Intermittent Oil Burner Issue
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I have an odd intermittent issue my oil burner. I’m looking for some insight.
First, some details. It is a 14-year-old Weil-McLain Series 3 Gold water boiler with a Riello 40 Series burner. It is controlled by a Hydrostat 3150 aquastat (Set L-155, H-180, Diff-10).
Now onto the problem. Periodically, the burner will not fire when the low temp is reached. It doesn’t try and fail to ignite; it seems like there is never an attempt. Sometimes this happens once every two weeks but there have been days where it happened four times in one day. The Hydrostat has a digital readout so I can see the temp is below 145.
It also mostly appears to happen when using hot water, the call for heat for the hydronic baseboard heating seems to be mostly fine, maybe once or twice. This was first encountered on Christmas Eve 2023. I turned the service switch off and then back on and the burner fire immediately. This happened on and off until mid-March of this year when I got fed up. I did some base troubleshooting by checking the voltage and contacts, which appeared to spec. I also checked and reset the high and low limits.
I though the resetting of the temps was the trick as things had been running fine until two days ago when the same symptoms returned. Was washing dishes and the water got cold. I checked the garage and alas, the temp was 120. One push of the button and we’re back in business until yesterday, and then again today.
Also back in March, I had our usual tech out to take a look at he said since everything was working, just changing the aquastat was an expensive gamble.
Is it time to replace the aquastat? Is there anything else that could be the culprit? Any and all thoughts are welcome and appreciated.
Comments
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Thanks. The probe connector seemed to be just fine and inserted as far as possible.
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Update - Changed the aquastat, burner controller, and flame sensor. Was good for about a month and now it's happening again. Looking for some ideas. Thanks.
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What button are you pushing?
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The reset button the burner controller.
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Is the reset button actually on the Riello Burner (a red lamp lights when off by safety) or is the "burner controller" the Hydrostat 3150?
If the red light reset button is on the Riello Burner, then replacing the Hydrostat is not going to fix your problem. One has nothing to do with the other. If there is a reset button on the Hydrostat and that is the problem, then the well adaptor may be at fault.
EDIT: The Hydrostat 3150 does not seem to have a manual reset for the control, so I must assume that the burner primary control reset is the one that you are pressing. That reset button is for a flame failure. That means that the Primary control went through a start up procedure and there was no flame present so the primary control locked out by the safety. You have either a bad control or a combustion related problem and the control is doing its job.
Edward Young Retired
After you make that expensive repair and you still have the same problem, What will you check next?
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You have either a combustion problem or oil supply problem. Swapping every part on the system will not fix either one of those things.
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