Silicon Nitride Hot Surface Ignitor

RapidRoy

When the silicon nitride hot surface igniter came out, it seemed to be the way to assure customers that they could rest easy knowing that the ignitor was very durable and trouble-free. One of my former coworkers has informed me that they are experiencing a number of these ignitors failing. Is anyone else noticing the same?

Tim McElwain

I have not heard of any

problems, in fact I believe one of the posters here a while back reported very good results with the White-Rodgers Silicon Nitride retrofit kit the 21D64-2. This allows you to replace the old silicon carbide units with a silicon nitride upgrade on selected furnaces and boilers.

Glenn Harrison_2

I have seen

very few failures of the OEM Nitide ignitors, ( we all know there will be a few that will fail).



However, I talked my current employer last winter into trying the White Rodgers 21D64-2 Universal igniters, as I had used them several times during the 2007-2008 winter. We were having problems with quite a few of them failing on some 80% furnaces, Carrier and Rheem to be specific. The worst part is they would only last about 2 weeks and burn out, We wound up giving up on them. I know we sent them all back for warratny, but who knows what the suppliers did with them.



Honeywell just releases a universal Nitride ignitor called the Glowfly. We are going to try these and see what happens.

Tim McElwain

After reading Glenn's post

I made two phone calls to two different companies who have used the White-Rodgers upgrade and they told me they collectively have only had problems with three of them and in all cases it was on Carrier units. Other than that they have been fine. Who knows?