Gas and Oil Home Heating Furnaces - Is my furnace worth putting any money into it?

I've been living in my house now for 4 years and have been told by neighbors that the guy who lived here before did lots of things on his own with the help of his friends and would not get the required inspections for the work being done. This is very eveident over the past 4 years as I have learned the hard way, that when you buy a house based on the initial looks, even though it was built in 1840 and appeared to be well taken care of, it is most likey to good to be true. I have had numerous contractors, who work for me, look at things and make comments like, "Whoever did this should be banned from doing it ever again" or " I would definitely check out the other work that has been done, just to be safe".:wall:

Now comes the furnace. Oil, base board heat and hot water. Energy Kinetics, system 2000, serial # 96062599. It appears the previous owner installed this too, with the help of some friends, based on the service man's recolection, as he was called to get the system running for the previous owner, when he and his friends could not get it to work properly. He, the serviceman was kind enough to leave his business stiker on the cabinet for me to call when it shut down the other day, in the middle of the night, at about 2 degrees (F). Needless to say, he did get it running after about an hour of cleaning and replacement parts and the house temp getting down to 51.

One thing I asked him not to replace, due to the availability and cost, was the system manager board. He did install a temp board so the system would operate, but made me sign a paper not holding him responsible for any damage or future problems. How critical is this board for both safety and long term use?

This leads me to the ultimate question of; Is this system worth investing into? I was told the zones are not set up properly in both area and numbers (There are only 3 zones and should be 4 or 5). The house is roughly 3000+ SF with 3 floors up and 2 separate basements, one for the oil tank and heaters and the other which is used for the children to play.

Any advice would be worthy given I really don't know of anyone who is in this line of work.:cool:

Thanks and have a great day!

I'd pay your repairman to come out and inspect the system and decide what needs to be done to repair the system so that it works safely and efficiently. Perhaps he can give you a bid on what needs to be done, and you should get things specific enough so that you can shop it around to other contractors if you wish.

Most of the time, hack jobs can be repaired. A lot of repairmen don't like working on them because of the risk of some obscure issue creating a hazard that they didn't see. I was one of those, and if the hack job was too bad, I'd wash my hands of it.

If I thought it was retrievable, I might be willing to do it.

It sounds like the only safety issue he thought critical was the system manager board.

More zones might be nice, but are not a safety issue. You've lived in the house four years--- is it heated adequately? If so, the zones you have are probably adequate, if not ideal.

Anyway, that's the way I'd be looking at it.

One thing I asked him not to replace, due to the availability and cost, was the system manager board. He did install a temp board so the system would operate, but made me sign a paper not holding him responsible for any damage or future problems. How critical is this board for both safety and long term use?



We live in a litigious society today. I do not blame him. However, not always does signing an agreement abscond a person of liabilty. Sounds strange, but that can be the case.

As long as the replacement control is fairly capable of replicating original boiler for prepurge with combustion blower and that the oil fires off as it should and the stat shuts it off as it should, I can't see how the control would cause any problem. Unless your particular unit has safety equipment on it that somehow his replacement control bypasses.

An area of concern is in how the oil drafts and combusts and conditions with the chimney system, so that there is less likely of issues with say chimney fire.

Since you do not say that the service person said the installation (in regard to how it drafts, combusts and discharges the burned oil) - was done wrong, that is all I can offer, regarding your question.

You may want to repost this thread in the boilers forum just above, for more professional (moderator) opinions.