Zen and the Art of Boiler Maintenance
Readers more familiar with my blog may remember a couple of months ago when I wrote about getting a new boiler. We had wanted one that kept itself filled, but that ended up being really expensive, so we went with a slightly less expensive model that required manual filling. A month or so ago I went downstairs to check it and it still had plenty of water.
When I got back from work last night, my wife asked me if it was cold in the house or just her. Passing up the obvious joke, I checked the thermostat and saw that it was 60' in the house. I went to check the boiler and sure enough it was low. I added some water and waited for it to kick on. It didn't do it immediately, so I figured that it took a little while to start up. I went back upstairs.
When it hadn't started a little while later, I went to check it. The pilot light was on, it had enough water, and it was certainly cold enough in the house. Jacking up the thermostat didn't help either. I did some research on the 'net and found references to resetting the system. This seemed like a good idea, so I went to look for a reset button. So I started poking around the various controls on the boiler (of which there are surprisingly few). Unfortunately one of the controls that I messed with was the gas flow control which turned off the pilot light. A frantic few minutes ensued and I was able to relight the pilot light. But the furnace still didn't kick on.
By this point I'd had it. There wasn't anything wrong with the gas system. For some reason the electrical system was goofy. So I went to the fuse box, flipped off the fuse for the boiler, flipped it back on, and *miraculous music* the boiler kicked on.
As I did the Happy Dance, I thought, "Great. My boiler is a Windows machine."
When I got back from work last night, my wife asked me if it was cold in the house or just her. Passing up the obvious joke, I checked the thermostat and saw that it was 60' in the house. I went to check the boiler and sure enough it was low. I added some water and waited for it to kick on. It didn't do it immediately, so I figured that it took a little while to start up. I went back upstairs.
When it hadn't started a little while later, I went to check it. The pilot light was on, it had enough water, and it was certainly cold enough in the house. Jacking up the thermostat didn't help either. I did some research on the 'net and found references to resetting the system. This seemed like a good idea, so I went to look for a reset button. So I started poking around the various controls on the boiler (of which there are surprisingly few). Unfortunately one of the controls that I messed with was the gas flow control which turned off the pilot light. A frantic few minutes ensued and I was able to relight the pilot light. But the furnace still didn't kick on.
By this point I'd had it. There wasn't anything wrong with the gas system. For some reason the electrical system was goofy. So I went to the fuse box, flipped off the fuse for the boiler, flipped it back on, and *miraculous music* the boiler kicked on.
As I did the Happy Dance, I thought, "Great. My boiler is a Windows machine."
posted by mypetrock at 12:23 PM
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