next day.

Eric found a guy selling food grade 50 gallon barrels out of his front yard for $10.00 a piece (112th between canyon and vickery in Tacoma). My dreams of a rain barrel for the soon to be garden came a little closer to reality. We grabbed 2, one for a composter and one for a rain barrel. Some day they'll actually get put together. I'm just glad the weather has been holding up to work on some of my outdoor projects.

Inside, Eric has decided to get the old oil furnace up and running. We don't see many of these on the west coast, most people have either natural gas (as this house will some day have) or propane. The first problem was the tank, it wasn't firmly seated and one of the legs had collapsed, a quick shove got it out of the way so we could tackle the next part of the problem, being the oil line. It had a kink in it which got cut out the end of the line got cleaned up with a little sand paper. Until the tank issue gets fixed, we're using a 5 gallon jerry jug of diesel for fuel. The end of the line was carefully bent and dropped down into the jug of diesel. Next it was onto the furnace. Oil furnaces are quite dangerous things, the atomized fuel can easily cause explosions. I would recommend that even the most seasoned diy'er leave this to the pros. Luckily I have an in house pro saving me from spending the $300 that it would cost for the same tuneup.

--Eric--
The first thing I took a look at was the filters. The return air grills(R/A's for those in the trade, the big ones probably in the ceiling or walls for those less familiar) didn't contain any, which needs to be remedied. The furnace its self could also contain filters if the R/A's don't have any (while they can be in either place, they can't be in both, if you have 2 in a row like that the filters restrict the air flow too much, like if you were to wear 2 dust masks and trying to breathe). Realizing there was no filters, I was concerned about the blower and motor having been plugged up. I pulled off the vent flue at the front of the furnace and opened up the blower access hatch. They looked ok so I moved onto the heat exchanger (this is the part that heats the air and separates the combustion chamber and all it's toxic emissions from the air that heats our homes) which has it's own inspection port. It was 1/4 inch thick with soot in spots, this is a big problem which generally indicates the need of a new furnace. We're only going to use it to get through this winter, so I vacuumed it out as well as the clean-out ports on the unit. Next it was onto the burners. The ignitor - transformer assembly which after disconnecting the fuel line and turning the screw flips right open. After opening it up I pulled out the ignitor - burner assembly. The ignitors were burned down and black with soot and the oil nozzle was caked with an oily sooty mess. For those of you with an oil furnace the oil nozzle should be replaced whenever you get it serviced (which should be yearly). At this point we ran off to McLendond Hardware for a new oil nozzle. I replaced that and the ignitors. Once it was all back together and the ignitors were adjusted, I test fired it to no avail. It was getting late so I'll have to get back to it another time and figure out why the darned thing wouldn't fire up.