So everything was fine, and now my oil furnace starts, runs for about
9 seconds with a good yellow flame, and stops.In a while I can press reset and then the same thing happens.
9 seconds is not enough time for the fan to go on, of course. Now it might be even a little shorter.Hellllllllp!
mm wrote the following:
Change the filter lately?
Thermocouple, flame sensor, limit switch,...
first thing to do is make sure everything is clean.
Make? Model?
I would guess that you have an issue with the flame sensor, or the primary control that the flame sensor connects to.
So everything was fine, and now my oil furnace starts, runs for about
9 seconds with a good yellow flame, and stops.In a while I can press reset and then the same thing happens.
9 seconds is not enough time for the fan to go on, of course. Now it might be even a little shorter.Hellllllllp!
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Do you have air in the oil line by chance?
My grandfather's oil furnace had to have a nozzle replaced last winter. They spray funny when not working right and the furnace shuts down for safety reasons.
"A good yellow flame"? No such thing. That's bad, it should be mostly blue with yellow tips. If it's running that poorly, the optical sensor is probably smoked up and shuts itself down. Clean off the sensor then try adjusting the air for a blue flame with yellow tips.
You do realize that this is an oil burner??
Apparently not. Most folks outside the frozen northeast seem to have never heard of oil heat.
LOL.
I will check all things that others, those who don't work Mind Control Central, have suggested. I did wipe off the photocell for the flame sensor, but maybe the connection is bad or something else related.
I also forgot to add that it shudders, shakes, a little when it first starts, something it's never done before.
Thanks all.
A good Yellow flame, is like pouring money down a lady, that wont produce. BLUE is a clean burn.
Oil burns yellow. If there is not enough air, it might burn dark yellow, and if there is too much air, it is iiuc light yellow (or bright yellow?) or even white or near white, though I've never seen white.
Yes. And I've watched pro's adjust them and I've done it myself many times. A yellow flame is going to build up a lot of soot in no time. Actually blue may not be best, try for a white/blue flame with yellow tips. And if you're picky, I'll change "optical sensor" to "photo cell". Yellow is not acceptable, unless you want the same problems the OP has.
Yellow? What are you burning, crude oil or heating oil?
I took (and passed with a perfect grade) an oil burner service course, and there were no blue or remotely blue flames anywhere in and of the burners we worked on, only very bright yellow, which might look white to some folks.
#2 diesel / heating oil I expect. I've never seen an oil flame that could be remotely described as "blue".
Follow-up.
So I turned the oil furnace on 2 hours ago and it's running fine.
The only explanation I can think of I didn't mention before, because i thought it so very very unlikely and would just confuse things.
Last night, I replaced the humidifier with one I had refurbished, but one rubber part I used was old and used and though it looked nice and it was flexible, maybe it wasn't flexible enough anymore.
When I put it in place and turned the water back on, it filled for a while and then overflowed, and ran down the outside of the plenum. But I find it hard to believe any water got anywhere important.
I watched carefully to see where the water went, and a lot landed on the flue-funnel or flue-catcher (I forget its name, connects the large furnace output opening to the smaller flue) and then rolled off that to the floor of the section below, with a little landing on the thermostat wire and the AC wire, and maybe a drop landingon the control box, but none of it seemed to make it to the any opening in the control box cover. I don't think any water landed on the low-voltage connection screws.
But all I can imagine is that it dried out during the day, because I didn't do anything but press reset and wait.
Trivia. Thank you folks for advice on the ball valve for 1/4" tubing. I can't reach the original valve for the humidifier, so I turned off the water to the whole house and disconnected the humidifer tube. NO water dripped out. Yet when I reconnected everything and turned the water on, turning the water off again wouldn't stop the dripping! So I connected the valve to the end of the tubing and that stopped the dripping, even when the water was turned back on.
I'm not an oil burner technician, but I wire about 25 oil and gas boilers each year. I have never seen an oil burner burn any color but yellow. I've never seen "tips", only flaming atomized oil spray.
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That's right. (I've recently read about #1, that it can be used too, but I don't know the difference. Is it purer in some way and more expensive?)
Well I'm no pro, but I've been reading a lot lately and while most pages just talk about what the gauges should show, one went over the colors like I said a couple posts ago. And I've looked in my furnace a lot over the years and it's always yellow!
That's obvious. Call a reputable HVAC contractor. If you don't know any, ask everyone you know. Somebody has a name.
A good Yellow flame, is like pouring money down a lady, that wont produce. BLUE is a clean burn.
Since you've obviously never seen an oil burner, do yourself a favor and google it. Every google search describes an oil burner color as yellow or yellow orange, but none come up as blue
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