Hi All -
Long time lurker, first time poster...I have pictures to help newbie questions
Configuration: Lochinvar FTXL boiler (LP) two years old, Ecobee Thermostats
Problem: Starting about a week ago, I started receiving an increase in lockout messages, both "flame fail ignition" and "flame fail running." Also during that same time period, I started to see anomalies on the thermostat: after several hours of the temperature behaving as expected (within 1 degree of the set point), there were long (more than an hour) periods in which the thermostat was calling for heat but the temperature continued to drift down (as low as 5 degrees below the set point) before heating resumed. I started to poke around a bit this weekend, and noticed an increasing discrepancy between ignition attempts and successful ignitions. I suspect that these are related, but there is not a 1:1 correlation so I can't be certain.
I have attached pics of the lockout history, temp, and ignition attempts/successes below to show you what's going on.
Here are my questions:
1) Are the ignition attempts/success related to the lockouts? I assume that there must be more than "x" failures before triggering the lockout condition which would explain what I'm seeing. Correct?
2) What might cause the somewhat random behavior seen here? Most of the time it works fine. And then it doesn't. Then it does. I would think that if it was gas pressure then the errors would be more consistent?
3) The working theory is that the ignition module is beginning to fail. Does that make sense, and would that fail intermittently before failing completely?
4) This problem has been seen over the past week or so during very cold weather. Might that impact?
I have a very simplistic view that when the thermostat calls for heat, the boiler should ignite and heat comes out. I'm struggling with which of the 1,000,001 things might be causing that simplistic view to go wrong.
As an aside....service tech is coming out this week...he's quite good and I'm confident in his approach. I'm picking your collective brains for ideas in the meantime, and will post what he discovers later in the week.
Greg
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