We're roasting

[bobquasit]

Someone came from the oil company today to give our furnace its annual cleaning. He told Teri that we needed to have our chimney cleaned out professionally. Another expense.

But what's worse is that when I got home, it was nearly 80° upstairs. The thermostat was turned to 63°, but the temperature was much, much higher. It was like walking into a wall of heat as I climbed the stairs. The furnace has been running often (although not continuously), and the upstairs heating ducts are hot even though I turned the thermostat all the way down two hours ago.

I don't know what's happening. I'm soaked in sweat. It's so damned hot that I had to open the windows all over the house, even though it's nearly freezing outside and there's snow on the ground. I'll call the oil company tomorrow. But right now, the furnace seems to be running amok. And I can't sleep with the real possibility that the furnace will overheat in the night and burn the whole house down.

So I just threw the switch and turned off the furnace completely. I suppose it will get cold over the next few hours - I'll close the windows soon against that possibility - but that's better than burning to death in our beds.

Sigh. Why can't anyone do ANYTHING right?

Comments

[unquietsoul5.livejournal.com]

It sounds like your thermostat has gone bad.... or the guy cleaning the system over-rode the controls/shorted them somehow.

Get them back in to take a look at it.... place it as a complaint, so they give you a 'callback' and don't charge you if it's their mistake.

I've had a thermostat go before, but the other way. It was an old one with an actual mercury switch... it got dirty, the contacts corroded, and was no longer making electronic contact so it never turned on in our case.

[unquietsoul5.livejournal.com]

Oil heat requires annual cleanings, both for the unit and the chimney to stay efficient. They need to replace the burner's nozzles and filters each year or they get clogged and you waste oil and produce smoke.

Chimney fires are a serious concern with oil burners, which is why you need to clean them each year (things fall into them, and flammable soot builds up in the chimney).

In my youth (after high school) I worked in the customer service department of an oil company. They weren't computerized, they used an 'addressograph' machine which made little metal plates that were used to make stamp impressions on invoices. It was practically the last one of these machines still in use in New England by any company... I got to make the plates, since I had been the last person ever trained in the Waltham School System on how to use these things (along with keypunch for datacards). I also got to be the extra Dispatch guy on their radio.... Everyone I was working with was a year away from their retirement.