Did I Say It Was Cold.... Bad Christmas Evening

 So, everything went fine before Christmas as well as Christmas Eve when we had our family get-together. Christmas day was also fine until about 7:00 P.M, (or later) that evening. I thought it was getting a little cool in the house so I looked at the temp which was down to 68 Deg. F. Seems the furnace quit working again. :-(

First thing I did was to bled the line thinking that maybe there was some air was trapped in the line that reached the pump. While bleeding the line all I got was air and spurts of fuel. My next thought was maybe the filter either clogged or froze again. So I go out in the cold (about 20 Deg. F.) removed the filter and it looked fine, not frozen and no sludge. I was hoping the pump didn't get messed up from the first time.

Ok, so I'm not getting fuel from the tank to the furnace, maybe the line is froze? So I go out and get the compressor, brought it in the house, and plugged it in until it shut off. I also disconnected the fuel line from the fuel tank and the furnace then held the nozzle on the line inside the house and tried blowing 150 psi of air through it, nothing, the line was clogged from being frozen.

Now what? The problem is, is that the line runs under the house to the basement, a place you can't even crawl under. At this point I pretty much did everything I could do being nothing was even open. We was lucky to have a gas stove in the living room for supplemental heat. Of course it's only to heat the living room and any heat from it only transfer from room to room by the movement of the air.

So I turned on the water in the bathroom and kitchen hoping none of the pipes wouldn't freeze. The next morning nothing had frozen through the night even though the temp got down to 16 Deg. F. In the kitchen the temp was 65 Deg. F., and the further you went from the kitchen you could feel these rooms were even colder.

Ok, we made it through the night without the water pipes or us freezing, so what to do now? I hated to think of pulling the fuel line out from under the house and worse yet, I hated to shell out $$ for a new line, being copper line isn't cheap.

Then I got an idea! Why not hook a hose up the the water heater and try spraying on the line going under the house? There in only a foot or less of space where the line goes under the house so you can't get under there. I went out to get a hose out of the one shed but gave that idea up real quick. The two hoses in the shed are heavy duty contractor hoses and they were stiff as a board! So we went to Lowes and bought a new cheap one (50 foot). 

After hooking the hose up to the water heater and running it way over to were the tank is (the 50 foot hose just made it), I sprayed hot water under the house where I figured the hose might be. I then went back in the house and tried blowing compressed air through the line again, this time it worked! Just to be sure I got down and blew through the line just to be sure.

My only concern then was hoping the copper line didn't split were it was frozen. After hooking the line back up to the furnace and to the filter on the tank, I tried bleeding the line again. After the first try fuel was coming through the line and I didn't see any air bubbles from maybe a split line. From that point on the furnace has been working fine.

Two places were the water and or sludge probably came from, either the new (used) tank that was sitting outside, our from our old tank when we pumped the fuel from the old tank into the new tank. The old tank has been out there for about 30+ years, so it's hard to tell how much crap might have been in it.

When we switched tanks I did notice something that kind of concerned me. The shut off valve on the old tank was for an inside tank which is made that if a fire would happen, there is plastic inside that causes the valve to automatically shut off. I wanted to keep that valve because if I remember right, it to wasn't cheap.

Knowing that the tank was empty being we tilted the tank up to drain everything out of the valve, I then decided to unscrew the valve from the tank. Oh! What the hell!!! When I unscrewed the valve from the tank fuel was running everywhere! I grabbed a large can and caught most of it which was probably about two gallon or more. When I looked at the valve, the opening on it was almost clogged shut from I guess built up fuel from the wax in it?

In any case I don't think we would have made it through this winter without problems being the opening in the valve was built up with so much stuff, it was almost completely closed. Anyways... the new tank has a stop valve on it and since that night things have been fine.... so far.