Harmon SF260 Draft Door Problems?/ Over Heating

 
hollynj
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Post by hollynj » Sat. Dec. 21, 2013 1:10 am

Hello all, I found this board while looking for help with our unit. It has overheated 5 times in the past two years and is doing so right now. Pipes are rattling and booming from it, woke me up. I got my husband up and sure enough it was up over 260. We have the aquastat set at 180 it seems to us the draft door doesn't shut all the way after it opens to heat up. We are on copper piping and have a safety feature installed that shuts the unit down when it over heats, but we invested $1000's to buy and install this unit and this is PIA. We had an outdoor furnace at our old house, moved down the road and town changed the laws on those and made this seem like a better option, not happy. We get it to burn through the night, which is what most people seem to have issues with, but this overheating is for the birds. The dealer said that he has never heard of people having issues with the automatic draft door staying open or getting stuck open a bit. We keep it clean, but it seems like the only plausible answer. We have tried the aquastat lower than 180 and it has overheated and our plumber put it up to 180 after it happened that last time. Anyone have any idea what is going on? We do not have the additional tank, so I guess we are going to add that, because it will help, but we don't really have the money for it right now, plumber also suggested instead to do baseboard off it in the basement to help with the problem, again, we just wanted to get through this season and do it in spring. My husband is self employed and winter is our slow time and do most our projects in spring /summer. I guess if we have to suck it up, we can, but hate laying out big $$$ this time of year. Any help is appreciated.

Thank you,

holly


 
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lsayre
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Post by lsayre » Sat. Dec. 21, 2013 7:42 am

Perhaps it is overheating occasionally due to too much chimney draft. Do you have a barometric damper installed in the flue pipe between the SF260 and the chimney? Do you monitor you draft with a manometer?

 
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McGiever
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Post by McGiever » Sat. Dec. 21, 2013 7:57 am

Are you burning wood and not coal?

 
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Dennis
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Post by Dennis » Sat. Dec. 21, 2013 7:59 am

hollynj wrote:We had an outdoor furnace at our old house, moved down the road and town changed the laws on those and made this seem like a better option, not happy.
hollynj wrote:We do not have the additional tank, so I guess we are going to add that, because it will help,
hollynj wrote:plumber also suggested instead to do baseboard off it in the basement to help with the problem
Just to be on the same page are you burning wood or coal
having a expansion tank helps,but at 260 degrees thats dangerous and is your PRV activating and what is the boiler pressure at 260 degrees
before adding another dump zone you need to learn to control the boiler first
have you looked into manually sliding the draft door,is it too tight and sticking,is the draft motor malfuncting
what size house are you heating and what/how many BTU's do you need
:?: is the boiler oversized for your needs :?:
I have an over sized boiler,but will be needing all that extra capacity later when hooking up the shop.My boiler was over heating and activating the dump zones all the time before I learn how to control it.I needed to reduce the firebox by 50% then all the problems calmed down.
Can you show some pics. of your set up,

 
hollynj
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Post by hollynj » Sat. Dec. 21, 2013 8:42 am

Hi<
we are heating with wood, as my husband has a tree service so we have tons of wood. I do not believe we have barometric damper installed, but then again we may. My husband is hunting,so going to ask him about that and get back to you.

The motor seems to work, but it seems like the door stays slightly open and doesn't shut tight when it closes.

MY house is about 2500 sq foot maybe a bit bigger, this was the size the dealer recommended. Now today is going to be 50's so I am going to only fill the stove with a few logs at a time.

The problem last night is it over heated at 1am, when we were all asleep and it was last filled at 9:30, temps were in the 30's.

I didn't even go down there last night, the noises woke me and I got my husband up, so I do not know what the pressure was I never asked him, he dealt with it. Sorry I can not answer more, but I love that people know about these units and with more answer may be able to help us. I will ask my husband more when he gets home later and post pictures. Thanks!

 
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Post by lsayre » Sat. Dec. 21, 2013 10:21 am

hollynj wrote:Hi<
we are heating with wood, as my husband has a tree service so we have tons of wood. I do not believe we have barometric damper installed, but then again we may. My husband is hunting,so going to ask him about that and get back to you.
With wood burning you would not want to install a barometric damper. They are not a good idea with wood. Unsafe. Forget my suggestion please.

 
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Post by hollynj » Sat. Dec. 21, 2013 11:12 am

Okay, we don't have one and my husband explained it and I did have one on a pot belly stove that burned coal as a kid. So that makes sense. My husband is thinking magnet on the draft door so it makes it close . It's light an the said it was slightly open when he went down, which appears that when it hits the 180 the motor shuts off and the door start to close and then sticks a crack open and bam keeps heating up the fire.

He came home from hunting and apparently set it to 190 watched the door open, then turned the aquastat down to 140 it closed properly. So it must have just not closed properly sometime in the middle of the night. The water pressure was released all over our basement floor ;) so I get to clean that up today.

I just worry about safety. Thoughts on weight on the door?


 
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Post by Rob R. » Sat. Dec. 21, 2013 1:08 pm

Do you have a dump zone hooked up?

 
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Post by hollynj » Sat. Dec. 21, 2013 1:40 pm

No, so I guess we are adding that.

 
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Post by coalkirk » Sat. Dec. 21, 2013 4:25 pm

I don't think a weight is the answer. Something must be bent or misaligned. Pictures would be nice of the mechanism. As far as safety is concerned the relief valve did its job. Hopefully its piped to the floor and wouldn't spray out into the room. When they open its quite a violent release of scalding water.

 
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Post by hollynj » Sat. Dec. 21, 2013 8:56 pm

The basement is dark even with lights on, flash wasn't much help

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Post by hollynj » Sat. Dec. 21, 2013 9:02 pm

My husband is going to let the fire burn out tonight, going to be high 60's tomorrow, see if he can find anything. Do some routine cleaning while we have it shut down anyway.

The original guy who installed it did a crappy job and we had a tech come back and fix some other stuff on the unti that was not done properly. He didn't seem to think anything else was wrong, but we told him it had over heated 3 times last year, now twice this year.

 
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Post by franco b » Sat. Dec. 21, 2013 9:26 pm

Are those manual air controls on the ash door closed tight?

 
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Post by hollynj » Sat. Dec. 21, 2013 9:27 pm

Yes

 
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Post by Smiss » Fri. Jan. 24, 2014 5:26 pm

Did you ever get this problem fixed? Running into the same problem on my Harman SF260 of 2 years old. Even with a dump zone running if the door sticks open it can get 200+F. No draft door sticking open last year or this year up until a week or so ago, I keep the motor and door clean, so I'm not sure why it sticks open.

Thanks,

Andrew.


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