Subject: Boiler pilot light went out
From: "David Hearn"
Date: 24/10/03 19:34 GMT Daylight Time
Message-id:

Our boiler pilot light went out today. Not sure when - the heating was
working this morning, but wasn't by about 2pm when my wife got home and
turned it back on.

I had some trouble getting it to stay lit - I kept the gas button pressed in
for 30 seconds as per the instructions, but it didn't stay lit when I
stopped pressing it. In the end I turned the boiler thermostat to something
other than 'Off' (which the instructions said it should be on). When I
released the gas button, the main burner fired up and it stayed lit. When
the main burner turned off later, pilot was still lit.

Now - any idea what may have caused this? Problem with the boiler I would
assume - the chance of the gas running out is low. Its an old Baxi wall
mounted boiler.

Possibly the pilot light thermocouple starting to fail. Get a universal one
from your nearest shed or plumb centre. Under a tenner and a few minutes to
fit. Best to keep a spare handy anyway as they only last a few years.



When I'd got the boiler working again, I saw that the burner would pulse
orange. It would be blue, then you'd hear a bit of a 'woosh' and it went
bright orange (whole burner) and then went blue again. It kept doing this
on a 5 second or so cycle. After its been on for a couple of hours, its
burning continuous blue again. Oh, and when it went 'woosh' you could see a
little puff of something come out the whole where the top thermocouple comes
out - which worried me.

Therefore I've booked the boiler in for a service on the 3rd Nov - its the
first time we'll have had it serviced since we moved here in May. Looks
like its not been serviced in a while (though the pilot thermocouple looks
quite clean and shiny!). We've had a little CO check thing next to the
boiler, and it hasn't gone dark. Since noticing the puff of something, I
moved the CO check thing to just above the thermocouple hole and I think its
gone a little darker than it may have - but its certainly not "grey or
black" as the thing says to check for.

So - any initial thoughts about the cause of the pilot light going out? Any
problems you think I've got with my boiler? I certainly don't want to have
to replace it!

I was already planning on getting it serviced - just made sure I did it now!


Thanks

Waste of time having boilers serviced IMO. While the boiler is running tap the
gas pipe where it runs into the burner a few times with a lump of wood. That'll
dislodge any crap in it. You'll see the flame flare orange each time you do it
and then it should settle back to blue. As long as the flame is blue everything
is fine.


Dave Baker - Puma Race Engines (www.pumaracing.co.uk)
I'm not at all sure why women like men. We're argumentative, childish,
unsociable and extremely unappealing naked. I'm quite grateful they do though.