Lock out

Bob Forand

Help !!!

I have a customer that has been experiencing intermittent burner lockouts. It is a Beckett AFG and has a SS2 power venter. He gets the lockout, goes to the boiler, pushes the reset and the boiler takes off.

I have replaced the cad cell eye, and the primary control. I used one of the Westwood testers and they registered as bad. I cleaned the boiler, checked the draft at the breach and verified the correct setting on the power venter. I did notice that the burner motor seemed to have more than normal resistance when checking for play in the coupling.
I have been looking at it as an electrical issue because of being able to reset the primary control and the boiler takes off. He only needs to push the button once. But I am not so sure now.

Paul Fredricks_9

If you're using an R7184 and there is an oil valve w/delay, there may not be enough safety time. If the SS2 is started when the primary pulls in, there may not be enough time for draft to prove and let the burner fire. It also ends up eliminating the prepurge. We've seen this a few times.

The solution is to wire the SS2 to B1 on the aquastat. That way the primary doesn't come in to play until the draft is proven.

Norm Harvey

The lock out could be from a number of reasons.

restriction in the oil line that starves the fire for fuel ; a bad spot of the burner motor (is it a capacitor start motor, or start windings?) ; weak ignitor ; to much combustion air supplied ; improper electrode setitng, or bad electrodes ; tons of things really.

I'd first start with Pauls suggestion to check for a timing issue, then do a nozzle, filter, and pump strainer change, then put in my combustion analyzer and set everything properly. At that point use your multi-meter and check the ohms resistance of the cad cell leads witht he burner firing.

If everything checks out, the ignitor is good, the burner motor isnt drawing too many amps on start up, I'd run it through a couple doxen cycles. I usually do 3 one minute burns, then 3, 3 minute burns, then all the rest have the burner run up to limit. Try to see if you can re-create the problem in front of you.



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Tim_41

pipe

Check the small pipe (1/4" i think) on the power venter. Those in time tend clog up with soot and can also have cracks.

Bob Forand

It's an R8184

The new primary is an R8184G. The boiler is a 10 year old Burnham, and it is a windings motor. I did do a complete cleaning, including a new nozzle, filter, strainer, and set up with a combustion analyzer. I did notice the draft was at .10 at the breach. I reset to .o4 using the adjustment on the barometric. I did break out the "t" gauge to set the electrodes as well.

I am having a hard time with the fact that they only have to push the reset one time and the boiler takes off. Consistently only once, and it will run many times throughout the day before it locks out again. That is why I don't believe it to be a fuel delivery issue.

I am going to try a new motor tomorrow, test the cad cell, run the Carlin 41000 through a couple of tests, check for cracked electrodes and take it from there.

Any other suggestions ? Should I be stumbling over the "one push-take off" ?