Hello, my oil furnace is 18 years old. I have it serviced every year, last winter I had to reset it a few times so I called in a technician to diagnose why. They replaced the flame censor and made sure the airflow was good. He said it was in good shape and running efficiently. But I still needed to reset every couple of days. I had that company come back at least 5 times until they finally said, "sometimes you have to wait for it to completely fail for you to know what is really going wrong." So this fall I had it serviced by a different company and explained the problem. This company said it was an old relay and changed it. 5 days later I've reset it 4 times. Any idea what can cause this? I have honeywell control board and honeywell thermostats in my 2 zones.

 

If it's failing..... by that I mean the reset button on the burner is tripping..... it is not a thermostat problem.

Unfortunately you'll find fewer and fewer techs that work on and understand oil burners.
I recommend servicing them every year.

Some problem areas are the spark electrodes, the high voltage spark coil, nozzle, filter(s), pump.
An oil burner uses a visual photo eye to monitor for flame. It typically gets blamed for any intermittent problem. I don't really work on oil burners but I have a few customers that insist. I have never replaced a photo eye.
Usually if the burner isn't running correctly the plastic cover can get sooted over and cause tripping.

 

There are almost countless reasons for intermittent lockouts. The most common are an ignition transformer getting weak & a bad spot on the burner motor (only applicable to motors without a capacitor).

 

How do I check an ignition transformer or for a bad spot on the burner motor?

 

A quick update, the technician was here. He replaced the cad cell again and adjusted some electrodes. I'll give update in a few days to let you know if this fixed the need to reset frequently.

 

another update. The technicians have been out three days in a row. After replacing cad cell and adjusting electrodes the first day, the next technician said the igniter wasn't always strong so he replaced that yesterday. So in the past two weeks I have a new relay switch, cad cell and igniter. Furnace still locks out, now everyday. Haven't reset today, waiting for the technician to get here.

 

Can you provide some details on the equipment? Make & model of furnace or boiler, burner brand (Beckett, Carlin, Riello, & Wayne are the most common)

 

 

The type of motor on that burner is not noted for having intermittent starting problems, nor is the ignitor. I should note that I am not at all fond of the primary control. As far as the zone control panel: Once there is a call for heat and it sends a signal to that effect to the primary, it's job is done. If your tech has the tool, he/she should be able to read fault codes from the primary control.

 

Technician was here this morning and switched to this relay. Been gone for an hour and this it what it reads.

 

Hope you called them back right away. Has anybody used any test instruments or are they just swapping parts.

 

If they left the installation sheet, it will tell you how to scroll thru the faults on that control.

 

so he came back Saturday and replaced the motor. That worked for 6 hours and I had to reset. Then it worked for ~36 hours. This morning I called again and they came to replace the transformer, increase the pump pressure and adjust some electrodes. The tech was very confident that this will fix it. They have done diagnostic but no issues flag. I'll update in a few days if this did fix it. At this point I don't know what else is left to replace.

 

Getting back to the very basics: Have they replaced the fuel filter, and pump screen then flushed the fuel system prior to replacing the nozzle?

 

I think they might have fixed it. It's been two days since they were here last and I haven't had to reset. The latest adjustment they made was to put the dip switch in the proper position. They also noticed the furnace was still very hot after shut down so they adjusted the power vent to run for 16 minutes after shutdown. So far so good. So if I don't post again assume the furnace is running correctly. Thanks for all your replies.

 

Power vent? That throws another whole set of monkey wrenches into the mix.

 

Hopefully this is my final update on this. I replaced the power venter circuit board and now it's been a week of running normal. I ordered it on amazon for half of what my furnace guy said he could get it for. Switched out the old one, took about 30 minutes. Hopefully this helps someone down the road that runs into the similar issue. The furnace company said they have never seen one of these circuit boards go bad.

 

I don't understand why the power venter board had to be replaced. If the furnace was still hot after shut down, the circulating fan should have either stayed on or come back on to cool it down. Of course, this presumes a fan controled by temperature not time. Many newer furnaces have fans controled by a timer which is totally stupid in my book.