Gas water heater fault
- Thread starter Tkirkla
- Start date
What did the dealer do to help you?
Chaseweston
Well-known member
Silly question but is it confirmed you have propane? Do other gas appliances work as normal?
This happened to us the first time we switched to the second propane tank (dealer was supposed to turnover with two filled tanks) - the second one was not and the furnace would not stay on (obviously)
This happened to us the first time we switched to the second propane tank (dealer was supposed to turnover with two filled tanks) - the second one was not and the furnace would not stay on (obviously)
Sorry, been unavailable since my post. Unfortunately we are not close to our dealer. I have tried different things with gas, tried with both tanks full with the diverter set to one, the other, and center. We live in ours, so air in the lines to bleed off is not typically a problem but tried and it didn't help. It is strange, sometimes it will work for a few hours and then fault and sometimes it tries to light and fault multiple times and then stops. Going to keep trying to figure it out and will post if I do. Thanks all
Have you checked your spark gap? The flame sensor uses the flame to make the circuit to hold the gas valve open. This is the same gap the spark jumps. It may be too wide or bridged with a conductive material. The first would prevent the board from proving ignition and the latter would prevent a spark that would ignite the gas/air mixture.
This is what I would do. My first guess is flow, second is spark/sensor.
Purge all air by running your stove and furnace simultaneously. Shut off all of the tanks at the valve. leave them closed for at least two minutes. Open each valve 1/4 turn. After you have them both open 1/4 turn, slowly open both valves....not like exaggeratedly slow but just slow steady turns. This may reset the regulators and give you the right amount of flow.
You can check high demand flow, not accurately but for purposes of a general diagnostic, by turning on your furnace then creating a demand at the hot water heater. If it is worse under load, then you absolutely have a problem with one or more regulators, a changeover valve, a pigtail kink, manifold issue, etc. If you really want to DX to prove this is contributing to the fault, you need a low pressure manometer, maybe Home Depot or Lowes rents them (they're not inexpensive and I think that is where my buddy rented the one I used when DXing a LP issue in the past...could have been from SW Florida Gas too). I'm pretty sure they sell them at Lowes or HD. You need an 11 water column measurement but fact check me on that.
Check for kinks in the line.
Turn off the tanks and clean the manifold...if there is more than one clean them all.
Check alignment of the orifice to the burner. IF you clean the manifolds, purge all air after reassembling.
After you purge and reset regulators, force a high demand scenario by running all gas appliances, including the furnace. Try to light the hot water heater.
As @KCAlis said, check your spark gap. But you also need to check your grounds (clean, snug, metal to metal) for the control board. while you are at it, check for cracked insulators (porcelain perhaps), dirt at the orifices, etc.
I don't know enough about the changeover valves yet to even suggest they can be bypassed, but if they can try doing that and see if it improves. That would be, in my novice changeover diagnostic estimations, a pretty good indicator that it is faulty if the fault state clears.
The systems are simple, on the ones. But there are a many elements to the systems that make troubleshooting a PITA. Sounds like a lot of time but this whole process, except for the manometer and cleaning manifolds, takes about 30 minutes.
terminalhour
Member
Ours also had an intermittent starting/FTL issue. When it wouldn’t light it would POOF out a flame from the vent because of an abundance of un-lit propane gas. I finally fixed it after moving the spark probes a little bit further in/together. It has started first time, and every time since