I ran out of oil. How do I start my furnace? I have asked the same. This is what I know about it.

Sigh. "I ran out of oil." I've said that too many times. I am a dumbass. You're smiling. Good. It's frustrating as hell to not be able to start your furnace, especially when it's 20 degrees out and windy!
Disclaimer: WARNING! I AM NOT AN HVAC TECHNICIAN. I AM NOT LICENSED IN ANYTHING DEALING WITH YOUR PROBLEM. IF YOU DO SOMETHING WRONG, IT COULD RESULT IN YOUR HOUSE BURNING, INJURY OR EVEN DEATH! MAKE SURE YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING, IF NOT GET A PROFESSIONAL! I AM A DO IT YOURSELFER, THAT IS ALL.
Now that we've got that out of the way:
Ok. When you run out of oil, the last few ounces travel through that tube that comes out of your oil tank under the concrete and up to your furnace. Kinda like when you drink a soda from McD's, you're sucking air. The furnace recognizes this, that there's no flame and shuts down. The magic red light comes on on the restart button on your furnace. So you put on your Superman cape and push the button. You hear the air rushing in for a few seconds and then the thingy that pumps the oil into the burner. If you don't hear the "whooooom" sound of "fire" it will run for a few seconds and shut off. Now, I've heard that you shouldn't push this button more than a couple few times as some fumes can build up and...... well. Not good. I'm guilty of pushing the button too much. I'm lucky I'm alive, I guess ;) So, now, you put 2 and 2 together and get 5 and you walk over to the oil tank and it says , O as in zero. You say a bad word and think, "I thought we could go two more weeks!!!" Now you have to explain to your wife how stupid you were, but you change the story so you're not at fault. Could be your furnace is full of soot, but more on that later...
   Ok, so now you call the oil man. "We ran out of oil and I need a delivery." "Do you need a startup?" A "startup" means that he will come downstairs and (for a fee of 35 bucks) bleed your line. "Bleeding the line", what the heck does that mean?? When you sucked all of the soda out of your cup, you just go refill it and then suck on it and voilla! you have soda in your mouth. It doesn't work like this in your oil burning system, unfortunately. What happens is your oil pump that is on your furnace (the thing that goes when you push the magic red button) starts sucking from the line from your tank. The only thing is, air is expandable. Much more so than liquid. So it "stretches" the air until the burner says, "I see no oil, I'm shuttin' down." and then the air "springs back" and you never get anywhere. That's my theory, not a fact that I know of:)  So what you gotta do is get a flat head screwdriver and unscrew this little black (on mine it's black) "bleeder valve". Oh yeah, get a pan to put under it as oil will eventually drip out. Probably a good idea to wear some rubber gloves unless you don't mind getting oil on your hands. Anyhoo, when you unscrew this thing, you will see some little oil bubbles. Wait until you get a "drip drip drip" and tighten it back up and try the magic red button. This may not work on the first try. Open it again and you might see some more bubbles and then the drip. Try again. If it starts, thank God. If it doesn't, you could try again. Like I said before, be careful. If you're impatient, you could loosen the brass colored hex head thingy on the pump and that seems to allow quicker expulsion of air in the line. Don't forget to tighten it later:) Now, that tube, or "line" is kinda long and is full of air, so you have to get it all out.
    If you don't get any bubbles or drip, you may have a blockage in your system that is not allowing oil to get to the burner. In the bottom of your oil tank is sludge. Sludge is produced, I believe, from moisture and fuel and impurties. It's like black mud. When you have a lot of oil, sludge is not that big of a problem. The oil and very tiny bits of sludge normally flow through the hole in the bottom of your tank. The filter coming out of your tank takes out most of this gunk. Now, when you only have a gallon of oil or so left, the sludge sees this as an opportunity to ooooze into that hole. Most of the time, this is NOT the problem (judging from the several times I have run out:) ). One time it was. I was not getting any oil at the burner, even after bleeding it. I changed the oil filter next to the tank. No good. I turned the valve off under the tank. By the way, these valves are opposite what you think. It's not like the water spigot on your house which you turn counterclockwise to open, you turn clockwise to open. It's weird! To make it easy, when you feel the "screw" coming through the "twisty thing" it's opening up. When the "twisty thing" falls off, it's closed. But don't screw it that far! When its loose in your fingers, it's closed, in other words. DO NOT USE A WRENCH on this thing. I did and ruined it! Fingers only!!
   So, as I said, I wasn't getting any oil flow from the tank. I closed the tank "petcock aka twisty thing" and removed the filter housing. With a pan underneath, I opened the petcock. It should have flowed like a cow taking a piss, but it lightly dripped. Not good!! If you haven't screwed up your petcock by using a wrench on it, you could open it up and stick some flexible thing in there to try and loosen up the sludge. Not a wire hanger, something flexible, like maybe an old cord from a vacuum cleaner (you'll have to cut the end off, dummy!). I've never done that, mind you, but I'm guessing it might work.  If you remember, I screwed up the petcock and had to buy another one at the plumbing supply store. They don't have these at hardware stores or Lowes or Home Depot, so don't waste your time going there! Now, if you do have to unscrew this petcock thing, if you have 275 gallons in your tank, keep in mind that you could end up with 275 gallons on your floor!!!!!!!!! Nightmare! I did it when I only had a few gallons in the tank. When I did unscrew it, it was only dripping. I stuck a wooden spoon in the hole and HELLO! here comes the oil flying out! I quickly screw the new petcock thing into the hole. Be patient if you do this. If you crossthread it, your f***ed! I wouldn't change this unless you are daring. Call the professional. I got the sucker to fire up after that however. I was very proud of my bad self.
    If you run out of oil and ain't got no money to buy the 150 gallons until payday, they tell me you can use diesel fuel, which is pretty much the same thing as heating oil. They actually put a red dye into heating oil to prevent truckers from using it. Apparently, the tax on diesel is higher. If a cop sees a red dye in the trucker's "diesel", it's a fine. That's what I understand. Again I am not an expert. If you do put diesel in your fill pipe, keep in mind that you need enough so that the liquid level is higher than the "bleeder" at the burner. It's a gravity feed and if the level of fuel is lower than where you are bleeding it, it won't flow. I had to put like 12 gallons or so before the level of fuel was high enough to allow me to bleed the air out. Strange but true.
   The thing that happened to me this morning is that I had the guy come out to start my furnace cause I couldn't do it, even with all my tricks. He came out on New Years day. He took the pump cover off and assorted other maintenance things. He got it going, but he said he didn't "like the flame". It was burning too rich. He used the nozzel they specified in the manual, but he said it was running too "rich". "Rich" means too much fuel in proportion to the air. "Lean" means too little fuel in proportion to the air. He told me, you need to get someone out here to clean out your furnace. There's a lot of soot in there. I was like, "Ok." I was thinking, "yeah, right give me some money to pay for it".  So, I was happy that it was running. Two days later, this morning, my wife says she smelled something. I go downstairs and I could smell nasty smoke. I open the little "window", the thing on the furnace with a wingnut on a metal flap that rotates, and some flames are shooting out with some black smoke!! I shut off the emergency shutoff switch (that red switch at the top of the basement stairs) and cough a bit and call him up to explain what happened. He said he'll be out at noon.
   I think about it and I'm thinking, "It's the old potato in the tailpipe trick!" In old movies, they would put a potato in the tailpipe of  a car if they wanted their enemy's car to stall. You see, if the exhaust fumes can't get out, they choke up the whole system! The fact that smoke was SHOOTING out of there, there was a lot of pressure that wasn't being released through the chimney. So I did my best Dick Van Dyke impersonation in Mary Poppins and popped off the front cover of my Pensotti boiler and took off the burner black plate, burner and all (WAIT UNTIL IT'S COOL!! DUH!) and saw a bunch of soot that was clogging up the works! I was surprised. Soot accumulates more than you think. I brushed off as much soot as I could, buttoned it all up and started the furnace. SUCCESS! To a certain degree. It wasn't puking out smoke anymore, it was only a little bit. Still the smoke should be invisible, not black. I called him with my Buckwheat hands and told him, "I got it running and it's not smoking anymore. I cleaned out the soot." He said he was on my street already and just wanted to see how it was running. He still didn't like how rich it was burning. He changed the nozzle from a .75 to a.65 but that didn't work, so he put the .75 back in. Oh yeah, if your thing ain't burning well, you should change the nozzle. Nozzles make a nice "spray" that makes it easier to ignite. If your nozzle is clogged, it may not spray nicely or not at all. You can't clean these things, I hear. Don't use a needle, you'll just screw it up. Just take the one you have and bring it to the store and show them. They are under ten bucks, I think. Anyway, he didn't charge me anything and monkeyed around with the air settings and got it running perfect. Nice guy.
   So, I've covered all my experiences with this stuff. I don't know anything but what I've learned. I wrote this because I was like you, looking for help online and someone else wrote info like I'm doing. If you're stuck and need a shoulder to cry on, I might be able to help. Email me at   musicmensch68@gmail.com  If this helped you, I would love to hear about it so I don't think that I wasted my time. If  you're like me, you won't email me. That's ok. I'm glad I helped you. I've been there,done that. Good luck, we're all counting on you.
TJBJB

ESPN has become so gay. Soccer. blufshsc(vomit sound)

I'm looking at baseball tonight and they are reviewing the gay soccer tourney. I'm like, "wtf???" I cannot begin to say how gay soccer is and how much I hate that these faggot liberals at ESPN put soccer on a level with real sports. FUCK YOU ESPN!!! STOP FAGGING UP OUR KIDS TO PLAY A GAME THAT RETARDS CAN PLAY!!! CAN A RETARD DO A HIT AND RUN? DOES A RETARD KNOW WHAT PITCH TO THROW TO ALBERT PUJHOLS? DOES A RETARD KNOW TO RUN TO FIRST BASE INSTEAD OF THIRD? I THINK NOT. IF A RETARD CAN PLAY A GAME, IT IS NOT A GAME THAT CHALLENGES PEOPLE TO USE THEIR FUCKING BRAINS. IN OTHER WORDS YOU ARE TURNING OUR COUNTRY TO SHIT AND TO TEACH OUR KIDS THAT THEY ARE NOTHING MORE THAN STUPID NATIVES IN AFRICA. FUCK SOCCER!

Stupid quizzes on Facebook(do you remember these cartoons??)

If you're a person that likes challenges, you like being quizzed. And if you are being quizzed you would like it to not be so easy that every question is a "slam dunk". I am shocked and saddened that this stupid quiz has apparently been passed along by lazy Americans to others to the tune of 2 MILLION times. If I took this quiz, I would be like, "wtf?" this is way too easy. Apparently, people in this country, I can't really say that, it may be abroad to English speaking people, but have we sunk that low, that we actually draw some pleasure out of not being challenged AT ALL????? Disgraceful.

I'm so pissed off right now that I can't even post!

My fucking keyboard is black. I had a white keyboard until one of my kids spilled something on it. I was surprised when the guilty party owned up to it. "I did it" said he. I was impressed with his honesty. I said to him................uh, you know that's bullshit. NOBODY DID IT! It would take CSI to figure this out.

So, it's black. I do most of my typing in the dark. I have a prob with numbers. I can't see them on a black keyboard! I am going to get whiteout and mark the most important keys so I can see them.

One thing leads to another by the Fixx (how I sing it)

The real lyrics are:

The deception with tact, just what are you trying to say?
You've got a blank face, which irritates
Communicate, pull out your party piece
You see dimensions in two
State your case with black or white
But when one little cross leads to shots, grit your teeth
You run for cover so discreet, why don't they:

The way I always sang it(because this is how it sounded to me):
The deception which tied, just what are trying to say?
You got a black face, chewy tits,
Lempa say fa feva Pocratease etc.

I always thought they said, "Chewy tits". Really!

Can we stop kissing Jackie Robinson's ass already????????

What the fuck is up with this constant ass kissing of Jackie Robinson? Fine, he was the first black player. Great! We all acknowledged that and thought it was great that people should not be shunned because they are black. We get it!!!! Do we have to vomit praise all the time for this player? I could see the Mets or Dodgers retiring his number as the Mets are a "byproduct" of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Why don't ALL PLAYERS wear 42 ALL THE TIME to kiss his ass further. How about EVERY stadium be named, "Jackie Robinson Stadium". How about making every player change his name to Jackie Fucking Robinson and play in "blackface" to honor him??? And every person who comes to the game should be in "blackface", and all the announcers too and the umps. How about requiring every MLB player to get plastic surgery to get as close as you can to looking like the great Jackie Robinson? And no players can be drafted unless they have plastic surgery to look like him. And finally, EVERYONE in America has to change their name to "Jackie Robinson". Even the women can feel comfortable, because "Jackie" can be a woman's name too. He was so great, he even took care of that. ALL HAIL THE BLESSED NAME OF OUR GOD, JACKIE ROBINSON!!!

United States defeats Puerto Rico!

This game was similar to the feeling that I had when the United States beat the Soviet Union in the Miracle on Ice! When the USA beat U.S.S.R or Soviet Union, Russia that was the single best sporting event. Tonight was reminiscent on a small scale for the political meaning.

It's obvious what the political meaning was for the "Miracle on Ice".

The meaning for me was the "justice" of the United States defeating those from our territory, Puerto Rico, who have been sponging off of hard working Americans when they are on welfare. There are many from PR who are wonderful people, but so many who come to the States to leech off of the system. Those who do it, be honest, that is what you are doing.

It is evil to do that, to leech off of a system.

Those guys don't look "Dutch"!!!!

The Netherlands team is comprised of people who do not fit the description of "Dutch". What's up wit dat? These are not "Dutch" players, they are transplanted from everywhere else. The reason I am saying this is that everyone is fawning over the Dutch upsetting the Domican Republic. So the picture that they want in people's minds is Hans Christian Anderson times nine in wooden shoes defeating the Goliath of D.R. I am willing to bet that not one of these starters was born in the Netherlands. The US team is, of course, comprised of people whose ancestors were from many countries, but we make no pretense of that. I dunno, maybe everybody is copying us. Freakin' Dutch.