Oil Boiler Lockout

[pimpdaddydog123]

I’ve been to a wall mounted oil boiler today, customer reported lock out issues.

I attended and found that the fire valve knob had accidenatlly been pressed, I suspect a child had stood on it!

Reset the fire valve, bled air out of the oil and the boiler fires up but only runs for about 2 minutes before locking out again.

I’ve checked the obvious, plenty of fuel, clean filters, cleaned photocell etc but still locks out after running for several minutes.



Any ideas?

Thanks

 

[RandomGrinch]

I know absolutely nothing about oil burners, but a good deal of posts on here and elsewhere, suggest looking at the solenoid coils for a fault like this!

 

[pimpdaddydog123]

I know absolutely nothing about oil burners, but a good deal of posts on here and elsewhere, suggest looking at the solenoid coils for a fault like this!

Thanks and you're right, apparently that is a common problem but I have replaced the coil with a brand new one, interstingly the customer had a coil replaced recently which solved a similar issue and he left the old one there.
All three coils measure the same value (approximately 2k) but the symptoms are the same whichver coil is fitted.
I can't help but feel it is soemthing to do with the fire valve, I don't think you are supposed to push the knob in!

 

[Terrywookfit]

Are we supposed to guess the Boiler/ burner and fire valve details??

I tried but my crystal ball is foggy today!!

 

[pimpdaddydog123]

My apologies, I should have given more detail. The fire valve is a Tesla TFV66030, the boiler is an old Trianco Eurostar and the burner is a Eurostar WM50/70.

It somehow feels like fuel starvation because the boiler fires and runs but only for a few minutes. The is a de-aerator fitted as well, the bowl is transparent amd the fuel level in the bowl is a foot lower than the level in the tank.

Could this be relevant? I don’t understand how the levels could be so different!

 

[Terrywookfit]

What does your oil pressure and vaccumn gauges tell you is happening.???

 

[snb]

you can't activate the fire valve by pressing the button. the only way to close the valve is for the temp to go over 66C. This is one of your problems though. someone has fitted the wrong fire valve. it should be a 85 /90c on a pressure jet burner.
If it's a lack of fuel i would be looking at the filters. But problem is most likely the pump solenoid

 

[pimpdaddydog123]

Thanks for all the advice chaps! unfortunately the customer could only give me 20 minutes to do an initial test but I did replace the solenoid coil, checked the filter at the tank and reset the fire valve. I also replaced the control box (830.3) with a spare one that I carry.

I am going back on Sunday to check boiler pressures etc and I will report back with my findings.

The fire valve was definitely closed, the householder thanks it got trodden on by her grandson whilst playing hide and seek but I wasn’t there obviously.

 

[oilhead]

If I had a customer who would only give me 20 mins to do a job, I'd walk away and not bother coming back.
Are you saying that the de-aerator is lower than the tank? Where is it in relation to the burner? If the fire valve has been stood on have you checked the connections? They may be leaking/allowing air ingress.

 

[pimpdaddydog123]

To be fair it wasn’t the customers fault, she initially suggested Sunday but I wanted to have a quick look at the layout first.
The fire valve isn’t leaking but it was very difficult to reset, I had to prise the know back up. Before I did that there was no il flow from the outlet of the de aerator.
The de aerator is about 600mm to the right of the boiler and about 600 mm from the floor.
I would say that it is about level with the bottom of the tank but lower than the current oil level, that last why I find it hard to understand why the level in the glass bowl is lower than the level in the tank, having said that I’m not sure how these de-aerators work.

when I go back I will check the oil pressure and, if necessary, temporarily bypass the fire valve for testing purposes.

 

[pimpdaddydog123]

 

[pimpdaddydog123]

That picture shows the de aerator amd you can see the oil level just above the red label bit that is significantly lower than the tank level.

 

[pimpdaddydog123]

It’s fixed, went back today and measured the fuel pressure.

It was running at 105psi which is a little low so I stripped the pump and found a large deposit of something in the filter.

cleaned the pump, put it back together amd it was then running at approx 117 psi, reset to to 110 and it’s now fine.

 

[pimpdaddydog123]

Filter and pump