fuel oil furnace won't fire

catmechanic

hi guys. i found this site through a google search and am hoping to get some help. i have an old Crane furnace. here's how it all started.

we just moved into this house in april. we are renting and currently trying to buy it. last winter sometime, the owners had a pipe in the basement break, they claim due to "running out of fuel". well, about a month or less after we moved in, we came home after being gone for the weekend to find that the temp was down in the 50's and the furnace was off. i left it that night  and in the morning i went downstairs. i hit a red reset button on the back of the furnace and it kicked on, or so i thought. i went back upstairs and i could hear it didn't sound right. opened the basement door to find smoke. went and dumped the power and just left it. i thought that it was unburned fuel that had ignited.

so this fall, a few weeks ago, i had a buddy of mine come and service it. got it all cleaned and went to turn it on. found out that the water pump motor was shot and thats what was smoking. replaced that and it worked fine until sometime in the middle of the night when it went out.

came to the conclusion that it was the transformer. bought a new one off ebay. installed it and it fired right up. ran for 2 days and now it won't light again. my buddy said that the one he pulled out wasn't very old.

what i am wondering is what is causing these transformers to go out? i don't think that they ran out of fuel. i think that transformer went bad and the furnace quit causing the pipe to freeze and break. the house was empty when that happened.

the landlord won't pay to fix the furnace. she said that it worked fine when she lived there and she isn't putting any money into it. lets see, she still wants rent money but won't fix broken stuff because we are trying to buy it. hmmm.

any help would be appreciated. thanks.

Steamhead

Landlord won't fix the heat?

Not sure what the laws are in your area, but in most larger cities the law requires them to. Call your local housing authority for more specific info.