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Beckett Burner tripping

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  • HVACNUT
    HVACNUT Member Posts: 7,424

    "It was pretty dirty to be fair."

    You. Need. A. Professional. The eye should be spotless. Always.

  • rick in Alaska
    rick in Alaska Member Posts: 1,524

    It seems to me if you keep bumping things around the burner to get it to run, that there is some kind of a bad electrical connection down there. My experience is that it is usually a bad primary, especially older 8184 primaries. Is that what you have? Since you changed it out with another one you had, then odds are it isn't the problem, but you can have two bad ones, especially if one is used. Like others have said, the burner doesn't care why it needs to run, but it does seem weird that it mostly happens with a call for hot water. I don't believe in coincidences, but I also do not discount them.

    Try this the next time it quits. Smack the aquastat first and see if the burner fires. I have seen a lot of them with a bad connection on the circuit board. Another thing that can keep a burner from running is a bad connection on the cad cell circuit. If the wires are shorted, it won't run. Maybe there is a very slight short in the wiring that can get bumped and it opens up for a while after hitting it, but then shorts again.

    If you can, pull the primary control loose and let it hang, and the next time it quits, put a voltmeter on it to see if it is getting power, but try not to bump it. If it is getting power but the burner is not running, try disconnecting one of the cad cell wires and see if it fires off. That will tell you if you have a short if it does. If you have power to the control, see if you are getting power to the motor. If you do, and it isn't running, then it is a bad motor.

    Rick

    JayS
  • JayS
    JayS Member Posts: 16

    Many thanks for the input.

    It's been 4 days now and the boiler hasn't tripped once.

    Rick in Alaska, I love the diagnostic methodology!

    The primary control was an R4184 D 1027 5. I replaced it with an R8184G1369.

    I can't say I understand why the primary control tripped on domestic hot water calls but it was consistent.

    The weather here has been below freezing for a long time, hitting zero, and the calls for space heat would go through once the motor and primary were replaced. Possibly, someone else in the house could have reset the primary with out my knowledge but I heard it kick on plenty of times and I myself didn't reset it. The domestic hot water was predictable.

    EdTheHeaterMan, thanks for the heads up that the motor could be bad if tapping on the transformer made it fire up. I would not have figured that out on my own.

    I realize that myself saying that I experienced this on dhw calls only is questioned here. I am equally surprised. I did find this on Heat-timer.

    "Heating a building is a very slow process as it takes hours to raise the building space temperature just a few degrees. In addition, the water temperature used is mostly at around 160°F. On the other hand, domestic hot water is a very fast process, as it requires a large amount of energy to be put into the water in a very short time. The boiler water temperature may reach 180°F during a domestic hot water call. This helps in fast domestic hot water recovery. In most residential installations, the domestic hot water load is greater than the heating system load."

    I can not testify that the above information is true. My intention here is to provide information that I have read. I do not have an answer as to what specifically was the problem. However, IF the demand is greater on the calls for dhw then it does make some sense that cleaning the strainer would have helped with that.

    As far as the cad eye, I did not check the ohm's before and after cleaning.

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