We have a service contract with a local heating oil company. It includes 1 tune up per year. I asked him a couple of questions and he was nice and answered them. One of the parts he was replacing had stripped threads and he had to wait for the parts truck to deliver a new one, but it’s covered by the service contract.
Right now he’s in his truck, doing paperwork I assume.
They inspect the heat exchanger for signs of leaking water, test the efficiency to make sure it’s not going to shit (using a special instrument that gets inserted into the flue), replace the filter if it needs it, replace the injector nozzle which is a consumable part, supposed to be changed every year, etc.
This boiler is about 35 years old from what we can tell. Over the past few years the fuel pump failed, the combustion fan failed, and now the part they’re waiting on failed (it just got here, by the way). That stuff was covered under the service contract, so we’ve come out ahead, or at least broke even.
Like anything you can probably just let this type of thing run until it dies, pay for repairs as you go, and hope for the best, but if I’m out of town and my wife has to deal with it, it’s game over. This way we just call and it’s done.
