ThermoPride OIL Furnace - Oil Smell Diagnose...

About a month ago I called some this company to come out for to service my oil furnace and they ended up asking me to pay $2400 to replace oil pump and chamber or $12-15k for a new efficient system replacement. I ended researching how to do the service myself and was able to replace the oil filter, oil pump screen, nozzle tip and everything is worked out.

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Recently I've been noticing a burnt oil smell through the air vent, which could very well be carbon monoxide?!?. I took the electrodes out and there is indeed oil remains in the chamber. The technician mentioned that my oil pump was faulty because it should pressure should only drop 20% once heat is satisfied and mine was going below. So I already ordered pump.

Meanwhile, I just want to verify if the pump is the culprit also read somewhere it could be the regulator. I bought this pressure gauge (link) and planning on doing a quick test but here is my question:

Where should I connected the Gauge: I see sometimes the gauge is connected to the oil supply line into the element and there is gauge connection on the top of the pump?? What is the purpose of each. My guess is that connecting it to the copper line is to check if there is a leak before the pump?






I will be following steps from a previous post to replace the pump. I am thinking if this problem still exist after replacing the pump, I will do a service call.

 

I've always tested as shown in "A".

Sometime while in the process of replacing the pump, I suggest you pull the burner & measure the "Z" dimension. This is the distance the nozzle face is set back from the end of the burner. On your burner, lay a straight edge across the end cone & use a tape measure to measure from the nozzle to the straight edge. That distance should be 1 1/8". Also inspect the end cone for warpage &/or cracks.

 

Thanks Grady...

I will make a check list for Monday when my pump arrive and is warmer over here.

Another thing is that I happen to speak with a HVAC pro and he even told me to return the pump after hearing my situation. He said the pump might not even be faulty considering the unit I got and the description of the issue. All I need to do is pull the electrodes back out, vacuum clean and wipe down the inside. Also mention to clean up the glass tube?

Well, Yesterday when the smell was stronger I did pull the electrode and wiped the oil in the chamber. It wasn't too bad. Today no one is noticing the smell, I only feel a very light smell burnt oil smell compared to yesterday. I will still follow through just to make sure i am not overlooking anything..

I was working from home yesterday all day and started to feeling drowsy/sleepy so I thought i was high in carbon monoxide...

 

I think you misunderstood "glass tube". What was probably said was "blast tube". Blast tube is a term commonly used in place of the proper name of burner air tube which is the tube into which the electrode & nozzle assemblies slide.

I also presume what you are calling the chamber is actually the air tube assembly. The chamber is the part shown in one of your pictures in which the fire burns.

If you suspect carbon monoxide, you need to get a pro in there pronto. Before calling one in, verify they have CO test equipment.

 

Hi Blizzster, I was wondering if you ever ended up correcting this problem and if so, what was the solution/fix? I am having a similar issue with the same furnace. Thanks!

 

Ruteger,
What is the model number of the furnace, exactly what is the problem you are having, & what, if anything, have you done in an attempt to cure the problem?

 

Err I meant having the same problem with a similar furnace - not the same furnace, it's an older ThermoPride. I'm actually unable to determine the Model # because I can't find it on the furnace and I've looked everywhere, so I think it must have fallen off or been taken off by the previous owner.

I initially started smelling an oily smell about 2 days after I had 100 gallons put in my 1/8 full tank, which I normally put in 100 when it's around 1/4 full, but I was sick on the couch for a week and didn't check it as often as I should and it was terribly cold. Since that time, I've changed the oil filter, air filter, strainer filter, nozzle .75 80A, sanded electrodes with steel wool, and adjusted electrodes to specifications (5/32" gap, 7/16" above, and 1/16" in front of nozzle - they were off by a bit, which is strange since I had the furnace served in October), checked the chimney and it had a lot of soot build up in the base, so I removed a 5 gallon bucket of soot from the base of the chimney, checked up the chimney with a mirror and it is clear, and checked the exhaust pipes and they are clear. I did not clean the blast tube yet. I also seem to be getting a lot of downdraft from the chimney, so I adjusted the barometric damper to be a little tighter and that seems to have cured the oily smell, but that seemed to have caused the burner to periodically stop after a 10 seconds or so of running). Thanks for any help/thoughts you can provide!

 

The model number should be on a plate or sticker in the area of the burner. The only thing I can think of which would cause a burner shut down after only 10 seconds of run time would be either a thermostat or primary control problem. Did you have to do anything to get the burner to re-fire & if so, what?

Soot in the chimney base is not a good sign. The furnace may need to be cleaned.

 

I had to push the reset button 2 more times and it started and ran and everything seemed to be fine, no smell, and it was throwing good heat. And it shut down and restarted a few times (normal cycle) without issue, but then I went out and came home 4 hours later and the furnace had failed to restart again.

It was cleaned and serviced in October. And I'm know I've checked the chimney flue in the past year and am pretty sure that it was soot free. Do you think that amount of soot could build up since October? I've burned roughly 400 gallons of oil since then.

Oh, and the model # is no where to be found on the plate, but there's a square of residue where I believe that information once resided.

 

No way should there be that much soot even with 4000 gallons, let alone 400. Something isn't right. If you can give me the nozzle size, pattern (Probably 'A"), spray angle (probably 80*), & a couple of good pictures of the furnace, I might be able to determine the model number.

 

Maybe I hadn't checked it like I thought I did. My father's thought was that someone must have used the chimney for a woodstove at some point in the past 5 or 6 years.

The nozzle size is .75 80A. Here are a few pics of the furnace.









Let me know if you need better photos. My camera was performing strangely on a couple of the shots.

 

I'm pretty sure that furnace is a OL5-85.
Around the flame observation port (round plate just above the burner), is that red some kind of sealant? If not & the metal is actually glowing, you have big trouble & need service badly.

 

Yes, it's red sealant put on by the technician when it was serviced. Thank you very much for determining the model number for me.

One other thing I forgot to mentioned (this is new to me, so it feels like I've done a lot to it), but the Honeywell relay switch (I think that's what it's called) was making a loud ticking/clicking noise in short bursts noise periodically and you could see sparks inside it. I replaced this during this process and it has not done it since.

Thanks for all the help you are providing. You're a livesaver

 

If you mean the primary control (grey box with the reset button), it certainly should not chatter nor spark. On that model Thermo Pride there was another relay as well. It is a fan center relay used for changing fan speed between heating & cooling. In either case, replacement was the best thing to do.

 

Yes, the primary control box with the red reset button was replaced. Sorry I'm not so good with the terms but I'm getting better as I go along.

Tonight I woke up to a cold house around 330am. Checked the thermostat and the temp had fallen below the set temperature. Went downstairs to find the control box was tripped. Pressed the reset button, the furnace fired for 10 or so seconds and then shut down. Waited 30 seconds and hit the button again and this time the furnace did not fire immediately and took 5 or so seconds to fire and caused a very small backfire noise and a puff of grey smoke to come out of the damper.

I'm thinking that since I adjusted the damper I'm not getting enough or too much air. I would lean towards not enough, since the damper was pretty much in a propped open, almost horizontal state when I made the adjustment to close it up to a more vertical position allowing it to wobble back and forth when drawing air.

The burner I'm using is a Beckett BLL101, Suntec A2VA-7116 oil pump, and as you determined have a Thermo Pride OL5-85 furnace. The air intake between the pump and burner is set to 5. I don't have a draft gauge.

Any ideas?

Edit: Took the burner apart again, changed the nozzle for the heck of it (replaced with a .75 80*NS which from what I read the NS is just a different brand's hollow A), cleaned the electrodes with steel wool, verified the electrodes were the appropriate distances from the nozzle, visually checked the CAD sensor and it seemed clean, bled the furnace - fuel was clean with no bubbles, started it back up. It fired and ran for 10-15 seconds and then shut down. The flame was what seemed like a good yellow color as it has been. Restarted a few times with the same results.

The thermostat I'm using is just a cheap Honeywell 5-2 Day Programmable Thermostat model RTHL2310B with new batteries. I bypassed the thermostat by removing the faceplate, disconnecting the wires from the thermostat and touching them together. The furnace turned on, but shut down within the 10-15 second range.

 

I have a oil fired water heater in my basement that's not in use. I opened it up and switched out the CAD sensors, since they were the exact same model number, but still had the same results.

 

Seems to me your going off on ohms. Is the eye pointed well,and when you switched did you replace the whole thing and the leads? Maybe bad flame ? If I were you I might pull the assembly and spray paint the blast tube silver. Years ago they would fill the bottom part of chimney with sand up to 6 inches below smoke pipe to make better draft if conditions called for it. If you have a down draft you might need a oil solinude. Think they still sell them as a stand alone unit so you don't need whole pump. If you do get solinude get a delay on it shorter then your control. Good luck.

 

I'm not really sure how to determine if the eye is pointed well. It looks to be pointed well, but the slide in bracket it is on seems loose, but I don't see any adjustment to tighten it. I only replaced the eye, but I will change out the entire mechanism and see what I get for results. I wiped the blast tube very clean with a rag, but painting it silver sounds like another step in the process.

The thought of sand 6" below the pipe sounds like about how high the soot was in the chimney before I cleaned it out.

 

Take a old srewdriver and put it on one of the slides and give it a sharp rap,support the transformer though. Don't hit it to hard or it will be tough to go back in.

 

Just replaced the entire eye mechanism with bracket and wires, and tightened it up with a screwdriver as you recommended, which seemed to make it quite tight. Wiped out the chamber some more and it's nice and shiny, but not silver. Fired up the burner and it seemed to run longer than before, but still shut down after 20 seconds or so.

 

Maybe bend the eye down a touch when closed, have someone look at the outside of the chimney at light off.Black smoke,too rich.Sparky flame to lean.Don't change air w/out test equipment. Nozzles can get easily messed up after running low and a fill. Did you clean all the way down head? I use a bent wire cleaner for copper to go thru the hole and get the fireside . Feel with your hand. That shapes the flame and can get carbon up.

 

Bent the eye down when closed and restarted. Same result. My dad showed up in the meantime and said he'd adjusted air before, so he wanted to give it a shot, so I said have at it. He adjusted incrementally down to almost 4 and the furnace is now running smoothly with clean burn out the chimney, BUT it was doing this yesterday during the middle of the day (I'm not sure if the warm sun on the chimney has something to do with possible lightened backdrafts or not).

Any concerns about what we he did to the furnace or other ideas? I really appreciate all the help you guys have given me on this site. I'm recently unemployed and almost lost a finger a few months ago from a wedding ring accident, so I have medical bills up the wazoo. Thank you guys so much.

 

You can do a simple test to determine if the primary is at fault. As soon as the burner fires, install a jumper between the F-F terminals. If the burner still drops out, the primary is the problem. DO NOT leave the jumper on for more than a minute or so.

 

I just replaced the primary on Friday. Do you think it could be bad already?

The furnace ran for 5 hours off and on before it did not start again. I pressed the reset button while adjusting the intake to 3.5 and then moved it back to 4 once it had run for a minute. It has now stopped hand started several times without failing. Is a air intake settings of 4 normal for the furnace?

Another thought came to mind of what might be wrong. The basement faintly smells of exhaust during the past week which made me wonder if I have a failed gasket where the exhaust pipe connects to the furnace. I looked online for how to of how to check this visually but was unable to find instructions. Can you give me instructions on visually checking the connection?

 

According to Beckett's web site, the correct air setting for that furnace is 7 on the shutter & 0 on the bulk band. Those settings are not carved in stone but generally a good place to start. Naturally they won't be right if the rest of the burner is not correct for what we are presuming to be an OL5-85.

The exhaust pipe is welded to the heat exchanger. there is no gasket involved to the best of my recollection.

 

So what attaches the sheet metal exhaust to the heat exchanger? A Clamp? Is there a easy way to peek in there? I tried looking through where it enters the furnace siding but the gap is too narrow to see much of anything.

My bulk band us at 0 and the furnace seems to be running regularly for the past couple of hours. Knock on wood that I don't wake up tonight from the cold.

 

If you look at the picture showing the burner, there is a copper colored pipe sticking out the front panel of the furnace. That pipe is welded to the heat exchanger. The sheet metal elbow simply fits over that copper colored pipe. Sometimes people will seal that joint with high temperature silicone but usually not.
You really need to get a service tech in there who is familiar with Thermo-Pride furnaces. If you have trouble finding one, Thermo-Pride has a dealer locator on thier website. Thermo Pride -
Those furnaces are actually easy to clean properly if one will take the time to do it. There are two cleanout ports behind that grey panel with the wiring diagarm on it.

I noticed a sticker which appears to be a wiring diagram above & right of the burner. The model number might be on there but it could list several.