Hi everyone, hope you guys and gals can help me out here. We just moved into an older house and just found out the oil furnace has a crack in it's baffle. The furnace is a Lincoln MBO-115 model. Is it possible to continue to use the furnace? Can the baffle be fixed? Ultramar, our local oil supplier, is giving us 500 liters of oil and suspending delivery of more until the furnace is replaced. The oil furnace is working very well, the house is warm at all times, there's no exhaust coming up the heat vents. They want $3500 for a brand new furnace and I can't afford that now. We're quite suspicious because the salesman did mention off-topic that Ultramar management are quite unhappy at the amount of furnace they sell and the salesmen need to sell more of them.
When the "warm and fuzzy is gone, it's time to move on." We cant see the crack from here whether its real or not. A second and third opinion can. Lets get this straight. Your oil company is giving you 500 liters of oil (dangling the carrot in front of your nose) and then suspending delivery of more (pulling the carrot away) until you replace your furnace?? Are the bricks starting to fall on your head yet? Do you have a working, new/newer carbon monoxide detector in your home? Turn your furnace down low or off, buy some plug in electric heater or some other source of heat to buy you some time and get another couple opinions and estimates. If and when it turns out your oil company is not being truthful, expose them to everyone you can. If they were correct, thank them and consider your new oil furnace purchase from them. Keep in mind that heat pumps, geothermals and other options are available. Bubba
THe short answer is to call another contractor for a second opinion.... *DO NOT* tell them what you have posted here.... just call them to check and service your furnace. If there IS a crack, make them show it to you. You will not have much choice but to replace the furnace. If there *ISN"T* a crack, then you have a couple of choices... either take the oil company to task for it, or change oil providers.
Thank you both for your replies, they were very helpful. I got an independent oil furnace tech coming in the morning to check the furnace out. I won't tell him what Ultramar said, I wanna have 2 unbiased opinions on how to proceed. So far the furnace is working well, the CO detector hasn't gone off. I'm still a noob when it comes to oil furnaces, what does the baffle do exactly?
Ok. Thats a good start. Now keep one more item in mind. If and when a "tune-em-up" comes into play (and it should,..each and every year) make sure you dont just get a new nozzle, oil filter and an "eyeball" of the flame. A proper tune up consists of an analysis of the flue gases with a digital combustion efficiency meter, smoke test and draft. That info then has to be deciphered by a tech that knows what he just did. Anything less is a total waste of money. Bubba
the baffle is the metal parts that seperate the combustion air which can contain CO and other bad stuff from the heated air that is distributed in your home (assumming you have a hot air system). It is supposed to allow the heat to exchange (heat exchanger) but not the air itself...
So a crack in the baffle can be a very bad thing if it is real because it can allow CO into the distributed air in your home...
Gee. We'd have never guessed. Oh, and by the way. Your answer is wrong, wrong, wrong. A baffle is exactly what it says. Use a dictionary if you're still clueless. You're confusing it with a heat exchanger or a pipe@booster ........I'm really not sure which. Bubba
I would like to know how this turned out. My friend just bought a house with a 1998 Lincoln furnace with a cracked baffle "apparently". I think the advice to get another opinion is sound. Funny that Ultramar is the same servicing company. What about converting to gas at this point. Can't you sell the oil back?
Did they SHOW you the 'crack' ? Or did they say 'Well, it's there but you can't see it, but we can' ?
Many moons ago, before I got into the HVAC trade, the heat went out one night. I called my regular fuel supplier for service.
My home fuel supplier's 'service tech' ( who happened to also be the owner's son ) told me 'Your furnace's heat exchanger has a crack in it'. I said 'Show me'. He said 'Well, you can't see it, but we can'.
They also basically 'condemned' just about every other component of the system, on the basis of 'it's about to go bad, we can tell'. Thermostat, burner, pump, fan, flue - just about every part was 'about to go bad'.
And, funny, enough, he could arrange to have a whole new unit put in the very next day, and arrange easy monthly payments and instnat financing 'because I was such a good customer'.
So, I called a non-fuel-selling service company, and had them come out that same night. The guy came out, I told him 'You're here to give me a second opinion, after you tell me what you see, I'll tell you what the other guy said'.
The guy went through the system, found a cracked electrode ceramic insulator. He had one on his truck for $ 12. He put it in, adjusted the unit, and said 'that's it, this unit is fine, and it's working great now'. Total bill - $ 67 including after-hours call-out and the part ( gives you an idea how many years ago this was ! ).
I told him what the other guy had said, and he told me 'No, I checked that, it's fine' on every item.
Some time not too long after, I got into the HVAC trade as a service tech. Spent 15 years in it. And during the remaining years (
5 + ) I had that furnace, I did my own maintenance. I'm one of those guys who kept things like spare fuel filters and nozzles on hand. Every year I inspected it. Pulled the burner, the fuel filter canister, inspected everything with a flashlight and an inspection mirror, etc. Like it was my very own furnace, in my very own house. Because it was.
Never had to replace one single thing in it. It ran PERFECTLY.
I called the fuel supplier the next day, got Daddy on the phone, and told him his son was a thief, and he could take that service ticket and shove it up his ass. And that he had just lost a fuel customer.
SO - GET A SECOND OPINION ! From someone who doesn't sell fuel !
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