Riello 40 burner not starting

Up Donegal

I went to switch on the heat in a house which had been closed for over six months (owner passed away) and the Riello 40 burner won't start. I pressed the reset button on the front and all I get is a slight hum which stops after a few seconds. The tank was filled up a few weeks before the last time the heating was used so it's not an oil problem and the burner was working perfectly up to that time. I know what the burner sounds like if there's no oil getting through so I've eliminated that.
Any Suggestions?

TIA.

mosii

Try bleeding,you would have to start there to eliminate problems.A 13mm plug on burner,not the one with adjustable screw.
You can see how on you tube.Good luck with the first step.

mickuhaha

Can you hear it fire up then cut out Or just the blower going.

jimf

a slight hum could mean something as small as a capacitor or as big as a fuel pump or a seized motor

important to find cause of failure if its not the capacitor as you could have water contamination in the oil tank

if you have changing the pump will be a waste of time and money without addressing the water issue

JamesM

Everything Jim says, but if it has been off for 6 months, moving the fan a bit might be enough to free a slightly corroded oil pump.

jimf

JamesM wrote: »

Everything Jim says, but if it has been off for 6 months, moving the fan a bit might be enough to free a slightly corroded oil pump.

spot on as usual james m

stoneill

As Mosii says, might need to bleed feed line, sometimes when filling tank from empty air gets trapped between tank and pump.

Wearb

The symptoms described doesn't indicate a fuel supply problem.

Billy Bunting

stoneill wrote: »

As Mosii says, might need to bleed feed line, sometimes when filling tank from empty air gets trapped between tank and pump.

Do you really think you should be touching the reply button on this forum ?

jyber

A Riello 40 G10 was shutting out after startup so I changed the Cad/Photo cell and that solved that problem. However it runs for a few minutes then the flame appears to stop, but the burner keeps running at about 4-5 seconds on and off. After a while it might run for a few minutes. It does eventually get up to temperature. Is it the solenoid coil? When I was running through everything before changing the Cad I measured the voltage from the motor to the Control Box, and it's over 50 volts, and the resistance on the coil windings in the solenoid were 1.4ish on one, and 1.3 ish on the other. Is this my problem?

jimf

first thing to rule out do you have ay restriction on the fuel supply like a blocked filter or a partially blocked fire valve

riello coils are nearly bomb proof

could also be a faulty new photocell

Wearb

Probably needs adjusting. A service with a flue gas analyser would most likely sort you out.

John.G

I remember one time that my Riello G5X had been lighting for a very short time and for the next 30 secs or so it sounded as if it was re lighting every 5 secs or so but never tripped and the problem never returned, boiler ran perfectly until its next service and was spotlessly clean all over.

Wearb

John.G wrote: »

I remember one time that my Riello G5X had been lighting for a very short time and for the next 30 secs or so it sounded as if it was re lighting every 5 secs or so but never tripped and the problem never returned, boiler ran perfectly until its next service and was spotlessly clean all over.[/QUOTE]
No surprise there.

jyber

No restriction on the fuel supply.

I changed the control box, and the solenoid coil, and it initially ran well, and I thought the control box had solved the problem.

However it has started to sometimes run as normal but often flames out for abot five second, and then re-lights for one or two seconds, and will keep doing this for a while.

When I run it off the boiler the flame looks good and normal, and the fuel pressure is right.

What next?

Wearb

jyber wrote: »

No restriction on the fuel supply.

I changed the control box, and the solenoid coil, and it initially ran well, and I thought the control box had solved the problem.

However it has started to sometimes run as normal but often flames out for abot five second, and then re-lights for one or two seconds, and will keep doing this for a while.

When I run it off the boiler the flame looks good and normal, and the fuel pressure is right.

What next?

I still stand by the advice I gave you about a month ago.

jimf

difference in the air density could now be causing overairing of the burner is it happening when the burner is hot or cold an easy test is to slightly hold your hand over the fan and see will it fire

we are only guessing why not get somebody with the proper gear to diagnose and fix otherwise you will have the price of a new burner fired at it

John.G

I often wondered about the air density effect and if some burners are more affected by it, a 15 deg difference in air temp will result in ~ 10% change in air mass and one mightn't think it would have a huge effect on ignition or running, my G5X burner set to 70K, 20kw output with a 0.6 nozzle has a damper setting presently I think of 1.9, it "came" with a setting of 1.8 but I would say that if I over aired this by opening the damper to 2.2 or even higher that it would still operate without any/much trouble, it would be interesting to see the FGA of a few different types when properly set up and when over aired.

jimf

the gx5 burner has a bigger fan box than the g3 john so your burner at approx. 2 would be nearer 3 to 3.5 on the g3 with the same nozzle

if you wer to play with damper on your burner if you went to 3 the burner may or not continue to run but if trying to start from cold id say
most likely not

the air density does come into play if you wer to set up a burner in june/july and leave at 11.5% co2 come dec that could now be 11% c02

its a well proven fact that over airing is one of the biggest causes of high co on oil boilers

sometimes after servicing a boiler and changing the nozzle when flu gassing the co could be up to and over 1000 ppm by just adjusting the damper and nothing else this can drop to 20ppm or even less

Wearb

Over airing is dangerous to play around with. If you do some reading on co, you will read that in high concentrations a couple of breaths of it can knock you out, leaving incapable of moving away from the source. A few more breaths later and you are no more.
What I have described is extreme but has happened and people have died very rapidly from it, sadly sometimes including rescuers.
As Jim says, small adjustments can cause rapid changes.

John.G

Interesting all right, CO is also highly explosive, I read years ago where there were a number of fatalities due to a blow back explosion on a very large marine boiler where the O2 controller on the burner developed a fault and one of the engineers noticed that the O2 level had fallen to zero and he manually increased the air flow, the subsequent enquiry found the probably cause was the flame front moving further into the furnace and ignited the CO.
I spent a lifetime running and maintaining fairly large, 50MW, high pressure steam boilers that could burn heavy fuel oil or nat gas or nat gas+bio gas, the combustion process was controlled by O2 trim which maintained 1.5 to 3% O2 (7 to 15% excess air), the boilers had two oxygen analysers and if either fell to 0.5% you got a alarm and if both fell to 0.2% the burner tripped and then carried out a 60 second post purge to clear out any potential explosive gases in the furnace. We didn't have any other gas analysis.

jimf

must have been good at the job john as you are here to tell your story

John.G

As in everything in life, common sense plays a large part in staying alive plus proper training and interest in ones job.
When I went to sea first as a engineer apprentice in the mid 60s, all the big boilers had 4 to 6 pressure jet burners and the fireman lit the first one with a lighting oily rag on the end of a bit of a rod, there was absolutely no monitoring of any sort but a fair bit of skill was needed to run the DC forced draft fans at the correct speed for safe light off and for all boiler outputs while manoveuring until full output which was then completely constant for the length of the voyage, the watch keeper would look at the haze from the funnel and then fine tune the fan speed to just get just a tiny trace of smoke.
It might seem frightening now but there were very few accidents in those times.

jyber

Patience, logic, and common sense solved the problem.

Thanks Wearb and jimf for your input.

jimf

jyber wrote: »

Patience, logic, and common sense solved the problem.

Thanks Wearb and jimf for your input.

what was the fix

jyber

I gradually reduced the grid aperture, on the flap opening at the fan, to slightly reduce the air intake.

What puzzles me is how did that air-to-fuel ratio get upset in the first place.

Wearb

jyber wrote: »

I gradually reduced the grid aperture, on the flap opening at the fan, to slightly reduce the air intake.

What puzzles me is how did that air-to-fuel ratio get upset in the first place.

While not certain, you probably have it producing hi carbon monoxide right now, so be careful.


Partially clogged nozzle or filters could cause this. Failing pump also. Also a crack or loose air box, something caught in the fan (leaf etc) that has now shifted. Those sort of things.
You really should have it adjusted with a flue gas analyser.

jimf

Wearb wrote: »

While not certain, you probably have it producing hi carbon monoxide right now, so be careful.


Partially clogged nozzle or filters could cause this. Failing pump also. Also a crack or loose air box, something caught in the fan (leaf etc) that has now shifted. Those sort of things.
You really should have it adjusted with a flue gas analyser.

what he says