Well, its been another long week and clearly I have yet to fully grasp everything there is to know about oil boilers. To be honest, I grew up in the country with a forced air system that ran on natural gas supplied from the street. I never had to think about where the heating supply came from, it was just always there. On Thursday I was cleaning up the cellar when I leaned over to touch the heating pipes as I was about to leave and realized they were cold. It seemed odd because the pump for the boiler was still running. When I went to check the boiler there was no fire. I then went to check the tank and much to my surprise I had realized that we ran out of heating oil…
Due to the extreme cold this last few weeks we blew through 175 gallons of No. 2 heating oil in less than two weeks and eviscerated about $850 in heating costs. Ugh. In addition to that fact, I found myself once again trapped in our boiler room at 2 AM with nothing but the sound of the water pump to keep me company. We called our typically oil supplier, but the office had closed at 5:00 PM. Ugh…
The stress then set in realizing that the framing contractors progress would slow considerably if we asked them to work in the freezing cold and the idea of pipes freezing and busting during the night was too much to bear. Skaggs Walsh to the rescue. Once again, it is amazing what can be supplied 24 hours a day in NYC. Within 3 hours they delivered another 250 gallons of No. 2 heating oil and we were back in business, or were we…
Because the tank had run completely out, the pump needed to be primed and I had no idea how to prime an oil boiler… Well, a few hours later and some random youtube videos and we were back in business.
Can’t wait to convert this thing to gas…