My darn Jotul Firelight won't stay on!

[DAKSY]

There should be a couple of screws holding the pilot bracket to the bottom of the stove.
Use a 1/4' drive - magnetic is best - to remove the screws.
Gently lift the entire pilot bracket assembly upwards far enough to access the retainer nut for the t-pile.
You may have some difficulty removing the t-pile from the plate it sits in, because they sometimes distort.
I can't emphasize enough that you have to be gentle. The pilot tube is thin-walled & can fracture easily.
If you must, loosen the pilot tube from the underside, as well as the thermocouple.
Disconnect the the electrical connections of the t-pile at the valve terminal block.
Once you get the t-pile out of the bracket, pull the wires up through the hole in the bottom of the stove.
Install the t-pile & feed the wires back down thru the hole & gently reposition the bracket assembly in position,
reconnecting the pilot tube & the t-couple if you removed them.
Apply a goob of RTV to the hole where you fed the wiring thru.
Reattach the screws - this is where the magnetic tip is REALLY handy - retaining the bracket to the stove &
reconnect the wires to the terminal block.
Light er up & see if she works.

 

[Wood Heat Stoves]

you may need to remove the pilot assy from the bracket, and lift it up to access the tpile

be careful of the pilot tube, and tcouple

oops, Daksy beat me to it again

 

[flipper]

You may have some difficulty removing the t-pile from the plate it sits in, because they sometimes distort --

man, you're not kidding!

anyway, i cut down a 7/16" wrench and finally got the retaining nut off. now i'm having a hard time removing the t-pile. will it go out either way -- i.e., can i bop a rubber mallet on it from above and try to get it to drop down and out the bottom?

also, can i cut snip the t-pile wires to get em out of the way or am i going to be using that part of the assembly again?

 

[summit]

It's gotta drop down... you can cut the wire if u got to, as the new one has the wires on it.

 

[flipper]

okay. from what bob was saying (Once you get the t-pile out of the bracket, pull the wires up through the hole in the bottom of the stove), it sounded like everything had to go up. i'll give bopping it down a try, see what havoc that causes. thanks.

 

[summit]

I think I see part of the issue, maybe: for a dv unit, there is a conspicuos lack of any kind of seal around the pilot/tc/tp lines in the bottom plate... this will force a lot of air up towards the pilot light, pushing flame off the tc/tp assembly, causing a loss in millivolts and eventual shutdown on higher draft conditions. Is there and seal around those lines, or is it just open air to the underside of the stove? shine a light up thru and see.

 

[flipper]

good catch, summit. it's open air, no seal. oddly enough, when i was fussing around down there, i found some small pieces of lava-looking rock forced into the assembly, not blocking the air totally but at least a little bit. i wonder if this could all add up to my problem -- though i wonder if a lack of a seal is how jotul intended it, since i don't see any signs of prior sealage.

p.s., if i decide to seal up the holes before doing anything else, how can i test the thermopile wires to make sure i didn't mess em up with all my pulling and tugging. would checking the millivolts as before do the tricks and do i need to light the pilot light to do that?

 

[summit]

just seal the holes with some red hi temp silicone, wait about an hour, and fire the pilot up. Use a multimeter set to 2000mv to the 2 thermopile leads. a healthy tp should read well over 350 (ideally 500 or so) mv under no load (switch off), and at least 180 under load (switch on). then light off the burner, and continue to check the mv reading every minute or so. If the tp is failing, then the # will drop untill it hits @130 or so, then the burner will kick off. you need to heat the tp via the pilot to check these readings, as the tp only creates electricity when heated.

 

[DAKSY]

good catch, summit. it's open air, no seal. oddly enough, when i was fussing around down there, i found some small pieces of lava-looking rock forced into the assembly, not blocking the air totally but at least a little bit. i wonder if this could all add up to my problem -- though i wonder if a lack of a seal is how jotul intended it, since i don't see any signs of prior sealage.

A lot of the holes in these older units were sealed with gasket cement. It could've hardened & some of may have fallen out...It'd look a LOT like the Jotul lava rocks...

p.s., if i decide to seal up the holes before doing anything else, how can i test the thermopile wires to make sure i didn't mess em up with all my pulling and tugging. would checking the millivolts as before do the tricks and do i need to light the pilot light to do that?

Pulling the wires back down shouldn't require a great effort, plus, they're pretty durable...You should be fine with goobing the RTV in the gap around them & firing it right up... Make sure you run it with the glass ON when you take the Mv readings, & make sure the top 3/8" of the t-pile is engulfed by the pilot flame

 

[flipper]

if it looked a lot like the lava rock, then that's indeed what it was. interesting. meanwhile, i've gooped on some of the red crap, making an unholy mess of it as i went. basically, the entire pilot area is now swathed in red. now i know why some jobs are best left to the professionals! nonetheless, i've come this far and i'm going to stay the course. will report back in the a.m., after i try to do some more gooping in the (many) blind spots ...

 

[flipper]

sheesh, i think i must have messed up the t-pile wires somehow. so, i finished gooping and the pilot light came on fine and strong and when i tested it a few minutes later i got a nice reading of over 500 millivolts. but then everything went berzerk and the reading dropped down into the low teens. huh, go figure. anyway, i stoked up the main burner and then i tested it. looked good at over 200 millivolts but then it went haywire too and dropped down to like 30 with the flame going out.

then i figured out what was going. as long as i held the multimeter probes to the wires, it drained all the millivolts out of the t-pile and the fire died; talk em off and the fire popped up again.

so ... what have i done now and how can i fix it?

thanks and sorry for being such an incredible bumbling pain in the arse!

 

[summit]

the multimeter shouldn't do that, unless you are grounding out the wire somehow. I don't think you've damaged anything, but I'd give the wires a good once over, and make sure there are no raw spots grounding out on the stove. 500 mv is a good #, however, 200 for load is fine, so it sounds like the tp is healthy!

 

[flipper]

damn. i thought i had it.

i fiddled w/ the wire and got rid of the jitter problem (i do think, however, that i nicked one of the wires somewhere and that's why it was grounding out; arg.)

turned on pilot, got reading of 480 mv. i waited a few minutes and it went down to 460. at that point, i turned on the main burner. initial reading was 250 - 260, holding steady. i had to leave for 15 minutes and when i came back, it was reading 230. sweet! then it dropped to 215. then, in the space of less than a minute, it rocketed up to 350 and the burner went out and it continued up to around 370, where it hung until i shut it down.,

now what?

 

[summit]

at 350 , shouldn't of gone out. sudden shot upwards is wierd: either a bad connection / groudout.. or a bad valve. did pilot shut out, too, or just the burner?

 

[flipper]

just the burner shut down; pilot remained on. given the previous jitters, i would suspect bad connection / ground out probably due to me messing up the t-pile wires. would that make the most sense? guess i might be buying a new one of them after all!

 

[summit]

keep us posted!

 

[flipper]

will do.

i'm back to trying to get the thermopile out. i've tried banging it down from above -- no luck, it won't go through ... yet. my next tactic is to switch from banging to pounding. we'll see how that works!

 

[DAKSY]

If you can't drive it out, smash it.
Take a pair of big pliers & mangle it enuff to get it out of there,
even if it comes out in pieces. It sure sounds like it's a POS
anyways, & for the $50 you'll spend on a new one, the piece
of mind will be "priceless!"

 

[flipper]

good advice and i nearly went the smashing route but after about a 1/2 hr of wrangling, i managed to slide it out. i can tell that putting the new one in is going to be hell too, but i'll cross that bridge when i get to it.

thanks for all the encouragement!

i only hope i haven't punctured any of the gas pipes...

well, we'll see!

more later ...

 

[flipper]

darn.

got the new t-pile installed okay, ticked the pilot into life, got a reading of 450 mv on the meter, fired up the burner, and still got in the 400s. woo-hoo! left for a half hour, came back, the flame was out, the pilot was still lit, and the meter was reading in the low 500s. go figure.

tonight, i'm going to tend to my bruises and wounds.

but what about tomorrow ... what might i try tomorrow?

 

[webbie]

Others can probably answer better - but is there an overheat sensor on the Firelight? I remember Heat and Glow had one at the top of the front or somewhere like that, and that would sometimes shut the thing down.

Also, are we 100% sure that the venting is clear and that the venting meets manual requirements and that any restrictor (if any) is installed?

 

[DAKSY]

Tomorrow...I'd pull the burner tube (again) & remove the burner orifice.
You'll need a 1/2" or 13mm wrench or socket.
There may be a spider web in there that may work it's way to the
orifice after the gas has been flowing for a while...
Take a peek down inside the gas line & run a Q-tip or a pipe cleaner down
in the tube & swirl it around to see if you can pull anything out...
If that's not it, Dave Gault will hafta chime in with the ohm readings to
check to see if your gas valve has Sh*t the bed...

 

[flipper]

Admin: Don't know about the sensor for sure but I don't see it mentioned in the manual. As to restrictoring, well, I don't know. The manual has explicit restrictor instructions for vertical installations but nothing i can see for horizontal, which is how I have mine. Here's a pdf link to the manual: (broken link removed to http://www.jotul.com/FileArchive/Files/USA/Old) products/Old gas products/GF600_Firelight.pdf/. see pages 12 and 13. am i not seeing something?

bob: i'll clear that tube and see what i can see.

thanks again all for your help and patience.

 

[flipper]

well, i dunno.

i went out and fired it up again and everything went swimmingly for 40 minutes, then the burner sputtered and died out, with the multimeter still reading in the mid-400s.

so then i started thinking about the restrictor plates and guess what? the insides of my Firelight don't match what shows in the manual. if you look at the third picture on my original post, you'll see the 5 or 6 tube thingy thing in the back. i don't see anything like that in the literature.

for that matter, the lit shows an on/off/stat switch for the main burner. all i've got is an on/off switch, w/ no third position.

and now that i think about it -- where did that 7-piece wood set come in and/or from? the manual shows only a four-log set and a pin configuration that doesn't match what mine is.

i double checked the plate that's attached to the stove. yup, says it right there, Jotul Firelight 600 DV. i went and checked all the old and new manuals and found nothing with a many-tubed inside like what i've got, altho the old Firelight manual, the one I've been using, does have the same front left and doors.

thoughts? suggestions?

 

[Wood Heat Stoves]

Tomorrow...I'd pull the burner tube (again) & remove the burner orifice.
You'll need a 1/2" or 13mm wrench or socket.
There may be a spider web in there that may work it's way to the
orifice after the gas has been flowing for a while...
Take a peek down inside the gas line & run a Q-tip or a pipe cleaner down
in the tube & swirl it around to see if you can pull anything out...
If that's not it, Dave Gault will hafta chime in with the ohm readings to
check to see if your gas valve has Sh*t the bed...

sit valve?
(broken link removed to http://woodheatstoves.com/nova-sit-820-troubleshooting-guide-p-12157.html)

robertshaw?
(broken link removed to http://woodheatstoves.com/robertshaw-gas-valve-troubleshooting-and-testing-p-12487.html)

less likey, honeywell-
(broken link removed to http://woodheatstoves.com/images/honeywellvsc8420gasvalvemanual.pdf)