Ongoing HRM Wallstar lockout problem - oil boiler

[Michelle Ryan]

Hi, I have a 20 odd year old HRM Wallstar that's giving us grief. It started going in to lock out occasionally in what seemed to be high wind/heavy rain about a year ago. We had it serviced 8 months ago and it's got progressively worse. The boiler fires up fine and sometimes stays on for 3/4 hours sometimes it locks out after 30 minutes, other times 5 or 10 minutes. If I press the orange reset button outside, then it fires back up but sometimes stays on for only 10 seconds before locking out again, sometimes 30 minutes, sometimes more.

The plumber replaced the pump and the capacitor on the motor and that seemed to work for 10 days but we are now back to square 1, it's spent all weekend locking out at various, random intervals.

He mentioned it might be something wrong with a seal meaning exhaust gasses are being back flushed into the system and to try running it without the external metal cover to see if that made any difference. This makes run time a bit longer before it goes in to lock out but it's still locking out eventually, plus it's winter in England and I can't leave the cover off permanently, surely??

Please, please has anyone got any suggestions as to what else the problem might be? Given it's a 20 year old boiler do we just cut our losses and get a new one? Issue is I understand wall mounted oil boilers are not easy to come by nowadays?

 

[oilboffin]

Could be the coil on the solenoid get the engineer to fit a seal not just talk about it also make sure the electrodes aren't in front of the photocell but round the side.Bob

 

[ReJect]

Solenoid as said can have same symptoms.
Control box also.
But the burner Motor also can cause intermittent lockouts.
Maybe your engineer is struggling with it all.
The air inlet should have been an easy test

 

[oilhead]

Another favourite on these, especially when they are of a certain age, is the non return valve incorporated in the fire valve.

 

[Michelle Ryan]

Thank you everyone, ended up finding a new engineer and turns out the flame sensor was struggling to see a flame, but he fitted a new one and it can clearly see the flame. Only 24 hours post fix but all good so far.....

 

[MrsV]

We have had the exact same thing as Michelle Ryan with our HRM Wallstar 15/19. Our engineer has replaced the motor, solenoid, control box and resealed the flue with mastic. Each day the number of lockouts increases with repeated resets required, not sure if its my imagination but seems worse in wet and windy weather. Has replacing the flame sensor (photocell?) sorted the problem permanently?

 

[Michelle Ryan]

We have had the exact same thing as Michelle Ryan with our HRM Wallstar 15/19. Our engineer has replaced the motor, solenoid, control box and resealed the flue with mastic. Each day the number of lockouts increases with repeated resets required, not sure if its my imagination but seems worse in wet and windy weather. Has replacing the flame sensor (photocell?) sorted the problem permanently?

Hi MrsV

A combination of the photocell replacement and a damn good service seem to have done the trick. It’s locked out only once in 4 weeks since we had it replaced and was 2/3 hours in to a 50mph wind/torrential rain storm. It’s survived 30mph winds fine last/this week. I can live with that. Hope you get yours sorted, I know how frustrating it is.

Michelle

 

[MrsV]

Thanks, that’s good to know. It was serviced in July and this has been ongoing since October. As you say, very frustrating.

 

[snb]

often on that age it's not the photocell that fails but corroded connections between photocell and it's lead.

if you have the 970 series control box it has fault diagnosis when it locks out to tell you a possible cause.

But sometimes they can be an absolute pig to pin point down to a specific item unless it fails whilst you are there. For the sake of about £100 you can just replace all the electric bits for new and should have a few years trouble free

 

[MrsV]

It is very intermittent making pin pointing difficult, that is really useful information, thank you.