First let me apologize if this has been covered I searched and could
not firnd a similar post.


I have an oil furnace with an indirect water heater attached. My water

heater recently went bad and I called a plumber to replace it, and
while he was there tuneup my furnace. The next morning I had no heat,
the plumber was away and did not have an emergency contact, so after
six hours of waiting for a call-back I called my oil company to service

the furnace. The tech determined no spark and a bad ignotor. After
replacing the ignitor still no spark, bad relay? After replacing the
relay everything worked.


I have two questions. 1. Could something the original plumber have
done have caused the bad relay / ignitor. I know nothing he did is
directly related to the relay but has anyone else ever seen anything
like this?


2. Who is responsible? The original plumber, or me, or is it a shared

responsibility?

First off, boilers heat water and furnaces heat air. It is entirely possible
that while the plumber was tuning the burner, something came loose on the
primary relay as there are a pile of wires spliced in the relay box, however
the relay itself is usually a self contained sealed box. If the "tech" had
no high voltage spark, he should have worked backwards to determine why. I'm
not inferring he didn't do this. Your post could be interpreted as the tech
was replacing parts until he found the correct one, but it's entirely
possible that several things were just worn out.


"John Jones" wrote in message
ups.com...
First let me apologize if this has been covered I searched and could
not firnd a similar post.


I have an oil furnace with an indirect water heater attached. My water

heater recently went bad and I called a plumber to replace it, and
while he was there tuneup my furnace. The next morning I had no heat,
the plumber was away and did not have an emergency contact, so after
six hours of waiting for a call-back I called my oil company to service

the furnace. The tech determined no spark and a bad ignotor. After
replacing the ignitor still no spark, bad relay? After replacing the
relay everything worked.


I have two questions. 1. Could something the original plumber have
done have caused the bad relay / ignitor. I know nothing he did is
directly related to the relay but has anyone else ever seen anything
like this?


2. Who is responsible? The original plumber, or me, or is it a shared

responsibility?

you were faced with a repair problem and you pursued it to make your
home whole again.
your responsibility in the future might be to ask for the old parts so
you can test them to put your mind at ease.
perhaps you may feel that the price you paid for service calls could
have been less expensively overcome. in the case of loss of primary
heat, the kitchen stove may provide temporary warmth when shopping
around for a repairman.
but it's difficult to justify having two working water heaters with the
second just standing by awaiting breakdown of the first.
if you are happy read no further.

if you need to accept the blame,
the contributing factors to failure might be damp environment or
electrical surges.
expecting relays and parts to last forever is wishful thinking.

i was sad when the water main gate valve failed closed during a faucet
repair upstairs. $150 worth of a good plumber and a new ball valve
later i found that my original gate valve i had installed personally
had lasted only 25 years.