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Anderson Ultra 80 Lowboy Oil Furnace: Heat exchanger cleaning and seasonal tune

Anderson Ultra 80 Lowboy Oil Furnace: Heat exchanger cleaning and seasonal tune


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Old 11-05-11, 06:53 AM
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Question Anderson Ultra 80 Lowboy Oil Furnace: Heat exchanger cleaning and seasonal tune

Hi all,

First time here and all.

Is cleaning a Anderson ultra 80 lowboy heat exchanger as easy as the 2 page "sales guide" show's where you sweep the 2 chambers with a stainless steel bottle brush? It seems WAY too simplistic to me and all. I have replaced the furnace oil and air filters, the nozzle, and set the electrode gap with the beckett T 501 gauge so I think all that is good to go. The furnace ran excellent last two heating seasons and didnt have anyone service it since fall of 2009. The 3 local technicians I checked into for having them do the work are 2-3 weeks behind so I did all the above work this year as I was having heating problems. Now I just wonder about the heat exchanger and my efficiency with it not being cleaned in over two years now. Match test and all that come out excellent and my overfire draft is correct at about -.02 inches. Thanks for any assistance you can provide.
 
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Old 11-05-11, 04:57 PM
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Did you also change the screen in the pump? If not you should, or at least check it. My policy is: If there is anything on the screen, it gets changed. I'm not familiar with the Anderson furnaces but the fact it is labeled "ultra 80" leads me to believe it is the same as an Armstrong, Ducane, or Lennox. The cleanouts are shown on page 7 of this file and are located about 2/3 of the way between the burner & flue collar. http://www.lennox.com/pdfs/brochures...il_Furnace.pdf
To clean the heat exchanger you would need a long flexible handled brush & a vacuum cleaner with its hose adapted down to take a piece of cheap (fairly stiff) garden hose about 5-6' long. Remove the caps, brush out the heat exchanger, & fish the hose around the heat exchanger via each cleanout to remove any soot, rust, or scale then replace the caps.
 
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Old 11-06-11, 03:50 PM
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Post clean out

Wow,

cleaned out the exchanger with a 1.5" x 48 inch long SS tube brush and I got what seems like alot of soot and rust, etc out of the exchanger and into the vac. I used the garden hose chunk and also some stiff PVC 3/8" tubing and together they were able to suck up 2 5 gallon shop vacs worth of clean outs. I'm not saying they were full but to where there was no longer any suction on the vac. nice part about the pvc tubing is you could see the soot travel thru the inside to the vac. Anyways, that is done and already I notice alot more immediate heat upstairs right now then I have in the past 1-2 seasons. I also checked and we have the correct overfire draft but I tweaked the airflow slightly so i got rid of what to me was a overly yellow flame. The flame now has more of a blast furnace orange glow and flame versus a yellowish one with flame that wasnt as concentrated. I know NOX or 02 testing is the suggested check of burn efficiency but less having equiptment to do one t is there other ways to check the burn?

And for the record, it is a Armstrong Oil Furnace, not a anderson I got my names crossed, I think anderson was a furnace company i had called.

Thanks again
 

Last edited by Ravinmad; 11-06-11 at 04:15 PM. Reason: corrected brand name of furnace
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Old 11-06-11, 04:16 PM
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If you want to routinely do your own maintenance, I suggest you pick up a used combustion test kit. They are often availabe on e-bay. At a very minimum you need to do smoke, draft, & CO[SUB]2[/SUB] (or O[SUB]2[/SUB]).
 
 

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