Water heater flameout: cleaning the electrode
My five-year-old Suburban water heater started to act up: it would light, and then go out, and relight, and go out, several times, until it would finally start to burn steadily. I did the usual Googl...
Forum Discussion
I believe the problem is a high resistance connection on the ground side of the electrode. The heater uses the change of resistance across the electrode when the flame is present to detect a lit flame. It's looking for a micro amp level current so good connects are important. If it doesn't detect this it shuts down the gas and then tries again. Hence the cycling. It appears that once the temp rises due to the cycling the current is large enough to be detected.
While it is good to have clean electrodes, I believe that you fixed the problem by unmounting / mounting the electrode from the frame of the heater. I had this problem and a through cleaning of all ground connections seemed to have fixed the issue.
While it is good to have clean electrodes, I believe that you fixed the problem by unmounting / mounting the electrode from the frame of the heater. I had this problem and a through cleaning of all ground connections seemed to have fixed the issue.
