Have The Oil Furnace Clean And Repaired Before Winter.
When using a furnace which burns oil, you can expect good service for many years. Usually, the furnace functions very well for many years more than the warranty suggests. With good general maintenance, an oil furnace can serve your home for twenty years or more with few, if any, down times.
Considered somewhat safer than gas powered furnaces, oil furnaces have been popular for quite some time. The fuel of an oil fired furnace is a liquefied petroleum product and comes under any number of names. It is commonly used as diesel fuel but is sometimes called fuel oil, bunker oil or furnace oil. One of the most common names for this oil is kerosene. It is safer than gasoline or propane. In fact, if a lighted match is thrown into a can of kerosene, it will probably put out the fire from the match rather than ignite as gasoline would do. Thus, oil burning furnaces are safer by far than gas powered furnaces.
Safety is one of the reasons for the popularity of an oil fired furnace. Many more people buy used oil furnaces than used gas furnaces. It is true that they may not seem as clean as the gas furnaces. Often there is an oily smell associated with using these furnaces. Also, there is sometimes an oily feel on furniture inside a home which heats with an oil furnace. The storage of fuel oil for the furnace is usually done by having an elevated drum near the house so the oil is brought to the furnace by the force of gravity.
Concerning repair of an oil furnace, there are fewer possibilities of failure with them than with gas furnaces. Often, a cheap part may be needed to make the furnace function well. Oil furnace parts are relatively easy to obtain and usually not very expensive. Sometimes, the only part that is needed is a simple filter or new electrode wires. Many times, cleaning of exterior parts of an oil furnace makes the furnace work as well as when it was new. Oil furnace repair is rather inexpensive when compared to repair of more complicated heating systems.
As mentioned above, fuel oil has many names including kerosene. However, there are different grades of fuel oil. Some are much more efficient for heating a home than others. Because of the various grades available, a home owner should be careful to buy only a good quality of fuel oil for his furnace to burn. It is not uncommon for a home owner to find that his furnace has stopped working because there is moisture or sediment in the oil that he bought. In such a situation, the problem is not in his oil fired furnace but in the fuel that he is trying to burn in the furnace.
A lot of home owners decide to have their furnaces modified to burn gas instead of fuel oil. They think that it will be more pleasant and that they will have fewer repair bills if they change to the gas furnace. There are negatives and positives on both sides of the decision to change furnace styles.