got no heat, please help with troubleshoutting

johnnyge

My boiler stop working tonight, got nop heat on a 20 degree night outside. It is a New Yorker. the damper is not opening. How can i bypass the damper to leave it on the open position to see if the boiler will come on. I check the power and i do have power to the damper control. chech continuity on the sensor attach to the hood and its ok. What else could be wrong that the boiler doesnty want to come back on.

Timco

damper

the damper motor usually has a tiny switch that will open it manually. If no response period, try jumping out the t-stat wires to see if your stat or stat wires are bad.  Does it do anything when the t-stat is turned from satisfied to heat call?



Tim

johnnyge

boiler back on

I got the boiler back on...This is what a did. I think i was getting a wrong water level reading on the side glass. Before i had the problem it looks like the water level was low, so i add water, after that never restarted.. I cleaned the side glass and from the top valve insted of getting steam i was getting water. so i drained about 2 gallons of water and after that the boiler came back on. Now my questions, It is any safety control that will prevent the boiler to start if it has too much water? as it will shut down for low water?.

I have a worry free contract with PSEG and when i call they told me that the next available appointment will be tomorrow between 8 to 4 pm. I was so dissapointed that i have being paying for 9 years for that contract t o find out that they do not show up for this type of emergency. Tomorrow i am going to cancel that contract.

Thank you for the replies. As always I am very thankfull that I find this web page and I will be going to the seminar in Parssipany, hope I will meet some for you there.

nicholas bonham-carter

boiler not firing for unknown reason

it could be that the pressure control is mounted below the normal waterline, and is feeling the standing  water pressure of the overfilled waterline as excess steam pressure.

the cure is to mount the pressure control well above the normal waterline. this caught me once during skimming, and made me wish for tell-tale lights on all the safeties [LWCO, pressure, pilot, etc.] on a boiler, so the particular device would light up when tripped. looks so easu for the mfg. to do!--nbc 

archibald tuttle

but . . .

I've seen the pressure control mounted not far above the operating water level, but I've never seen a factory supplied pressuretrol senstive enough, even at a low setting, to show pressure made with a few gallons of water over the control mounting point.  I tend to only see these problems on pressuretrols when tenants help me out by filling the system (and I do mean filling, trying to make hydronic heat out of the steam system).



On the other hand, systems that I ran vaportrols on are very sensitive to over fill. One way to tell the difference is that pressuretrols are smaller about 2"x3 " with a metal cover and vaportrols are large, e.g. 5 x5" with a clear plastic cover.  Obviously the scientific way is to read the scale, a vaportrol is usually in oz. of steam with 16 ozs as the max (although they have 4 lbs ones). A pressuretrol is in lbs. and usually goes up to 15. It most often amounts to a safety cutout in all the residential steam I've seen. I've never had a residential steam system that made the pressuretrol except by being overfilled.



Certainly this seems to have been the problem if you drained water and it started, but, unless you have a vaportrol, I think you might still have too much water in there as it would take more than 2 gallons too much to trip a pressuretrol off in my experience. If you were getting false readings on the site glass, you can have shmuck in the valves and lines that doesn't allow for a proper level reading.



Brian

Charlie from wmass

I get calls several times a year to "dry" boilers.

I show up and the boiler is filled above the site glass and the pressuretrol is shut off due to the water column. This is not a bad thing as if the boiler tried to fire with no room for the steam it could make a mess. condensate shooting out vents and lots of water hammer. You may have a clog on the bottom tap of your sight glass. This will make it hard to judge the true water line.