The number of heating oil companies that deliver in Oregon and Washington has dropped in recent years. With that, many longtime and loyal heating oil users have seen their preferred heating oil company and driver go away. Due to that change the new larger roll up heating oil companies are not as responsive as your old smaller company. Star Oilco has been keeping homes in the Portland area warm since 1936 and we want to be there for you. We are locally owned, veteran-owned, and are multi-generation family owned and operated.
If you are out of oil, please let us know and we will make a special effort to prioritize you even if you have never bought heating oil from us before.
We provide the following instructions as a best practice. We do not recommend inexperienced and untrained home owners putting tools on their furnace for any reason.
IF YOUR FURNACE DOES NOT START AFTER A FIRST ATTEMPT PLEASE SEEK A PROFESSIONAL HVAC TECHNICIAN FOR HELP.
When do you run out of heating oil? It’s always when winter seems to be at it’s coldest. It also doesn’t help that after you run out and finally get a delivery of heating oil your furnace doesn’t want to start. The cause of this can be many things. From air in your fuel line to a clogged nozzle on your heating oil furnace. Sometimes it is a simple home owner fix. Other times it will take a professional HVAC technician with experience in oil heat (natural gas and oil furnaces are very different things).
If your furnace runs out of oil, we recommend you lower your thermostat only until after you receive your delivery of oil.
After receiving your oil delivery and making sure the tank has settled for a few minutes, turn the thermostat back up to the desired temperature.
Go
to your oil furnace and look at the burner, which probably looks like what is shown. To the right in the picture is a little red button. The red button can look different dependent on your model of furnace and might also look like the several options below.
Push the red button once. Again, only push this button once. After pushing this button, your furnace will attempt to fire up and move fuel. If your furnace begins to start, but then shuts off again DO NOT push the button again. If you push the button three times your furnace will usually go into a lock out safety procedure to protect you and your furnace.
If your furnace does not start after pushing this button once, the most likely cause is air in your fuel lines. When you ran out of oil your fuel pump probably pulled air which is trapped in the lines. Your pump most likely needs air to be purged from the lines and the pump to be primed in order for you to have heat again. This is an easy procedure but should only be done by a trained professional. If you call a skilled oil HVAC technician out to your home, they will also tune up your furnace as well with this procedure.
If you are curious about how this process works, you can find more on You Tube or at Wikihow. For more on what a trained professional would do in the oil priming process is described by Wikihow.