SUPER CLEAN. Yes it will take paint off if you saok it over night full strength, but I use it 4-1 to clean all my swap meet finds. Never harmed paint or decals. Also used it to clean lots of oily gunky stuff in the garage.
Very sorry for your loss, and can also recomend working with the adjuster. If things are going poorly don't get mad, wait 24hrs and call there boss.
Tim
ALLEGHENY 2-6-6-6: I am so sorry to hear of your loss. After reading all the replies, you have received some good info from many of the guys. Having worked in equipment maintenance within the electronics and semiconductor fields all my life, I can tell you that your equipment "can" be cleaned. The big question is, how much time and money do you want to throw at this problem? Ultrasonic equipment can clean your equipment, and there are various size baths that you can use, you can even rent some of this equipment. Check this out before you make your final decisions.
Now for your furnace; furnaces should be maintained annually, service contracts are a great way to go for most people. As BobK mentioned already, they check the furnace from top to bottom, replace worn parts, change the oil filter, vacuum the chamber, and run efficiency tests, etc. Our state is now passing a bill that will require the added use of bio-fuel mixed with #2 heating oil. I hope someday that it will be 100% bio, then it will only smell like french fries when it backfires.
For the guys in other parts of the country who are not aware of what goes on outside their area, and as some of the guys have also mentioned already, homes in the U.S. and Canada are heated ( and cooled ) via several methods: Electric heat ( quiet, 0 maintenance, 100% efficient, but the most costly to run ), oil fired forced hot water, oil fired hot air, gas fired forced hot water, gas fired hot air, heat pump, solar electric, pellet stove, wood stove, coal stove, etc.
I am on like my fourth different oil furnace. I like them as a back up to a heat pump, and far better than gas or electric furnaces. The one in this house is a back up to the heat pump. I do not understand how what happened to yours happened. Not saying it didn't, because obviously, it did. Did your heat exchanger split a seam or what? Because the home circulating air is supposed to be totally separate from the combustion air circuit in every one I have ever seen or heard of. Otherwise your home would smell like oil all the time.
Only problem I have ever seen, and it was not on mine, was someone put a chimney cap over the flue and messed up the draft a bit, and did not adjust the flue damper to compensate. They got quite a bit of soot back into the house thru the flue damper when the wind was blowing because they did not notice the problem at first.
I had a gas furnace where the PVC flue settled between hangers and trapped condensate, and that sooted up the heat exchanger and the firebox kept tripping on overheat.
I sometimes use a kerosene heater in the house as well. No soot or smell if you get it going strong outside and do not shut if off to refill it. Great when the power goes out. And yes, for all the scaredy cats out there, I know what the safety instructions say, and yes I have a CO monitor. In six different houses, three of which were pretty darned tight, I have never tripped a CO/CO2 alarm. Fantastic when the power goes out for two or three days with an ice storm.
Virginian: An oil fired furnace can cause that sort of accicent quite easily. It is usually caused by wear of key parts or adjustment for ignition. Vaporized oil is not suppose to flow into the furnace until the ignitor fires. This is accomplished via an 11kv transformer causing the spark to jump a precisely set gap between two electrodes. If the gap is set wrong, or wears too wide, or is carbonized, and oil is still spraying into the fire box, you have one good backfire when/if the ignitor re-fires. This causes one big back puff out the seems of the door, and every seam that is not tight.
Many people do not perform ANNUAL maintenance, they wait until things fail, or, until something like this happens, either because they don't know they must perform this maintenance, or, they are trying to save a few bucks. In most cases, it is because people just don't know how furnaces work, and the dangers of not performing annual maintenance.
Mark thanks for all the common sense advice yes your right I need to take deep breaths etc. and have approached it with a clear mind now. To all of you who have replied thanks for the sentiments and advice. To clarify a few things we have oil because natural gas is not available in our area. I could have changed to propane but the cost of propane is astronomical and it just wouldn't be practical. As far as maintenance goes my oil company maintained the furnace regularly and the service tech. that last checked it told me that he was impressed at how well it was running and how clean it was. The cause of the whole disaster was caused by a power surge or spike, which took out the electronic safety control board. The spike also tool out the two computers, which were in the same room. The adjuster told me that surge protectors aren't worth the material they are made of because the spike happens so fast the surge protector and or circuit breaker doesn't even see it to trip the safety. The part of this which really frosts me is that I just had the electrical service in the house changed and the electrician mentioned about a whole house surge protector and that's where it ended. He never asked us if we wanted it or not. Would it have made a difference or not I was told it would and I was told it wouldn't have so it's all water under the bridge right now.
Fortunately I have a good maybe even great insurance company who said they would cover the loss of my trains and or the cleaning 100%. I spoke to the adjuster and expressed my concerns that I didn't want to give up my trains no matter what. He told me he understood and that if I wanted to I could buy back anything they considered a total loss at a percentage of the amount given. Will they pro-rate or give me direct replacement value I will have to ask my adjustor.
I spoke to a very reputable train seller/service yesterday and what the game plan is that I will send him a few engines that are "the worst of the worst" and he will make an ascertain as to A: what to do and how long it will take to clean and service each engine. Hey if they are going to pay for it I would rather have them cleaned and repaired then replaced etc. Tony's trains also advised me to clean the track work and switch machines with acetone. I have gallons of it here at work so I'll give it a try. Last night we tried vacuuming some of the crap off the layout with one of those small computer vacuums. It seemed to do the job but will be extremely labor intensive.
I spoke to the folks at Micro Mark and I ordered an ultrasonic cleaning bath. I know from my experience with firearms that these things clean very well. I was also advised of a mild detergent solution along with a clean water rinse bath and either a low-pressure airline to blow them dry or maybe a very low temp in the oven with the door left open. I was even thinking of just using a high intensity lamp or just plain old air-drying. I think once I devise a system it will be fairly easy. I'm going to get together with those friends who helped me build my layout and we'll have a brain storming session as to how to approach rebuilding scenery etc. Well time to go search the Internet for more cleaning solutions and methods etc.
Thanks again for all your kind thoughts and replies
Driline wrote:I thought oil firing furnaces went away with the mini skirt? We had one in the early 60's and then converted over to heated water. My own homes have been forced air.
Oil fired or hot water or forced air???
Do you walk to work or carry your lunch?
I've had oil fired hot water. They are not mutually exclusive.
Dave
Lackawanna Route of the Phoebe Snow
grayfox1119 wrote: Virginian: An oil fired furnace can cause that sort of accicent quite easily. It is usually caused by wear of key parts or adjustment for ignition. Vaporized oil is not suppose to flow into the furnace until the ignitor fires. This is accomplished via an 11kv transformer causing the spark to jump a precisely set gap between two electrodes. If the gap is set wrong, or wears too wide, or is carbonized, and oil is still spraying into the fire box, you have one good backfire when/if the ignitor re-fires. This causes one big back puff out the seems of the door, and every seam that is not tight.Many people do not perform ANNUAL maintenance, they wait until things fail, or, until something like this happens, either because they don't know they must perform this maintenance, or, they are trying to save a few bucks. In most cases, it is because people just don't know how furnaces work, and the dangers of not performing annual maintenance.
Grayfox, I know all that, but I just couldn't see one backfire causing all that, but now that we have fried electronic controls all is made clear.
Allegheny, get a fused surge protector. They are cheaper, but they only work once, and you can almost never find replacement fuses (they are actually in line fusible links). But, they do work that one time. Saved my computer when lightning hit the phone lines, but I couldn't find more fuses, so I got another type, and POW! the next strike got the computer too.