Gas and Oil Home Heating Furnaces - Fuel Oil Furnace Question

Hello,
I have a couple of questions regarding our furnace. It's a Weil-McClain(sp?) oil fired unit. It uses an internal coil to heat hot water.

Last night, while installing some foam around the hotwater pipes, I noticed a little "door" near the base of the chimney. I opened it up, and it was fully of "gunk". They looked like little whitish brown "chips". Any idea what this is? I can take a picture and post it here.... It's not at ash door for a fireplace. Our fireplace does not have an ashdoor.

Also, whenever the furnice kicks on, you can smell "diesel" outside the house. Whenever we're working in the yard (which isn't too often this time of year!) you can alsways tell when the furnace goes on. What causes this?

Thanks,
Glenn

I took some pics last night, I'll upload them and post here for you folks....

Here's a pic of the clogged area. I removed the stuff tonight. It filled one and almost a half of two 5 gallon buckets!

I was having the same "deisel" smell from my furnace. I think that the problem was that the fuel was not being burned completely. We had the filter changed, replaced the nozzel and vacumed the chamber.
You should change the filter and clean chamber once a year.

Good advice! I should probably call and have the furnace serviced...

Looks like my picture didn't show up. I tried to "attach" it, but it didn't work...

You can probably replace your own furnace filter and nozzles before you ever get the chance to figure out how to attach a picture - the process is needlessly complex and this "IT professional" gave up months ago!

Good luck!

-Chris

LOL! You know, I can see here that it says: "Maximum size: 1 bytes" That's certainly not enough to post a picture! Maybe a line of text, but not a picture!