"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"Carl Byrns" wrote in message
news:xhapj.8002$ds2.4229@trnddc05...
-Carl (don't even ask about the 1949 Fairbanks- Morse oil furnace. I am
the world's leading authority on that alleged heating appliance)

I think we'll move after my son is out of college. I've about had it. My
furnace is an early -'50s Burnham Pacemaker that I had converted from oil
to gas 28 years ago, after my oil delivery company tried to put 350
gallons of oil into my 220 gallon tank, which was 1/4 full at the time,
and the balance wound up on my basement floor.

My big adventure with the 1949 FM occurred when late one Saturday I noticed
the house was getting cold. I went downstairs and tried the usual remedies,
including hitting the reset switch a couple of times. The burner would start
and then stop. After reviewing the wiring diagram, I opened the cover on the
stack switch (for those of you who don't know what a stack switch is, it is
a mechanical thermostat the sits in the exhaust flue. The stack switch has a
bimetal spring that unwinds when heated by the flue gases and closes a
switch to allow the burner to keep running. If the spring does not trip the
switch within 10 seconds, the burner is shut down. It is a safety device in
case of a flameout) and figured out the 'ignition' relay wasn't pulling in
all the way. I figured this out by pushing on the relays (the other one is
the 'motor' relay) with an insulated screwdriver. Ah-Ha! I pushed in the
ignition relay (got a nice buzz from the HV box) and with a second
screwdriver, pushed in the motor relay annnnd all the oil that had been
spraying into the firebox lit off with a bang that shook the house and
loosened up about 60 tons of soot, half of which blew out of the automatic
damper I was standing right in front of. I looked like a coal miner. The
rest of the soot went out of the chimney (too bad it was dark out) and
coated our snow-covered lawn and much of the neighborhood with a fine black
powder. The next day I got up on the roof (to see if the chimney had been
damaged) Looking down at the yard, my house sat in the middle of a black
circle.

I replaced the stack switch and burner with a Beckett.

-Carl