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QUESTION:Having problems with a Munchkin boiler for radiant floor heating in a
vacation house. Propane, in-ground tank. Cold climate.
Since the installation 16 months ago, we have been plagued by F10
lockouts. This is a vacation house, only used winter weekends, so this
is a disaster. The boiler has shut-down and locked-out 20x last season,
10x this season including 5 of last 6 nights. It's so bad, we have
someone coming to the house each day to reset it. Ugh.
What is F10? The Munchkin manual says, "This code appears if the flame
is going out while the burner is on and this happens more then 4 times
in one heat demand. " Requires a manual reset.
The boiler has good periods and bad. Ran from mid Nov to late January
with no problems, and now locking-out just about every night, usually
in the middle of the night (I have a web-cam monitoring the control
panel). Yes, I think the lock-outs are correlated with cold, but on
the other hand we had some very cold nights in the Nov-Jan period when
the boiler ran fine.
Here's what we have tried:
Possible Cause: Problem with the boiler:
- Factory rep changed all the sensors and tinkered with the controller
Possible Cause: Insufficient propane flow for boiler and hot-water
- Raised propane pressure to 10.5" at house regulator
- Note: the hot-water heater is not running AT ALL during most of the
lockout episodes
- Also tested that in normal conditions, there is plenty of gas flow
for both.
Probable Cause: Freeze-up of one of the two propane regulators
- In one lockout episode (mid morning on a very cold day) I was able
to observe that the Rinnai tankless hot-water was not getting gas. From
this I conclude that our problem is intermittant gas supply, not lack
of capacity in normal conditions.
- Thinking moisture in tank, we've had methanol injected
- Replaced house regulator
- Replaced regulator at the propane tank
Any suggestions? Have others had problems with a Munchkin locking-out
F10?
ANSWER: Your solution is to call the factory rep and bitch up a storm. The install
was either screwed up, or the boiler is a lemon, (probably the installer!).
You may want to hire a second company to look it over. Just a wild guess
here, but check over the install very carefully against the manual. I worked
on a Lennox furnace the other day that had never run right in five years.
Someone had mixed up the vent terminations on the venting causing it to lock
out frequently. It had been checked over many times by the installers!
After 16 months I might hint about lawyers!
We have installed only one Munchkin, and it has never failed. Thirty times
in the last 16 months is pure BS.
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