Oil Furnace Trouble

[Ironsights]

My brother has an Olsen oil furnace with a Beckett motor in a doublewide mobile home that was jacked up onto a basement 40 years ago. 10 days ago at 3am the chimney pipe was so full of soot it pulled right off the ceiling and filled the house with smoke and soot. Fortunately I was awake at he time; smelled something odd and quickly shut down the furnace. The next day I had to clean up piles of soot alongside the furnace and in the pipe that goes from the ceiling to the furnace. My brother called a guy to check it out but all he did was change the nozzle and said cleaning it was never really worth the money. The chimney has been pouring out black smoke and big chunks of soot ever since.

Should there be this much soot built up in a chimney from a 12 year old furnace? What causes it?

(If I could figure out how to open it up I’d clean it myself.)

 

[AC Power]

Improper combustion is often the reason that exhaust gases are heavy in carbon. Check to ensure you have sufficient oxygen intake to the burners. One way to check this: Look at the main burner flame when furnace ON, if the flame is fluttering yellow with little blue, there is improper combustion. Remember: CO is one molecule carbon and one molecule oxygen, dirty and toxic (deadly). However, if there is enough oxygen introduction to the combustion process, some of those oxygen molecules attach themselves to the CO, become CO2 (Carbon Dioxide). Check your combustion.

 

[Ironsights]

Improper combustion is often the reason that exhaust gases are heavy in carbon. Check to ensure you have sufficient oxygen intake to the burners. One way to check this: Look at the main burner flame when furnace ON, if the flame is fluttering yellow with little blue, there is improper combustion. Remember: CO is one molecule carbon and one molecule oxygen, dirty and toxic (deadly). However, if there is enough oxygen introduction to the combustion process, some of those oxygen molecules attach themselves to the CO, become CO2 (Carbon Dioxide). Check your combustion.

Thx. The sight glass is black so I can’t analyze the flame. What I did was adjust a slider device that apparently changes the fuel/air ratio (like a carb?) and the smoke from the chimney immediatley disappeared. It was a very small adjustment and made a huge difference.

What a mess.
The furnace air intake must have sucked up a lot of that soot and smoke and pumped it all over the house so I‘ve been cleaning the carpets and the floors continuously. And there are big chunks of carbon all over the sundeck and the porch roof too. Even the siding will have to be cleaned.

thx again…Happy New Year.