I bought a home one year ago that has the original oil burning, forced hot water heating system from 1964. I have two heating zones. When I purchased the home, the system was inspected by the oil company which provides the oil contract; they advised me that although old, they had been servicing this residence for several years without any trouble. The system ran without incident all last winter. This summer, I had it cleaned, as instructed. However, the service technician that cleaned the unit was all "gloom & doom" about how it was going to fail on me in the middle of the night and I had to buy a new unit. Simply put, I felt like I was getting a hard-sell. I turned up my thermostat at the beginning of November, and occasionally (as in every few days or so) I will notice the house is cold. The thermostat indicates several degrees below the set temperature. The temperature gauge on the boiler is well below normal range. I press the reset button and the unit fires. I notice for a brief moment a stronger fuel odor than normal, but this quickly dissipates. Typically, however, I need to wait a few seconds as the burner will stop within 30 seconds of resetting. I wait about another 30 seconds and reset it again. This time, it will fire and keep running. It will work fine for several more days then the cycle repeats. My father has an identical type unit and suggested it might be the control box (in which the reset button is housed). My online research indicates a few other possible culprits. I'd like any advice you can give before I call Mr. Gloom & Doom back to service this unit, as I am certain he will have an I-told-you-so attitude, although I'm suspicious he did something either wrong or on purpose to cause me to consider buying a new furnace. I will add, the company for whom he works is highly regarded in the community and the owner, who inspected the furnace when I bought the home, is not like this repairman. Suggestions and recommendations are appreciated. Thanks!

We've had some boiler issues for awhile now. We have oil heat, baseboards in house. First we we're getting hardly any heat, and figured out that the boiler was hooked up wrong. We fixed that and we are getting more heat, but not as much as I think we should be getting. I've also started timing the boiler and it comes on for 5 minutes and then shuts off for 5 minutes, 24 hours a day. Is that right? Seems like just when we're starting to get some heat it shuts off. We had a plumber in here for another problem that told us he thought it could be the pipes running from the boiler - they are only 3/4 inch and he said they should be 1 1/4. Their quote to fix the pipes was $2,200. Very confused and frustrated, and don't want to keep throwing money at things "hoping" they are the problem. Any thoughts or advice?