Boiler problems

[hall]

Wondered if anyone has had any experience with a Hamiton Engineering boiler? Our is less than one year old, and just started having problems. We are having to "reset" it about two times a day now. As far as we can tell, there are no air restriction problems in the boiler room, and the gas pressure does not seem to be an issue. Before we make a service call, would any of you have suggestions on things to look for. We tried replacing the igniter, but this did not help. We didn't ever think that was the problem anyway, but Hamilton had suggested it.

Also, what do most of you do? Turn yours off at night, or leave it on?

[Anonymous]

Give us some more information, what model and size, is this a standard atmospheric unit or a high eff. What are the symptoms. When you turn it one what does it do or not do? Are there and gauges or indicators on it. Give us some more info and we'l try to help.

If it is less than a year old isn't it under warranty?

[Andy]

If this unit has a recirculating pump, you should check the pump motor for trouble.

[hall]

As far as the model and size, we will have to check that one out and get back to you, and will also check to see if it is high efficiency.

The symptons: when it needs to heat water during the day, sometimes it will kick on, and sometimes it won't. Even though our tank is insulated, when you go in the boiler room you can tell the temperature is considerably cooler, so you immediately go see if the boiler is off, and of course it is. So next we go to the diagnostic panel, a light is flashing 3x. The explanation for this reads, "ignition failure", and you have to hit the "reset" button to get it to ignite.

Yes it is under warranty, the part, not the service call. First we have to figure out what is wrong, or call someone else in to tell us what has to be replaced.

[Anonymous]

Its not a high efficiency unit, as they don't give off any heat to the room itself. Its hard to diagnose from afar, but it sounds like the ignitor is either bad, or the flame sensor is bad. The way they work is they create a hot surface to ignite the gas and then monitor for a flame, if they don't sense the flame they shut down and try again. After a set number of trys they lock out and you have to manually restart the system. In some units the ignitor doubles as the flame detector.

[Andy]

check the flame sensor as Kirby said, it may need cleaning rather than replacing. It can be cleaned with some fine emery cloth.

[Follow]

I had a problem like this....when I turn on heat pump/boiler on in the morning, flame comes on start working than after that turn off itself (after reaching set temp.) when the set. tem goes down, it trys to ignite I can hear ignitions trying to start the flame again but it fails, than shot itself down, i had to turn of pump and restart again than works...so I call my repair guy, he clean pilot area and adjust pilot distance to ignitor.. now everything works great..
I hope this helps.