Heating

Ok I will admit it.  I have been spoiled since I have had my own place(s) with either an electric heater or "city fed" propane heat.  Recently I moved back to my old town.  I have a fuel oil / kerosene burner now with a 250 gallon tank on the outside.

Before I get into the whole reason for the post, let me just tell everyone out there that it seems to me that Kerosene and Fuel Oil are one in the same.  Only difference is the K number.  Fuel oil has multiple K numbers and is usually 2 while Kerosene is K1.  This equates to basically $0.20/gal difference in price.  I purchased K1 not knowing the difference.  I come to find out that K1 burns much cleaner so I don't feel so taken advantage of as much as I did when I first found out.

When I moved in, the fuel tank was bone dry.  The fuel gauge on the tank was below empty.  Now to all you folks out there, I do not have perfect credit (I have some judgements against me that are a few years old) so I was not qualified for a budget plan.  This kind of defeats a budget plan if you ask me.  They were created for people who can not afford a $700 fuel bill at once.  So I ended up being a pre-pay customer with a minimum delivery of 100 gallons.  Luckily I bought this before oil went above $85/barrel so I got it at a "discount" of $2.89/gal.  For those not smart at math, my 100 gallon fill up cost $289.

I have no idea how long 100 gallons will last me.  Nobody here talks about fuel usage etc.  I figured that 100 gallons would last me a month at minimum especially considering the nice spring like days we are having right now in Hagerstown.

After several cold cold cold mornings (just like camping lol), the fuel was finally delivered on this past Friday.  Being the careful person I am, I tried to fire up the furnace.  No luck.  It came on for 5 seconds and shut off.  Wee.  So I remembered reading something about bleeding the lines when I signed my lease.  They wanted to charge me $50 to come out and bleed the fuel lines because "I allowed the fuel tank to get below 20 gallons".  Well no amount of explaining the fact I just moved in settled the argument so I said forget it I'll just freeze.

This morning I decided to "Man Up" after waking to another cold morning.  I figured if I can write computer software, I could bleed the fuel lines myself.  After some googling I found This HOW-To.  It explained it in simple terms even a non-programmer can understand, cause that is the point of wikiHow right?  Anyways, I rumaged thru my toolbox trying to find the right size wrench.  Yup, all out of wrenchs, apparently they were "lost" in my move last month.  So I broke out my ratchet set.  The ratchet BARELY covered the hex nut to open the bleeder valve.  I bled the line according to directions on the wiki and saw a flame come on.   At this point I was feeling quite proud so I tightened the bleeder and took the pan of oil I now had to the bathroom off the floor so the kitties would not think it was water.   Before I even made it to the bathroom, the furnace shut off.  Somewhere in my mind I could hear someone laughing.. or so it seemed that way.  So I swallowed the pride I had a few seconds ago and went back.  I reset the system and it did not fire.   At this point I was thinking "crap I got the wrong oil"...

After thinking about my potential screw up, I decided to bleed the line again.  Figured if it worked once, it surely has to work again.  So I put my little pan down and loosened the bleeder valve.  Reset the furnace and it started spitting foamy oil (like it still had air in the line).  So I just sat there with my ratchet waiting for the fuel to stop being foamy.  My pan was getting close to fuel then all of a sudden, the fuel changed from yellow to pink.  It dawned on me at that point that the previous tennants had fuel oil and I had kerosene.  The fire from the electric fired pilot kicked in and I had a solid stream of pink.  I closed the bleeder valve and the furnace is still running as I type this.  :)

I guess I can add fuel oil furnace bleeder to my resume.

-SJ

Originally posted on My Homepage