Utica Boiler lockout

Thanks for the good luck and I'm not insinuating that all people in this area are country bumpkins as I've been coming to this area for over 50 years and have quite a fondness for the people who I've met with and deal with here. My only disdain is for the people who lack the knowledge that they need who refuse to get it when it is available and offered to them. You'll find these people all over not just in the country. I'm more inclined to note that there is a real need for more skilled labor in many parts of our country like our area here and that more of our younger generation needs to be drawn to the skilled trades like plumbing and heating with more incentives in place for them to do it if we as a whole throughout our whole country want to be able to survive situations like this going forward. If the scarcity of skilled services are like this now what will it be like in years to come when these sparse few service providers are retired and gone and someone's heat goes down in the middle of Winter and their pipes break and they freeze to death. These companies who manufacture these boiler products are making them more electronic and complicated than they need to be where parts are shutting down heating appliances more than usual so more maintenance and expenses will have to be done at the customers expense. I've got a Peerless boiler in my permanent residence that is over 50 years old and still going strong and my only repair to in more than 20 years ago was to replace the mini volt thermal-couple on it that cost less than $20 bucks. Why mess with something that wasn't broke and provided great service for a great amount of time. Do you see a pattern developing here where we are getting squeezed between a rock and a hard place ? Just my personal observations, that's all.

ED Thank you for your comment and I agree with all that you've said. The takeaway from this post would include the fact that the onus of finding a good contractor to service his needs is on the customer and everyone needs to do their due diligence to obtain that end. In cases like mine where the contractors are few and far between in areas like mine and trying to service more people than they have the time to take care of in an efficient manner an outcome like this will will surly happen again. Boiler manufacturers and distributors need to also better train their personal especially the tecks who are in the service departments that these contractors and people like me call to get answers to questions like how to unlock a system that you made and sent out into the field. It blows my mind that they could not answer that very important question and now my intent is to try to find an engineer at that company to talk to who might be able to give me an answer to that question.

@GGrossThank you very much for your comment as it was greatly appreciated. That vent pipe used to be 2" with the Glowcore boiler we had in there for over 10 years and did not have a problem with it and when they went to install the boiler I wanted them to use the roof vent instead of the through the wall vent because this is a seasonal residence and I overwinter about 200 flowers in our attached solarium and need to maintain at least 40 degree temps in the Winter months. If this boiler's vents got blocked with high snow going through the wall it would shut down because no one would be here to monitor it and shovel the blockage away. The pitch on this pipe is the best that can be done for the location that it is in and the plumbers didn't think they might have a problem with the pitch. I have to snowshoe into the camp once a month during the Winter which takes about 20 minutes or so coming 250 miles each way from WNY to check on the place and to water the flowers. That 128 code for ignition failure came on three times in less than two days and I tried to do the normal reset a few times before I cleaned the igniter and when I was finished and went to turn the power back on I saw the lockout so I must have hit my 5 x reset try just before I cleaned it not knowing that this was going to happen. If you know how to override and unlock the boiler so I can see if the igniter cleaning was successful or not I would greatly appreciate that info. Once it starts I can try to find someone to come out and check the other items that you noted but that would probably take a very long time as Syracuse NY is the largest metro area to us about an hour away and many of the big plumbing companies who service in that area will not drive this far to service someone. Meanwhile we are going on two weeks with no hot water and we have company staying with us for another 7 days. Please help with the unlock if you can and thanks again for the info.

That's the biggest problem I have right now, when I called ECR International to talk to the service teck he told me to do the same thing and when I called him back to tell him that it didn't work he was at a loss for any other way to override it , thus my complete frustration at this point …..

@GGross Ha, ha, ha I just saw your last post after I got the boiler back on and running again so all is good at this point. Thank you and all the other skilled tecks out there who monitor this site and then take the trouble to reach out and try to help people who sincerely need your help to solve some of these HVAC and other appliance issues, you guys rock in my book and I hope someone will be there for you in your time of need to help you out some day. Blessings to you all ❤️