BOILER SHUTS DOWN

Steve Paul

We installed a Burnham 204 HW boiler W/ standing pilot about 2 years ago. The pilot fails and goes out intermitanly whenever it feels the need to bust spheres. It will remain lit for 6 weeks,or 2 months,or a fortnight, however long it wants to. There is no set pattern of failure. We have changed thermocouples, the gas valve, regulated the pilot, cleaned the pilot tube, checked gas pressures and replaced the entire pilot assembley. But the problem still returns. It never fails while we are there. The customer has been quite patient, but he has been reading fire arms catalogs recently. Has any one had a similar experience? What did you do to remedy it?

Jack Legg

Hmmmmmmm .........

gas valve, pilot assy, parts, parts, parts ..... hows about checkin' the draft ????

Steve Paul

Pilot goes out

Good idea! We did that. Chimney is clear, draft is fine with or without water heater operating, Flue damper shuts and opens when it's supposed to. Thanks

ed wallace

boiler shutting off

maybe a bad wiring harness

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Steve Miller

electronic iginiton

I'd think about changing it over to electronic ignition. Burnham prolly has a direct replacement. You win, the customer wins in saving a few bucks on gas without a pilot. Just a thought....

Steve M

Uni R

Draft research...

You should have records of when you have been called back so that you can reasonably guess a 12 hour period before the call where the pilot went out each time. It may be worthwhile to go check an online weather site for that area and check the wind conditions for that period. There could be a particular wind direction in which, if the wind has enough velocity, the pilot light gets snuffed.

http://www.wunderground.com/

Unknown

Steve

Take a look at the post below labeled "Gas Boiler and Pilot Light". There are some good reasons stated by Tim McElwain as to why this is happening now but not before. Sometimes we need to focus ouside of the box for possible explanations. As Tim stated in that post, the pilot is not regulated so whatever occurs within the incoming gas pressure will also occur with the pilot flame. Has anyone checked the incoming gas pressure and monitored it while appliances are turning on and off? Hope this helps.

Glenn Stanton

Burnham Hydronics

Nick_13

pilot problem

Are there any roll-out switches that are automatically resetting before you return, I would say to check the gas pressure first, and see if it is possibly a regulator problem.

Robert O'Connor_7

How bout combustion air??

Is the house of resonably tight construction? If so, maybe it happens when the kitchen exhaust, dryer, toilet room exhaust(s) are all working. Try it, you may find it. I'd also check the gas pressure before & after the gas valve...Robert O'Connor/NJ

Dale

Wind

We had one like this, figured out that the room draft was too good and if the mechanical roo, door was opened on a high wind day the pilot would blow out. Elegant fix would have been to replace the fixed draft hood with a barometric damper, our fix was a little sheet metal shield under the boiler arround the pilot. As I said in my other post sometimes heat is reflected off the floor under the boiler and the cold junction gets too hot. Is the boiler up on bricks? If so the wind idea looks better and the too hot cold junction less so.