Our furnace tried to kill us again

So we've been relatively lucky so far with unforseen house "issues" since we've moved in, but the big exception has been the furnace. Earlier in the fall we discovered that it was trying to suffocate us by not being connected to the chimney. The vent pipe had been popped out and we didn't notice-not to mention the pipe being held together, literally, with tape and wire (thanks for finding that Dad!)

Things have been pretty quiet for the past few weeks, though, so we thought things were going pretty good. Then came Sunday morning-turns out it was just biding its time.

I got up to let the dog out and noticed that the house was awfully cold, so I checked the thermostat and realized that the furnace wasn't running. I ran downstairs and checked the fuel tank (which said we still had an eighth of a tank) and the burner itself. The reset button had popped, so I hit that once and nothing happened. Normally this wouldn't be a huge deal, except we were having all the students over for an end of year dinner party that evening, so having a heated house seemed like a high priority.

I called the emergency contact number and talked to a really nice service guy who walked me through checking a bunch of things (including hitting the reset button again-this will have significance later) and suggested that our fuel gauge might have been stuck, so we probably ran dry without knowing it and we should get some diesel fuel to tide us over to Monday when we could get a fuel shipment. So I ran out to Tractor Supply, got a couple diesel containers and proceeded to top of the tank (managing to only spill a bit on myself). We let everything settle and then tried to fire things up again. Nothing.

So I did some internet repair research and found out how to bleed the fuel line (thanks wikihow). I managed to do that pretty successfully (only a little bit of spillage, quickly cleaned up with baby powder and cat litter) and figured we were in the clear. Ha.

Unfortunately, the furnace still wouldn't light (even with another cycle of the reset button), so I called the furnace people again, they walked me through bleeding the line again (still nothing but another round of the reset button), so they kindly said they'd send somebody out. Of course by this time it was almost 1 and the students were coming at 3:30.

The furnace man actually got there pretty soon and set to taking things apart. Pretty quickly he discovered that fuel woes weren't even close to being the main problem with the furnace. The igniter was shot, as well as the transformer that provides the spark. Fortunately he happened to have all the parts he needed on the truck, so after a relative minimum of fussing, all the parts were back in place. We had a little trouble when the upstairs thermostat stopped responding and then kicked on unexpectedly while the fuel pump was engaged (the upshot being that is was like hitting the reset button two or three times-are you keeping count? Good-we're almost there).

So at this point Steph came home with the pup (they'd gone to the dog park to tire Shasta out before the party). I came out into the backyard while the repairman finished up. We were chatting and then suddenly Steph's eyes went wide at almost exactly the same time that every smoke detector in the house started going off. I turned around and we saw a giant plume of black smoke coming out of our chimney with even more visible through the windows in the rest of the house. The furnace guy came...well, "staggering" is too strong a word, but it was close, out of the basement door coughing in a cloud of smoke, and let us know that the furnace was most definitely working now.

So what happened? Remember all those "reset button" pushes? Everytime you do that, unless there actually isn't any fuel, a primer stream of oil gets pumped into the combustion chamber. Without any spark, our furnace had accumulated quite the prime, all of which went up at once when the furnace finally lit, hence the smokestack effect. Needless to say, this wasn't exactly what we were expecting less than an hour before house guests, but with fans, a ton of candles, incense, and an aggressively mulled cider pot on the stove we managed to clear out the diesel fumes and smoke in time for everyone to arrive, and tonight we have a pleasantly purring furnace, a full oil tank and a deep and abiding respect for the reset button.